Cloud and Service Catalog Blog

Overview of ITIL2011 by Ian Clayton. If You Don't Have $500 or Time to Read for 600 NEW Pages

ITIL 2011 update is out. And it's big. And you can't upgrade the books... so you might want to attend this webinar from Ian Clayton to get the skinny on it.

Ian is not a huge fan of ITIL so you are likely hear a critical view on it -- which is a good thing from my point of view.

From the invite see below.

On July 29, 2011 the latest edition of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) core publications are released. This FREE webinar will provide you with unbiased and expert opinion on the ITIL 2011 Edition, and will help you understand how the latest edition of ITIL fits into your Service Management plans.

---

Are you considering purchasing the ITIL books for the first time? 

Weighing whether to upgrade an existing version?  

Or perhaps interested in how best to adjust the knowledge you gained during formal ITIL education so it remains current?

Then don’t miss out on the chance to attend the one webinar designed to help you with these questions, and help you gain maximum advantage and value out of the update, protecting any existing, or planned investment you may have in these important publications.

via www.servicemanagement101.net

Service Catalogue Resource: This One Is a Good Primer for ITSM/ITIL Folk

I recommend "Demonstrating Value from IT Using Service Catalogues & SLAs" (PDF) by Barclay Rae as a good primer.

He covers SLA's, key service catalog elements and for those looking for categories and hierarchies, a nice comprehensive and visual set for IT services, Facilities and HR.

It's also quite dismissive of bad SLA's and quite funny about it. A small sample:

• This SLA will be filed for reference and stored in the private folder D://unused/garbage, marked ‘Do not read’. In the event of it being read it will become invalid.
• IT will respond in a timely manner to high-priority business incidents, if they
  are asked very nicely indeed, and also made to feel very special and
  important.
• IT will respond in a timely manner to high-priority business incidents, if they
  are asked very nicely indeed, and also made to feel very special and
  important.
• IT will respond in a timely manner to high-priority business incidents, if they are asked very nicely indeed, and also made to feel very special and important.

Other documents are here.

 

Reality Dish Served: Customer Focus Seems Hard When the House is Burning.

Ian posted a question that is getting some nice, frank answers. It's "Is Inside-Out Thinking Threatening Your ITSM Initiative?"

How do you tell if you are thinking 'inside-out'? IS THIS YOU?

1. you are unable to describe your value to customers.
2. key staff are unable to state clearly who the customers are, and what you do for them

Which then generate some interesting responses...Such as this frank admission of what the SLA really was all about.

The thrust off the document was to protect Global IT's ability to meet their target fulfillment times, not how we can make the process simple and easy for the customer.

And this quote I think speaks to many ITSM practitioner's day to day reality.

The thing is that its customers can't hear the message about value [add] whilst there are fires burning in basic delivery

And someone talks about the culture changes required.

But, we're talking about a culture shift, not an overnight task, and that means that a climate needs to be created for change. Part of that is embracing best practice in governance, in service management, in delivery; policy, enabling processes, resource and relationship management, etc.

So all in all a good thread. Recommended. Feel free to add your views..

Upcoming Webinar: Using a Service Catalog to Achieve IT-Business Integration Feb 9 @ 9am #ITIL #ITSM

This webinar is coming up. My friend Troy DuMoulin from Pink Elephant are hosting a 1 hour webinar on using the service catalog for IT-Business integration.  This will be Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9 am.

We'll have a very good interactive session this time. I want to get as many questions out there as we can!

Don't miss it!

The Service Catalog – A Strategic Tool for IT-Business Integration
Webinar Featuring Pink Elephant and newScale Experts

Attend this webinar and learn why the Service Catalog is a must-have in your strategic management tool kit.

Hear the experts from Pink Elephant and newScale – the authors of the practical guide "Defining IT Success Through The Service Catalog" – as they explain the strategic importance of a Service Catalog and how to use it to strengthen IT’s capabilities and achieve IT-business integration.

"Is the ITIL make-over like putting lipstick on a pig?" No. But Should We Be Asking Pigs to Fly to the Cloud?

