Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL by Malcolm Fry Recognized industry luminary Malcolm Fry outlines the reasons organizations fail to effectively implement ITIL, and discusses why a philosophy of continuous improvement is paramount to success. 1
Table of Contents Top Ten Reasons Organizations are...1 Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL...1 Top Ten Reasons for Implementation Failure...3 The Impact of IT Failures...5 The Need for Continuous Improvement...5 High-Level ITIL Benefits...6 What ITIL Is Not...7 Time To Reap the Rewards...8 About the Author Malcolm Fry is a recognized IT industry luminary with over 35 years experience in Information Technology. He serves as an independent executive advisor to BMC Software. Malcolm is the author of four best-selling books on IT service and support, has had many other articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of information by technology journalists. In addition, he is the solo performer in a highly successful, best-selling video series made for the Help Desk Institute. He is an original contributor to ITIL and has Masters level ITIL certification. ITIL is a registered trademark of OGC - the Office of Government Commerce 2
IT Service Management has become both more sophisticated and more critical to the business. We are now in an era in which an IT failure or error can interrupt critical business processes, severely damage a corporation s image, affect the bottom line, and even impact a company s stock valuation. As organizations become more reliant on technology, the need for reliable, well-managed services continues to increase. With this increased demand on IT performance, IT needs well-defined processes to ensure that IT operations are maintained at optimal levels. The Information Infrastructure Technology Library (ITIL ) is the de facto industry standard framework for providing guidance specific to IT service delivery and support processes. ITIL can help IT organizations improve Service Management processes, as well as enable them to deliver benefits that matter most to both the IT organization and the business. The ITIL books are comprehensive and clear, yet many organizations are unsuccessful in implementing ITIL. Why is this? I ve worked with numerous organizations through the years, and have concluded that many factors contribute to failure in implementing ITIL successfully. Top Ten Reasons for Implementation Failure Below I ve listed my top ten list of reasons that organizations fail in their attempts to implement ITIL: 1- Lack of management commitment No project can succeed without management commitment and drive. You can achieve isolated wins with ITIL without management commitment, but these wins will be few and far between. Commitment itself is not enough; those in management must show their commitment to ITIL by their presence and involvement. 2- Spending too much time on complicated process diagrams When you start to approach ITIL, there is a great temptation to produce complex and detailed process maps. This is not necessary for most of the processes, and wastes valuable time and resources. Many of the processes, such as Incident Management, are performed hundreds of times every day and do not need rigid process maps. However, you should create simple process maps for some of the ITIL processes. 3 - Not creating work instructions Too often, organizations fail to establish written work instructions because they spend too much time on creating complex process maps. Work instructions include escalation rules, priority definitions, and change categories. These work instructions must be written, published, and continually reviewed. 3
4 - Not assigning process owners IT, like most other departments, is often silo-based and not process-oriented. A process owner should be assigned to each of the ITIL processes that cross functional silos. The process owner should concentrate on the structure and flow of the process, without having to focus on staffing and other departmental issues. Quite simply, the process owner s job is to carefully monitor and manage the assigned process so that it can be continually improved. 5 - Concentrating too much on performance Most IT monitoring activities concentrate on performance, while ignoring quality and processes. For example, most Service Desks can report how quickly they escalate incidents, but few can report how often they escalate incidents to the wrong person. Organizations need to spend more time on improving quality as part of implementing ITIL. 6 - Being too ambitious ITIL consists of ten Service Management processes. Many organizations attempt to implement too many processes at once, causing confusion, staff unrest, and poor integration between the processes. 7 - Failing to maintain momentum It s a huge effort to implement all ten ITIL processes and maintain the momentum, especially if the biggest gains come early in the ITIL implementation. A complete and successful implementation of ITIL takes most organizations between three and five years a long time to maintain momentum. Remember, to maintain the momentum from those early achievements, you must implement all of the ITIL processes. Think of it like a taking a course of antibiotics when you are ill--after a few doses, you feel better. But, if you fail to complete the whole course of the prescription, you will soon be back to square one feeling ill again. 8 - Allowing departmental demarcation Some of the processes cross more than one department. This often causes conflict among departments, especially in organizations where department boundaries are rigid and ownership is important. All departments need to understand that ITIL is a joint venture and success comes from all working together; that is, the power of one, and not from ownership of a process. 9 - Ignoring solutions other than ITIL Although ITIL is regarded as the industry best practice for IT Service Management, many other best practices and frameworks exist to facilitate Service Management, such as Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT), Six Sigma, and CMMi. Corporate control requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, can also affect ITIL. These other components are often ignored, which can delay ITIL implementation. Even worse, if you don t focus on these components, then you are not maximizing ITIL s potential. 4
