itSMFI 2017 Forum Focus - June Forum Focus ITSMFI | Page 17

to realise in a services environment as opposed to a software environment. In what follows, I will summarise the main Agile principles that were discussed and will draw some conclusions of their applicability to service management. As for focusing on value, do we need Agile for this? Not really, as it should already be recognised that value is the primary aim of delivering services. However, Agile provides a refreshing perspective where value creation and the customer's perspective on the services are central, which is lacking in some service management implementations that focus mostly on the internal activities. contracts, which customers need to accept. All in all, the ISMF seems well positioned to make the move from classic, process and internally oriented Service Management, to a more externally focused, flexible way of delivering services and creating value for the customer. Once the breadth of the ISMF has been embraced, an Agile approach to service management can follow naturally. It is the close collaboration with the customer that is a major contribution of Agile, also in the service provider area. The “daily” aspect of collaboration needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but the aim to more closely involve the customer in the development and delivery of services is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction is ultimately maximised. Agile's focus on the well-being of the people who actually need to do the work is fully in line with the Integral Service Management Framework. It should be common sense to have this focus, but not all organisations have developed that far yet. Agile may well provide the push to get there. I believe that Agile has a point in wanting to reduce unnecessary documentation, as many documents will never be read by anyone or become obsolete as soon as they have been written due to new developments and requirements. However, in a service provider environment, it is hard to cut away all documentation, simply because the service knowledge needs to be retained. In the area of change, Agile goes a bit over board in its embrace of change as a constant (Agile Principle: Welcome changing requirements, even late in development), but has a point when it comes to the need to be flexible about it. This applies to services as well as to software development, albeit in different ways. Services require a higher level of control, specifically if they are provided to multiple customers, hence change management for (multi-tenant) services needs to be stricter than when developing a software product for a single customer. Iterative and incremental service provisioning is an area that Agile is the great game-changer in, but it is also the area that is most difficult to apply to services. It very much depends on the type of service you are providing whether a minimum viable service can actually be developed, on top of which incremental enhancements can be regularly provided. It is also up to the customer to actually agree with this approach, where the benefit is that services should be available earlier, but subsequent enhancements are to be developed in a collaborative way. This is a departure from classic References http://agilemanifesto.org/ 1. Gordon Groll, Jayne – The Agile Service Management Guide, 2015 2. Pinchbeck, Lee – Agile Service Management, in: itSMF Australia Bulletin. August 2016 3. Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility, Netflix, 2012 4. Meyer, Bertrand – Agile!: The Good, the Hype and the Ugly, Springer, 2014 5. Kliem, Ralph M. – Managing Lean Projects, Auerbach Publications, 2015 Dolf van der Haven was born in Muiderberg, The Netherlands, in 1971. Originally a Geophysicist, he has a wide background in IT, Telecommunications, Management, Psychotherapy and Service Management. He currently works as a Service Management Consultant at Verizon Enterprise Solutions and is Co-founder and Managing Director of Powerful Answers, a Service Management consultancy based in Bulgaria, The Netherlands and the Czech Republic. He is also member of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 40, which develops the ISO/IEC standard series 38500 (Governance of IT) and 20000 (Service Management). Previous publications include The Healing Elephant (2008 in Dutch, 2009 in English), about psychotherapy; and The Human Face of Management (2014) about people management. Dolf lives in Groenekan, The Netherlands, with his partner and their 75 chickens. He can be reached at [email protected]. 17 itSMFI Forum Focus—June 2017