Steve Chambers at ViewYonder catches the same question I had when I wrote "Is ITSM / ITIL Keeping Up with the State of the Art in Cloud Computing? Doubts Emerge" I then wrote that there didn't seem to be much thinking going on about the impact of cloud computing to ITSM.

Steve's wish list is to have a more pragmatic ITIL. 

I wish ITIL was more referenceable, more pragmatic and more relevant for today’s infrastructure.  Here’s some things I’d like ITIL to cover:

1. Virtual Infrastructure – how the service and server lifecycles are transformed, and how they impact all the other ITSM processes from SLM through Finance through to Config Management.
2. Cloud Computing – the epitomy of managing IT as a service, this is a great opportunity for ITIL to provide a best practice framework.

Yes, you heard me, I’d like to see a library of best practice reference frameworks for IT Infrastructure. 

I don't think it's going to happen for three reasons. 

First, it's cultural. Part of the ITIL culture seems at times to be intensely anti-technology and vendor.  And the problem with that is that technological change is vendor driven.  With all the good an bad that implies, but it is a fact. As long as that attitude remains, innovation will flow like molasses, not a river. 

Second, it's structural, ITIL is owned, and parceled out in such a way that many organizations (OGC, TSO, ITSMF, training organizations) each with its own focus and motivation that is hard to bring innovation in. 

It doesn't have to be this way. For example, AIIM is a professional organization, with a a large following and a very well defined process to create international standards. So innovation is part of its daily operations. I'd love to see ITSMf model itself along those lines.

Third, it is the nature of ITIL. Which is supposed to be a "best practice framework". Best practice, by definition, means proven, tested, and ... backward looking.  Which is neither good nor bad. 

I want my surgeon to be very proven, tested and backward looking --most of the time.  But in times of rapid change, particular the junction of technology and economics we are living in 2010 that backward looking "best practice" doesn't work and can be down-right counter-productive.

I do believe the ITIL v3 update will be a good thing. I'm a software guy, so patch updates are not a bad thing.  But when we patch updates, we don't re-write the stack. We fix the minor problems.

So what's the problem with a best practice framework. For me, it's the phrase "BEST PRACTICE." It's designed to make the brain stop thinking and looking for alternatives. If you find best, why keep on searching?

If ITIL was referred to as a set of "common practices," "useful body of knowledge," "guide to where dragons be hiding," or just "useful accumulation of tidbits you really ought to know by now" then... we'd have both the value ITIL brings, and the ability to keep on innovating.

But wishes ain't reality. And someone told me long ago, "Don't aska pig to sing. It doesn't work, and it annoys the pig." 

So it's really us who need to think if we should be asking pigs to fly? Lipstick optional.

Steve. I think we are on your own.

Don't Like Service Standards? Go Out and Make Some of Your Own. Here's How. #ITIL #SPACL

We've gotten some good positive feedback about SPACL so far. And we'd love to get more contribution from the ITSM community.

So to help you give us feedback, I thought I'd share a little bit of how we go about thinking what needs to be in the service model.  This is a subset of what I wrote in response to a question at spacl.info/

For SPACL, we need to model a "Core set of Definitional Elements, Attributes, Data Structure and Hierarchy" in one of the three objects we have decided to tackle first; these are ServiceOffering, RequestableService and ServiceRequest.  There are other objects, such as ServiceAgreement, which we may tackle later or never. 

So for any element, like Warranty we run it through a "Core set of Definitional Elements, Attributes, Data Structure and Hierarchy" test. This is why it takes a while to make standards.  I'll explain.

First, is it core? Which is a judgment call for sure, but if Warranty not there is the ServiceOffering still valid? If it's not there, does something important break. And also the opposite, if this gets added, what compatibility and interchange between systems might get lost. What complexity might get introduced?

In the SPACL group we are guided by the history of successful standards, which teaches that the more complex the standard, the less adoption it receives. X.400 was the ultimate e-mail standard, but the winner that the internet runs on is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and the X.500 model for directory was too complex so it was replaced by Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and so on.

So the question of core is a very important one.

Second, is the element Definitional or is it Run-Time? In other words, can this element or attribute be sent from one party to another without the party having to know about the service operations?  This one trips up more than one ITSM practitioner, yet it's super important.  This would exclude having some kind of customer approval workflow in the definition because there's no way for a provider to know the internal approval workflow of customer.

