Copyright 2005 © Symbox Limited - 1 - Five Milestones to a Successful ITIL Implementation www.Symbox.com Version 1.5

White Paper

Five Milestones to a Successful ITIL Implementation

By Martin Thompson, Symbox

Overview Once an organization has decided to adopt ITIL best practices, the question becomes ‘What is the best way to implement ITIL, and what are the practical steps involved?’ This white paper is designed to provide insight into the most common hurdles faced by organizations when implementing ITIL best practice and includes practical steps on how to overcome them.

Contents Overview ........................................................................................................... 1 Contents ........................................................................................................... 1 1. Get Buy-In. Constantly Reinforce it. .............................................................. 2 2. Benchmark Your Current Position................................................................. 2 3. Establish Key Metrics.................................................................................... 3 4. Select and Define Processes ......................................................................... 3 5. Overcome Resistance.................................................................................... 4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 5 About Symbox .................................................................................................. 5

5 MILESTONES 1. GET BUY-IN 2. BENCHMARKING 3. KEY METRICS 4. PROCESS DEFINITION 5. OVERCOME RESISTANCE

Copyright 2005 © Symbox Limited - 2 - Five Milestones to a Successful ITIL Implementation www.Symbox.com Version 1.5

1. Get Buy-In. Constantly Reinforce it. Implementing ITIL best practice is a strategic business decision. It requires buy-in from the business in order to proceed, and then ongoing support to ensure it meets the original objectives. You can facilitate senior management engagement and buy-in with your ITIL implementation with a sound business case. Bear in mind that not all the benefits commonly cited by the industry are tangible or directly revenue related (See benefits to the left), you’ll need to measure these improvements via specifically chosen metrics (covered later). The tangible bottom line benefits can be bolstered by a cost / benefit analysis (An example of which is defined in the ITIL Service Support Book1 in Appendix E). As well as Management buy-in, a common stumbling block is the process owners not being given sufficient authority to enable organisational change. Similarly thought must be given to defining roles in the processes and assigning responsibilties. “Impediments to successful ITIL adoption revolve principally around management factors that are under control of CXO. CXO sponsorship is the dominant critical success factor in the adoption of ITIL. Survey participents report the major barriers to ITIL adoption are lack of awareness (61%), an ability to attain buy-in (60%) and a lack of committed process owners (59%). Technical issues are of secondary importance to adoption decisions.” 2 Last, but not least, service desk administrators or agents also need to buy-in to the project and realise the benefits of ITIL adoption. An important factor in the deployment of any tool is user acceptance so engage all participants from management to analysts to end users with the assessment of the interface and usability of the system.

2. Benchmark Your Current Position ITIL cannot be implemented overnight so it is important to plan which elements of ITIL you will adopt and in which order to ensure you derive maximum value for your efforts. A good starting point is to benchmark the maturity of your existing processes against best practice. This can be achieved via third party consultants or using in-house skills. Both approaches have their benefits. It is often fruitful to seek the advice of an independent party who can offer a fresh pair of eyes and new perspective on your current state; especially those ITIL practitioners who have “Been there, done that” and can share their practical experience from other successful implementations. If you take the DIY route there are some self-assessment templates on the ITSMF website. See http://www.itsmf.com/bestpractice/selfassessment.asp for further details. The objective of the benchmarking exercise is to identify areas which areas should be addressed next in order to deliver the most benefit. It also means that your organization will have created a baseline against which future improvements can be measured.

1 Best Practice for Service Support, OGC, TSO (2005) 2 The adoption of ITIL in large organisations. Tech Republic 2005.

Benefits of ITIL • Help to prevent problems before they occur in the IT environment – resulting in significant reduction in the number, resolution time and business impact of service incidents • Provide services that meet business, customer and user demands • Improved availability, reliability and security of IT services • Learn from experience • Provide demonstrable performance indicators • Reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of IT infrastructure assets and IT applications.

• Improved resource utilization including decreased levels of rework and elimination of redundant activities. • More effective third party relationships and contracts

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How ITIL are you already? It is very likely that you will already have some processes in place, but they have not been formalized or designed specifically to comply with ITIL. There maybe scope for adapting your existing processes and establishing some quick wins to gain some momentum with your best practice strategy.

3. Establish Key Metrics Once you have established a baseline and identified some areas where the most benefit can be sought, its is now important to identify some metrics, called Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), which can be used to measure the success of your ITIL implementation. There are three principal sets of KPI’s. 1) Workflow KPI’s – each process must follow a set of defined steps in order e.g.

Approval must precede implementation, acceptance must follow testing. Workflow KPI’s relate to the process steps and the what, who, when, how many and how long did it take (Service Level Agreements).

