my blog

Are Job Families the new IT Management device?

As we move towards to the ‘new’ technology landscape of XaaS, Robotics, Automation, DevOps, Analytics, etc. we must change how we manage IT for the future. Unfortunately many IT organisations still suffer from the herd mentality, managing IT the way they do because everyone else manages their IT that way. Traditionally IT organisation employed two IT Management devices: The Rational Device defined by organisation, structure, rules, metrics The Emotional Device defined by relationships,

SLAs in the SIAM Model

In defining SLAs in the SIAM world, there are a number considerations which will influence the choice of SLAs The nature of the SIAM function, whether it is a retained in-house function or an outsourced function. This will position SIAM differently within the IT organisation and can influence the shape of the SIAM function and where responsibilities versus accountabilities reside? The nature of the Service Provider contracts. These can be managed service contracts, capacity-based contracts or a

Are SLAs in Service Management Dead?

This a very interesting discussion has been going on in LinkedIn. From reading the comments it appears that there are common themes coming through which I would challenge. Here are some of my thoughts from reading the discussion. There is a difference between Customers (those up sign up to the Service Level Agreement on behalf of their business units) and Consumers (End Users often mistakenly referred to as ‘Customers’) Consumer expectations do not = Consumer needs. Don’t believe that all

Is IT outsourcing just an expensive experiment?

4th generation outsourcing, the current flavour of IT outsourcing, is not working as it should for many businesses. Many of their IT organisations are ignorant of, or choose to ignore, the fundamental reason. As a result, many business are not realising the commercial or value propositions of IT outsourcing. 4th generation outsourcing is defined as multi-vendor outsourcing (or multi-sourced services) enabled by service integration. The challenge for service integration is that IT organisations

Do Incident SLAs really have any value?

It always strikes me as strange the way that IT organisations apply SLAs to Incidents. Typically Incidents are categorised as Severity (or Priority) 1 through 4 or 5 and service restoration times to the categories such as Severity 1 = 4 hours, Severity 2 = 8 hours and so on are applied. In my experience, when there is a Severity 1 Incident, IT consumers do not get exercised about when it will be resolved, although Senior Management and Department Heads, etc. should. But your average consumer

What is an IT Service?

Over the years I’ve asked many people, in different roles and in different countries to explain to me what an IT Service is. To date no one has given me an in informed answer. I’ve asked clients, service providers, and public speakers and no one person has been able to coherently define what an IT Service actually is. Yet we freely use terms such as service management, everything-as-a-service, service provider, value-add services, service excellence, self-service, customer service, and the list