It doesn't mean that a service at company XYZ can't or shouldn't have an approval process. It simply means that a SPACL ServiceOffering cannot require the provider put an approval workflow in the definition.

Third, is this an element or an attribute? An attribute is like a field. It has a value and a data type; like "$10" is a integer of the type currency.

On the other hand price is an element of SPACL definitions and has a complex data structure at that. For example, the price of "$30 per user per month" is one that has currency time, integer, a unit of measure "per user" which has to be defined somewhere, and a periodicity that also has to be explained ie. a year has 12 months, for example.

In SPACL we know we need to define these things. The question is to what degree? Do we need to create a list of allowable units of measure for IT, such as byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, etc? And maintain them? This is a serious endeavor and one that other e-commerce standards eventually had to. For fun, check out the UN site where the global units of measure for international e-commerce are documented.

And finally we have hierarchy. Are some elements required by other elements? For example, price often requires units; it's $5 per hot dog. $5 does not tell you enough. You need the unit of measure hot dog. Thus unit is part of price in this example.

Our goal with SPACL is to take the ambiguity and opinion about service definitions as much as possible and no more. There will always be the need to extend the definition for different industries, uses, etc. In fact SPACL allows for extensions. We see our job as first defining that core set of elements and attributes which all Services need to share.

So to now answer some of your question (I'm lenghty, ain't I). For example your third bullet is very much run-time. The decision of how to display a service is one that a customer can make different from another customer. So SPACL might include category in the definition, but would not include display rules.

Ready to make a standard?

So if you think there are elements and attributes we need to consider for SPACL, I encourage you to make your voice heard at spacl.info.  Go and make a standard you can be proud of.

Quick Comment on Our ITIL Service Catalog Book: We Need Updated Reviews

Thank you to all who have written such nice words about our book, Defining IT Sucess Through The Service Catalog: A Practical Guide, Second Edition

For some reason, the reviews of the first edition are not linked to the second edition. Which is unfortunate, because they were good reviews!

So if you've read the book, and hopefully liked it, I'd appreciate if you take a moment to jot down your thoughts on Amazon.  If you didn't like it, well let us know too. 

For example, we struggled hard to keep the book short. I wanted to fill it with examples, but examples wear out. So I'm thinking next book to do almost all cases and examples. Not a new book so much as hands-on guide adjunct. 

If you have not purchased it, you can by clicking on the picture below. I did put a free chapter on tools in the community, if you are curious.

Quick Comment on Our ITIL Service Catalog Book: We Need Updated Reviews

Thank you to all who have written such nice words about our book, Defining IT Sucess Through The Service Catalog: A Practical Guide, Second Edition

For some reason, the reviews of the first edition are not linked to the second edition. Which is unfortunate, because they were good reviews!

So if you've read the book, and hopefully liked it, I'd appreciate if you take a moment to jot down your thoughts on Amazon.  If you didn't like it, well let us know too. 

For example, we struggled hard to keep the book short. I wanted to fill it with examples, but examples wear out. So I'm thinking next book to do almost all cases and examples. Not a new book so much as hands-on guide adjunct. 

If you have not purchased it, you can by clicking on the picture below. I did put a free chapter on tools in the community, if you are curious.

Quick Comment on Our ITIL Service Catalog Book: We Need Updated Reviews

Thank you to all who have written such nice words about our book, Defining IT Sucess Through The Service Catalog: A Practical Guide, Second Edition

For some reason, the reviews of the first edition are not linked to the second edition. Which is unfortunate, because they were good reviews!

So if you've read the book, and hopefully liked it, I'd appreciate if you take a moment to jot down your thoughts on Amazon.  If you didn't like it, well let us know too. 

For example, we struggled hard to keep the book short. I wanted to fill it with examples, but examples wear out. So I'm thinking next book to do almost all cases and examples. Not a new book so much as hands-on guide adjunct. 

If you have not purchased it, you can by clicking on the picture below. I did put a free chapter on tools in the community, if you are curious.

