International Process and Performance Institute

For those business people who may be unfamiliar with the concept of IT Service Management, (often called ITIL®) let's start with a very brief explanation.

As information technology increasingly underpins key business processes, sometimes actually becoming the company's product, the way technology is managed has come under fire. It is no longer adequate to manage 'infrastructure' --- individual servers, routers, applications and so on --- the organization must take a holistic, end-to-end view of technology from the context of critical business processes.

For this reason there are a number of frameworks that IT is looking to for guidance on establishing internal processes to effectively and efficiently manage technology from this new paradigm, the most popular of which is the IT Infrastructure Library or ITIL®.

What is essential for successful adoption of ITIL®  and/or IT service management within an organization is active participation from the business. Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons why it is common for the business side of the house to not be involved in these quality improvement programs. 

In some cases IT does not seek to engage the business as a result of fear due to poor working relationships with the business. In others, the business is well aware of the need to make difficult decisions and trade-offs that they are not currently being held accountable for and therefore avoid participation.

When the business finally gets involved, it is easy to get intoxicated with work flow automation and technology, (which is also right in IT's comfort zone). The focus on the customer and business process improvement is lost.

Customer Expectation Management: Minding the Gap

One simply has to read the guidance to see the relationship between Customer Expectation Management (CEM) and ITIL®:

"Perceptions of value are influenced by expectations.  ... What the customer values is frequently different from what the IT organization believes it provides. Mind the gap."                                            - ITIL® Service Strategy, Section 3.1 - Value Creation

More specifically, there are some important areas that IPAPI CEM Method™ can help with ITSM adoption.

First, getting the business to define business processes from the customer perspective (not 'the system') is an obvious benefit. Without this orientation by the business it is likely that key business processes will not be defined from the outside-in, resulting in investments in automation that are not truly customer-aligned. Indeed, if we successfully achieve technology integration with the business the risks associated with a lack of customer focus could increase significantly.

The increasing pace of technological change brings more complexity to IT infrastructures. In many cases the IT organization is drowning in an n-tier, virtualized and distributed technology infrastructure. The IPAPI CEM Method™ seeks to reduce the complexity of business processes precisely at a time when complexity is an increasing burden on the IT staff.

The IPAPI CEM Method™ also offers an approach that is based on simple process activity modeling (via the Process Activity List) that can help both IT and the business avoid detailed workflows when that is not what is needed.

This approach can provide the IT organization with a simple and quick way of validating key business processes, limiting time consuming re-engineering and analysis to areas that have high customer value.

Business & IT: Two Lanes on the Same Highway

Making sure your ITSM road map has a business lane is fundamental to success, and managing customer expectations applies to both internal and external customers.

The IPAPI CEM Method™ and ITIL®'s Service Strategy share common principles that can be used effectively in both BPM and ITSM initiatives. Make sure your road map has both an IT and a business lane that share a common vision of where you're going.

I believe that incorporating the CEM Method™ as part of your ITSM improvement program can help you mind those gaps, but I'd be interested to know:

If you are on a journey to ITSM, how involved is your business?

How are you documenting key business processes for the IT organization to map technology to?

What challenges are you facing?