2) Dataset KPI’s relate to the data captured in the process as the workflow is carried out. E.g. why is a change required? How many hours has the server been offline?

3) Business KPI’s – these should be determined as metrics that have a measurable impact upon the business, usually financial. These could range from loss reporting to overtime hours worked on call outs.

The ITIL dashboard. When KPI’s are used effectively, an organization can quickly establish whether a process is working or not, then enhance the process accordingly to improve performance. Some KPI’s can be measured prior to completion of the process. This type of KPI enables action to be taken to correct an issue early on rather than after a process has failed. Other KPI’s measure the outcome of the process, often as a percentage change up or down. Begin with the end in mind. Choose KPI’s that target business benefits from an end user perspective. This ensures your processes are focused and prevents wading through irrelevant data.

4. Select and Define Processes Which Process to choose first? In a study by Forrester Research3 Incident Management “…came out as a clear winner”. In our experience Incident, Problem and Change management show the largest gap between current processes and industry best practice, and obviously represent the area likely to deliver greatest benefit. Although Configuration Management is the ideal process to obtain, this is not an overnight implementation and organizations are likely to recognize greater early success and gain momentum wth Incident, Problem and Change Management whilst planning their Configuration Management Database.

3 Not all processes are equal, Thomas Mendel Ph.D. Forrester Research. 16th March 2005. www.forrester.com

“You can’t prove what you don’t measure” ITSMF

How ITIL are you already? It is very likely that you will already have some processes in place, but they have not been formalized or designed specifically to comply with ITIL.

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Experience also shows us that a modular or phased approach whereby the implementation is broken into chunks works best. This allows time for the improvements to filter through to IT staff and encourage buy in amongst key stakeholders. The early successes can then be used as a springboard for future improvements. Allocate an owner for each process and ensure users have the opportunity to give their feedback and input into the process. The ITIL methodology can be described as descriptive rather than prescriptive (Prescriptive is the realm of standards). The ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery books include guidance on how to implement best practice but do not include the specific workflow required in order to achieve it (In automotive terms ITIL would dictate that a family car should have four wheels, but does not go as far as how to attach those wheels). Therefore any business planning to implement ITIL can either build their own custom process designs from scratch, or make use of existing templates and customize them for their own requirements. For example, Symbox, who have worked with a wide range of clients on ITIL projects and have refined templates, built on a pragmatic approach to ITIL. Every implementation will have its nuances, but the ability to import successful ITIL based templates and then fine tune them to individual requirements has been very popular.

5. Overcome Resistance Introducing any new process naturally requires the business to review existing job functions and roles and ITIL is no different. Whilst designing your new processes it is critical to consider the people and partners required to support them. Ensure your team is positioned in accordance with their skills, style and passions. Some organizations will experience resistance when implementing the new ITIL methodology, staff may feel disgruntled if not introduced formally to the the new service oriented approach. E.g. Incident management advises us to focus on maintaining service without necessarily understanding why the service was interrupted (until later); this may be a significant cultural change for some companies. With some elementary awareness training end users will start to think about how they go about their day to day roles and the potential impact it may have on the business. E.g. one public sector organization reflected this sentiment in their call logging screen, offering the end users to select the priority of the call based on its effect within the organisation. Users are offered the options; 1) This incident effects me 2) This incident effects my department 3) This incident effects the business Implementing ITIL is not just about evaluating and revisiting processes, it is about organizational change. Therefore, involvement, communication and training are absolutely fundamental to the success of your implementation.

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Conclusion It is recommended that a practical approach that emphasizes and constantly attempts to reinforce senior management engagement is adopted. This must be balanced by actively involving all stakeholders through the process involved from managers to analysts to end users. To facilitate this approach it is vital to benchmark your current position and then define key metrics to monitor the progress of the project from this base point. The benchmarking exercise will also allow you to select specific processes based on their predicted business benefit rather than attempting a big-bang ITIL implementation. When defining processes it is advisable to consider amending existing pre-defined ITIL process templates rather than re-inventing the wheel. Finally, it is recommended that training and education are at the forefront of your implementation to communicate your ITIL vision and ensure success.

About Symbox

Symbox customers rely on their appliances to automate their business processes. From applying best practice in service management, to delivering quality of service to their customers, suppliers and business partners, Symbox is the cornerstone to efficient operations. The core of the Symbox system is a robust workflow engine. From this workflow foundation business processes can be mapped, either using proven blueprints or templates or by building business processes from scratch. Symbox provide a core set of process templates including ITIL, Facilities Management, Purchasing and Event Management. The Symbox innovative approach has won them significant success in the IT Service Management field. However, because of the flexible nature of the system Symbox has also been implemented successfully to manage Facilities Management, CRM, HR and Accounts Payable processes – all from the same appliance.