New edition of "Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog" coming end of August

Our book, “Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog” came out about 18 month ago. It has been quite successful with five printings already.  For this kind of specialized book selling it’s considered a big deal by the publisher. 

But the book came out a few months prior to the ITIL V3 refresh so while it's quite accurate, ITIL v3 introduced some new distinctions.  Today, I want to inform you a new update edition is arriving at the end of the month.  The current book is now sold out until then.  Bill, Troy and I submitted the final draft to our editors last month.  So here's the new cover.

While the core (80%) of the book remains the same, there some important new changes which make it more useful.  Here are the big changes: 

• The book is now fully complementary to ITIL v3.  We adopted ITIL V3 in terminology and process names everywhere it made sense.  For example, service request is now "request fulfillment."  All process names are consistent with ITIL v3 process names.  Finally, we also cover some of the processes related to service catalogs.  These are minor changes but ought to simplify the reader's understanding of the Service Catalog and Service Portfolio in ITIL v3 without having to read 3 ITIL books. 

• We’ve added more clarity about the service model to make coherent with ITIL v3 and newScale / Pink service model.  ITIL v3 has a little guidance about defining a business service; the book adds a lot more and the service catalog templates and request fulfillment templates remain.  But now we are all talking about the same thing.

• Extensive new section on Request Fulfillment that establishes specific requirements and clear links to Service Portfolio.  ITIL v3 refers to this linkage in passing, but not how or why.

• A new chapter on the value and use of technology along with a set of over two-hundred (200+) questions broken down by ITIL process to help organizations construct RFI's,  RFP's,  or evaluate technology for service catalog solutions. Over the last year we've seen lots of different RFP's to inform these set of questions and with Pink's Verified criteria included, these ought to be very helpful in giving readers a sense of what they might want to look for.  These questions cover Service Catalog, Portfolio, Request, Demand, and Financial management modules.  This chapter alone can save you thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

• New section on using a service catalog to manage a supplier relationship and the case as to why you need to use a service catalog

This book will be launched at the ITSMF FUSION conference in San Francisco. It will be under a new Pink Elephant imprint and printed in North America. This ought to make ordering it easier and cheaper.  I don't know the price for the book but I'll update you once I have logistics information on ordering, price, etc.  We will be doing a book signing at ITSMF Fusion in San Francisco -- I'll update you on that too.

Join our LinkedIn group for service catalog professionals

New edition of "Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog" coming end of August

Our book, “Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog” came out about 18 month ago. It has been quite successful with five printings already.  For this kind of specialized book selling it’s considered a big deal by the publisher. 

But the book came out a few months prior to the ITIL V3 refresh so while it's quite accurate, ITIL v3 introduced some new distinctions.  Today, I want to inform you a new update edition is arriving at the end of the month.  The current book is now sold out until then.  Bill, Troy and I submitted the final draft to our editors last month.  So here's the new cover.

While the core (80%) of the book remains the same, there some important new changes which make it more useful.  Here are the big changes: 

• The book is now fully complementary to ITIL v3.  We adopted ITIL V3 in terminology and process names everywhere it made sense.  For example, service request is now "request fulfillment."  All process names are consistent with ITIL v3 process names.  Finally, we also cover some of the processes related to service catalogs.  These are minor changes but ought to simplify the reader's understanding of the Service Catalog and Service Portfolio in ITIL v3 without having to read 3 ITIL books. 

• We’ve added more clarity about the service model to make coherent with ITIL v3 and newScale / Pink service model.  ITIL v3 has a little guidance about defining a business service; the book adds a lot more and the service catalog templates and request fulfillment templates remain.  But now we are all talking about the same thing.

• Extensive new section on Request Fulfillment that establishes specific requirements and clear links to Service Portfolio.  ITIL v3 refers to this linkage in passing, but not how or why.

• A new chapter on the value and use of technology along with a set of over two-hundred (200+) questions broken down by ITIL process to help organizations construct RFI's,  RFP's,  or evaluate technology for service catalog solutions. Over the last year we've seen lots of different RFP's to inform these set of questions and with Pink's Verified criteria included, these ought to be very helpful in giving readers a sense of what they might want to look for.  These questions cover Service Catalog, Portfolio, Request, Demand, and Financial management modules.  This chapter alone can save you thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

• New section on using a service catalog to manage a supplier relationship and the case as to why you need to use a service catalog

This book will be launched at the ITSMF FUSION conference in San Francisco. It will be under a new Pink Elephant imprint and printed in North America. This ought to make ordering it easier and cheaper.  I don't know the price for the book but I'll update you once I have logistics information on ordering, price, etc.  We will be doing a book signing at ITSMF Fusion in San Francisco -- I'll update you on that too.