10 - Not reviewing the entire ITIL framework Although there are ten basic ITIL processes, look at the entire ITIL framework when putting ITIL best practices in place. In particular, review the Security Management and the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Infrastructure Management books, because ITIL success is dependent upon other IT processes. The Impact of IT Failures I ve just outlined the reasons that organizations fail in implementing ITIL, but let s take a step back to understand why we need the welldefined processes as defined by ITIL. Two examples show the impact of two critical IT failures in the same week, first when the National Air Traffic System failed to operate in the UK: NATS Flight Data Processing System failed at around 0600 BST for an hour, after overnight testing of an upgrade. Extract from a BBC (UK) report dated June 3, 2004 (www.bbc.com) As a result of this failure, virtually all flights from commercial airports were grounded for at least an hour beginning at 6 a.m. on June 3, 2004. Can you imagine the chaos? Not to mention the cost and image damage. This failure was obviously caused by the testing of a future change. Note that the change was only being tested, yet it still had an enormous effect. It appears that poor change management was the cause of this failure. Now, for the IT failure at the Royal Bank of Canada in the same week: RBC s computer woes began on Monday, May 31 with what it described as a routine programming update to one of its computer systems. The bank s national system failed to register withdrawals, deposits, and payments against customer balances. Friday, June 4, 2004( www.globeandmail.com) Again, this looks like a failed change, but is described by the bank as a routine programming update, suggesting that this type of change had been performed many times before. Surely, a routine update shouldn t fail, should it? Sometimes, the lack of attention to the routine can cause the worst problems. The impact to RBC was huge, because it was a full working week before IT was fully restored. The Need for Continuous Improvement Ensuring successful IT Service Management is like becoming a martial arts expert. To maintain your martial arts level status, you have to continuously practice and train, because laziness breeds failure and incompetence. To maintain your IT Service Management at the highest level, you must practice continuous improvement, or you will breed failure and incompetence. No IT Service can rely on previous successes, so it is important for IT Service Management to embark upon a continuous improvement cycle. 5
The power of ITIL lies in not only in its well-defined processes, but also in its philosophy of continuous improvement. To gain the full benefits of implementing ITIL, IT staff and IT management must meet this challenge of continuous improvement. Both the ITIL Service Delivery and Service Support books include a list of ten benefits that you should achieve as a result of following ITIL Service Management processes. The philosophy of continuous improvement is reflected in the following list: Improved quality of service - more reliable business support More focused IT Service Continuity procedures; more confidence in the ability to follow them when required Clearer view of current IT capability Better information on current services (and possibly on where Changes would bring most benefits) Greater flexibility for the business through improved understanding of IT support More motivated staff; improved job satisfaction through better understanding of capability and better management of expectations Enhanced customer satisfaction as service providers know and deliver what is expected of them Increased flexibility and adaptability that is likely to exist within the services System-led benefits, e.g. improvements in security, accuracy, speed and availability, as required, for the required level of service Improved cycle time for changes and greater success rate. 1 High-Level ITIL Benefits This is quite an impressive list of benefits. If you are not currently achieving these benefits, then quite possibly you are suffering the losses and impacts of not implementing ITIL best practices. Here are some additional high-level ITIL benefits that are not mentioned in the ITIL publications: Common terminology- Apart from standard processes, ITIL has a standard set of terminology that allows IT to communicate more easily with customers. This is especially useful to large, multi-site organizations in which all sites perform the same IT Service Management functions, but are using different lexicons to describe their actions. In addition to simplifying communication with IT, standard terminology also improves training, improves reporting, and reduces confusion. 1 Best Practice for Service Support, ITIL. The Key to managing IT services, Page 17. Published for Office of Government Commerce under license from the Controller of Her Majesty s Stationery Office Crown Copyright 2001. 6
Narrower gap between management and practitioners Senior management often does not understand many of the processes under their control, for a variety of reasons. There may be too many processes for management to understand them all, or a manager may not have performed some of the processes. Also, the processes may have changed. One of the benefits of an ITIL shop is that senior management can use the ITIL books as a guide to help them ensure that Service Management processes are being performed according to best practices. International standards ITIL has a BS15000 British Standard, is allied to ISO9002, and is awaiting ISO ratification. Reaching the standard required for ratification is a great vision for the improvement of IT Service Management, even if you do not wish to become ratified. Staff certification ITIL has independent staff certification comprised of two main levels of certification: foundation and managers. If you are certified at the foundation level, you show a general understanding of the ITIL processes and terminology. To pass managers-level certification, you need a comprehensive knowledge of ITIL, along with the ability to implement and manage ITIL in the workplace. It s important to note that ITIL certification examinations are set and marked by independent examining boards that cannot teach or profit from ITIL certification. A by-product of ITIL certification is that you can gauge the quality of your training by the percentage of your staff that passes the exams. What ITIL Is Not Your organization can realize many important benefits by implementing ITIL best practices. In most organizations, there is still much good work to be done. Be careful, though, to draw a line between looking for tangible benefits and merely tinkering with technology. It may be useful to look at what ITIL is not: ITIL is not a methodology for implementing IT Service Management processes. Rather, it is a flexible framework that you can tailor to meet your specific needs. ITIL does not contain detailed process maps. ITIL provides the foundation and information that you need to build and improve your processes. ITIL does not provide work instructions. For example, the ITIL Incident Management process tells you at what point you must escalate the incident, but it doesn t tell you how to escalate the incident, or who you should escalate the incident to; only you can determine this. It is refreshing to discover that, while ITIL is not the complete answer to everything, it does provide a solid foundation. Think about it like this: memorizing the rules to baseball does not mean that you can play the game. To play baseball well, not only must you follow the rules, but you must also learn to utilize your strengths and abilities. 7
Similarly, memorizing the ITIL books does not mean that you can effectively implement the ITIL processes; you can successfully implement ITIL best practices only by understanding your IT strengths and abilities. Time To Reap the Rewards Knowing what you know about ITIL, and the benefits it can bring to your business, aren t you ready to see what it can do for you? Let this industry framework guide you as you implement IT Service Management best practices in your IT organization and begin to reap the rewards that ITIL can bring to IT, to users, and to the success of your overall business. 8