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If we look at some of the core ITIL disciplines – change control, capacity planning, incident management, problem management, supplier management, configuration management – the environments to which they apply are increasingly complex. The mindset behind applying them must also adapt. If the disciplines are applied in a risk averse fashion, when the business environment demands agility and responsiveness, there will either be unmet demand or uncontrolled change. Our role is to make the business successful and a tenet of good governance is that the owner should set and take responsibility for the risk appetite to be applied. When was the last time that your organisation had an active discussion about this and what it meant for how IT services are managed?
Environmental complexity also requires service management skills to be applied across increasingly diverse suites of applications and infrastructure. Hybrid environments are pretty well all environments as it would be unusual (unthinkable?) for there to be a one size fits all hosting or platform solution to meet all needs. Service managers need to be curious about the elements that make up their domain and ideally, one step ahead of their clients in what might come next. Engaging with incumbent vendors to find out what’s on their roadmaps, reading articles on what similar businesses are doing, attending networking events with peers and their clients stimulate thinking and grow capability without the constraints of formal training.
Speaking of which – what’s on your development plan for 2019? If you haven't thought about it yet, you are already running the risk of lagging behind the
change curve. You don’t need to have the 5 day training course in mind yet, but you should at least be thinking about the topics that would challenge your approach to technology, stimulate you to change the way that you do your job and will make you think about new value that you can bring to work. It doesn’t matter how long you have been in your current role or how bespoke or aged the technology might be that you’re supporting. There are some terrific free courses on offer from companies who offer cloud services, robotic process automation, business intelligence etc. Yes, because they are free you will be signed up to an email newsletter and the content will be introductory level only, but if you want to listen to ad free music you need to pay the subscription fee. For the price of the effort required to study something new, you might identify a discipline through which you could increase the value you bring and the value people attribute to you.
The role of service management is more important than ever if we are to prevent complexity from driving heightened risk and unpredictability. Service Managers can add depth to digital, but their responsibility starts with continuous improvement, not keeping the lights on.
IT Leadership for the 21st Century
Technology | Innovation | Digital
| Driving Business Transformation | Director
Susan Sly