Join our LinkedIn group for service catalog professionals

New edition of "Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog" coming end of August

Our book, “Defining IT Success through the Service Catalog” came out about 18 month ago. It has been quite successful with five printings already.  For this kind of specialized book selling it’s considered a big deal by the publisher. 

But the book came out a few months prior to the ITIL V3 refresh so while it's quite accurate, ITIL v3 introduced some new distinctions.  Today, I want to inform you a new update edition is arriving at the end of the month.  The current book is now sold out until then.  Bill, Troy and I submitted the final draft to our editors last month.  So here's the new cover.

While the core (80%) of the book remains the same, there some important new changes which make it more useful.  Here are the big changes: 

• The book is now fully complementary to ITIL v3.  We adopted ITIL V3 in terminology and process names everywhere it made sense.  For example, service request is now "request fulfillment."  All process names are consistent with ITIL v3 process names.  Finally, we also cover some of the processes related to service catalogs.  These are minor changes but ought to simplify the reader's understanding of the Service Catalog and Service Portfolio in ITIL v3 without having to read 3 ITIL books. 

• We’ve added more clarity about the service model to make coherent with ITIL v3 and newScale / Pink service model.  ITIL v3 has a little guidance about defining a business service; the book adds a lot more and the service catalog templates and request fulfillment templates remain.  But now we are all talking about the same thing.

• Extensive new section on Request Fulfillment that establishes specific requirements and clear links to Service Portfolio.  ITIL v3 refers to this linkage in passing, but not how or why.

• A new chapter on the value and use of technology along with a set of over two-hundred (200+) questions broken down by ITIL process to help organizations construct RFI's,  RFP's,  or evaluate technology for service catalog solutions. Over the last year we've seen lots of different RFP's to inform these set of questions and with Pink's Verified criteria included, these ought to be very helpful in giving readers a sense of what they might want to look for.  These questions cover Service Catalog, Portfolio, Request, Demand, and Financial management modules.  This chapter alone can save you thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

• New section on using a service catalog to manage a supplier relationship and the case as to why you need to use a service catalog

This book will be launched at the ITSMF FUSION conference in San Francisco. It will be under a new Pink Elephant imprint and printed in North America. This ought to make ordering it easier and cheaper.  I don't know the price for the book but I'll update you once I have logistics information on ordering, price, etc.  We will be doing a book signing at ITSMF Fusion in San Francisco -- I'll update you on that too.

Join our LinkedIn group for service catalog professionals

Most People are Editors, Not Authors: New Pre-packaged Service Catalog Content for the Editor in Us

At newScale, we believe robust pre-defined catalog content is a key enabler for accelerating the development, deployment and maintenance of a meaningful service catalog. As I've heard say, "most people are editors, not authors." Having catalog content as a starting point saves a ton of time and money.

I'd like to introduce you today to some of the work being done by our content team.  Sorry for the advertising, but I am personally very excited by the work being done here so I thought I'd share it. 

We have a team dedicated to producing new content on a quarterly basis.  Unlike software updates, which everyone understands, Catalog content needs to be not only created, but also described, documented, and componentized to be truly useful. 

Our latest quarterly update includes enhancements to the ITIL v3 Service Process Library, Access Management, and End User Management. To give you some some sense of what this includes, let me get you a bit of detail.

Service Process Library for ITIL v3
This library helps an IT organization adopting ITIL to "activate ITIL"; this library defines all the requests, roles and role descriptions that are necessary to make ITIL processes operational. For example, this process library for ITIL v3 has a:

1. New Supplier Management category and services (to support all the supplier management processes)
2. New category images to simplify merchandising. 
3. Updated, streamlined email templates
4. Key design decisions,
5. Email templates
6. Enhanced service workflows across the library
7. Workflow suggestions, including Visio diagrams of service model flows
8. Pre-packaged data models and web forms
9. Pre-packaged KPI and reports.

This adds to the prior supported process such as Catalog, Service, Availability, Capacity, Change, Continuity, Supplier, and Portfolio  Management Process and roles. Here are just some o the 50+ process in this service catalog library:

Service Catalog Management

• Request a New Service
• Request a Change to an Existing Service
• Remove a Service from the Service Catalog

Service Level Management

• Review an Operational Level Agreement
• Request Change to an Underpinning Contract
• Propose Service Level Agreement
• Review a Service Level Agreement
• Change a Service Level Agreement

Access Management Library

This one has also been updated; there are now over 130 services defined.

•    18 new models & sample services have been added. These cover a variety of identity access requests.
•    The Configuration Guide has been enhanced and includes additional service design recommendations. 
•    New category images. May not seem important but they all need to be thematically and color-coherent.
•    Updated, streamlined email templates. These are written, pre-formatted, process ready notifications that let you do the whole Amazon, Dell type of experience.

End User Management Library

And of course, our proven and robust End User Management Library which contains all the end user services your catalog needs with over 260 service definitions. 

This is a foundation library. Each service includes published descriptions, pricing, and service levels to set customer expectations – and give business units the information they need to make cost-benefit trade-offs in order to better manage demand. The library also provides pre-built service request forms for each service area. Every pre-built form contains a variety of common service-specific data elements necessary to capture the upfront specifics for a service order. Each form is ready to use as-is –you may also reuse or configure the form elements to meet the specific needs of your customers.

These are a huge time-savers.  And we have new ones coming out on a quarterly basis. I also should mention our existing Facilities, Telecom, Network and Data Center Libraries--over 1000+ service definitions.

I'm very proud of our content team and the great strides their making. Sorry about the commercial; but this is not something most people are even aware exists. It deserved a post.

Most People are Editors, Not Authors: New Pre-packaged Service Catalog Content for the Editor in Us

At newScale, we believe robust pre-defined catalog content is a key enabler for accelerating the development, deployment and maintenance of a meaningful service catalog. As I've heard say, "most people are editors, not authors." Having catalog content as a starting point saves a ton of time and money.

I'd like to introduce you today to some of the work being done by our content team.  Sorry for the advertising, but I am personally very excited by the work being done here so I thought I'd share it. 

We have a team dedicated to producing new content on a quarterly basis.  Unlike software updates, which everyone understands, Catalog content needs to be not only created, but also described, documented, and componentized to be truly useful. 

Our latest quarterly update includes enhancements to the ITIL v3 Service Process Library, Access Management, and End User Management. To give you some some sense of what this includes, let me get you a bit of detail.

Service Process Library for ITIL v3
This library helps an IT organization adopting ITIL to "activate ITIL"; this library defines all the requests, roles and role descriptions that are necessary to make ITIL processes operational. For example, this process library for ITIL v3 has a:

1. New Supplier Management category and services (to support all the supplier management processes)
2. New category images to simplify merchandising. 
3. Updated, streamlined email templates
4. Key design decisions,
5. Email templates
6. Enhanced service workflows across the library
7. Workflow suggestions, including Visio diagrams of service model flows
8. Pre-packaged data models and web forms
9. Pre-packaged KPI and reports.

This adds to the prior supported process such as Catalog, Service, Availability, Capacity, Change, Continuity, Supplier, and Portfolio  Management Process and roles. Here are just some o the 50+ process in this service catalog library:

Service Catalog Management

• Request a New Service
• Request a Change to an Existing Service
• Remove a Service from the Service Catalog

Service Level Management

• Review an Operational Level Agreement
• Request Change to an Underpinning Contract
• Propose Service Level Agreement
• Review a Service Level Agreement
• Change a Service Level Agreement

Access Management Library

This one has also been updated; there are now over 130 services defined.

•    18 new models & sample services have been added. These cover a variety of identity access requests.
•    The Configuration Guide has been enhanced and includes additional service design recommendations. 
•    New category images. May not seem important but they all need to be thematically and color-coherent.
•    Updated, streamlined email templates. These are written, pre-formatted, process ready notifications that let you do the whole Amazon, Dell type of experience.

End User Management Library

And of course, our proven and robust End User Management Library which contains all the end user services your catalog needs with over 260 service definitions. 

This is a foundation library. Each service includes published descriptions, pricing, and service levels to set customer expectations – and give business units the information they need to make cost-benefit trade-offs in order to better manage demand. The library also provides pre-built service request forms for each service area. Every pre-built form contains a variety of common service-specific data elements necessary to capture the upfront specifics for a service order. Each form is ready to use as-is –you may also reuse or configure the form elements to meet the specific needs of your customers.

These are a huge time-savers.  And we have new ones coming out on a quarterly basis. I also should mention our existing Facilities, Telecom, Network and Data Center Libraries--over 1000+ service definitions.

I'm very proud of our content team and the great strides their making. Sorry about the commercial; but this is not something most people are even aware exists. It deserved a post.

Most People are Editors, Not Authors: New Pre-packaged Service Catalog Content for the Editor in Us

At newScale, we believe robust pre-defined catalog content is a key enabler for accelerating the development, deployment and maintenance of a meaningful service catalog. As I've heard say, "most people are editors, not authors." Having catalog content as a starting point saves a ton of time and money.

I'd like to introduce you today to some of the work being done by our content team.  Sorry for the advertising, but I am personally very excited by the work being done here so I thought I'd share it. 

We have a team dedicated to producing new content on a quarterly basis.  Unlike software updates, which everyone understands, Catalog content needs to be not only created, but also described, documented, and componentized to be truly useful. 

Our latest quarterly update includes enhancements to the ITIL v3 Service Process Library, Access Management, and End User Management. To give you some some sense of what this includes, let me get you a bit of detail.

Service Process Library for ITIL v3
This library helps an IT organization adopting ITIL to "activate ITIL"; this library defines all the requests, roles and role descriptions that are necessary to make ITIL processes operational. For example, this process library for ITIL v3 has a:

1. New Supplier Management category and services (to support all the supplier management processes)
2. New category images to simplify merchandising. 
3. Updated, streamlined email templates
4. Key design decisions,
5. Email templates
6. Enhanced service workflows across the library
7. Workflow suggestions, including Visio diagrams of service model flows
8. Pre-packaged data models and web forms
9. Pre-packaged KPI and reports.

This adds to the prior supported process such as Catalog, Service, Availability, Capacity, Change, Continuity, Supplier, and Portfolio  Management Process and roles. Here are just some o the 50+ process in this service catalog library:

Service Catalog Management

• Request a New Service
• Request a Change to an Existing Service
• Remove a Service from the Service Catalog

Service Level Management

• Review an Operational Level Agreement
• Request Change to an Underpinning Contract
• Propose Service Level Agreement
• Review a Service Level Agreement
• Change a Service Level Agreement

Access Management Library

This one has also been updated; there are now over 130 services defined.

•    18 new models & sample services have been added. These cover a variety of identity access requests.
•    The Configuration Guide has been enhanced and includes additional service design recommendations. 
•    New category images. May not seem important but they all need to be thematically and color-coherent.
•    Updated, streamlined email templates. These are written, pre-formatted, process ready notifications that let you do the whole Amazon, Dell type of experience.

End User Management Library

And of course, our proven and robust End User Management Library which contains all the end user services your catalog needs with over 260 service definitions. 

This is a foundation library. Each service includes published descriptions, pricing, and service levels to set customer expectations – and give business units the information they need to make cost-benefit trade-offs in order to better manage demand. The library also provides pre-built service request forms for each service area. Every pre-built form contains a variety of common service-specific data elements necessary to capture the upfront specifics for a service order. Each form is ready to use as-is –you may also reuse or configure the form elements to meet the specific needs of your customers.

These are a huge time-savers.  And we have new ones coming out on a quarterly basis. I also should mention our existing Facilities, Telecom, Network and Data Center Libraries--over 1000+ service definitions.

I'm very proud of our content team and the great strides their making. Sorry about the commercial; but this is not something most people are even aware exists. It deserved a post.

ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues

I'm always looking for a metaphor to explain Utility and Warranty.  I like this one from ITIL Blues.

For example, if I go to a hairdresser to get a haircut (the Utility being the haircut service; it could also include shaving or hair dying) I’ll certainly will be expecting that:

   1. It won’t take too long to get my hair cut
   2. My head suffers no harm
   3. I have a comfortable chair
   4. and so on…

All these build up my perception of “how the service is being delivered” - the Warranty.

Link: ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues.

ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues

I'm always looking for a metaphor to explain Utility and Warranty.  I like this one from ITIL Blues.

For example, if I go to a hairdresser to get a haircut (the Utility being the haircut service; it could also include shaving or hair dying) I’ll certainly will be expecting that:

   1. It won’t take too long to get my hair cut
   2. My head suffers no harm
   3. I have a comfortable chair
   4. and so on…

All these build up my perception of “how the service is being delivered” - the Warranty.

Link: ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues.

ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues

I'm always looking for a metaphor to explain Utility and Warranty.  I like this one from ITIL Blues.

For example, if I go to a hairdresser to get a haircut (the Utility being the haircut service; it could also include shaving or hair dying) I’ll certainly will be expecting that:

   1. It won’t take too long to get my hair cut
   2. My head suffers no harm
   3. I have a comfortable chair
   4. and so on…

All these build up my perception of “how the service is being delivered” - the Warranty.

Link: ITIL v3: Utility and Warranty - two sides of the same coin « ITIL Blues.

itSMF ITILV3 Overview

If you can't afford the ITIL v3 books. Or don't want to read all the books at their glorious $450.00 cost. ITSMf UK has published a nice primer subset.

It can be found here. (Warning: PDF coming)  itSMF_ITILV3_Intro_Overview.pdf

itSMF ITILV3 Overview

If you can't afford the ITIL v3 books. Or don't want to read all the books at their glorious $450.00 cost. ITSMf UK has published a nice primer subset.

It can be found here. (Warning: PDF coming)  itSMF_ITILV3_Intro_Overview.pdf

itSMF ITILV3 Overview

If you can't afford the ITIL v3 books. Or don't want to read all the books at their glorious $450.00 cost. ITSMf UK has published a nice primer subset.

It can be found here. (Warning: PDF coming)  itSMF_ITILV3_Intro_Overview.pdf

Today is the day that changes the service catalog industry

Many of you know me from the blog, classes, conferences, or the book.  But as CTO of newScale (aka my day job), building software that improves people's lives and makes organizations work better is my passion.  Normally I don't talk about products in this blog, but today we have made big announcement and I'm super excited.   So I beg your leave, and for a moment, allow me to communicate my excitement about this announcement.

We are introducing the newScale FrontOffice suite!  This release includes dozens of pre-defined ITIL roles for all of the processes that link to the IT Service Catalog. It also provides new software functionality to activate these ITIL processes across the entire service lifecycle - including service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement.  There's a lot more(see press release for everything else)

One of my favorites new products in the suite is the newScale Organization Designer(tm). 

Everyone knows one of the painful parts of implementing ITIL or any process framework is  defining the roles, the processes those roles participate in and the capabilities and tools those roles need to do their job.

Sometimes this falls under the rubric of cultural change;  except it's often about changing daily practices as much as attitudes. Tools are needed to support and enforce the new daily practices brought about by new processes. I believe good, elegant tools help change attitudes; it's hard to get excited about change when it looks the same as yesterday.

So where does Organizational design play with the catalog?  Let me give you a scenario from a real customer example: this customer has 12 distinct business units, several hundred business services in the portfolio, each supported by various request fulfillment processes.  Then add a dozen of Relationship managers, several hundred service agreements, five IT organizations, 25 service areas (servers, network, etc) across 3 continents covering 150,000 employees and you get a flavor of the complexity.  Each agreement drives the availability of different potential service requests with different approval chains. This is highly complex environment, changes daily and needs to be made an operational and recurrent.

A static document for a catalog is not even feasible for this customer; the catalog has to support all the different players, each needing a different view to do their job. (See dynamic catalogs)

So, we have created the newScale Organizational Designer, a tool to model your organization al structures, accounts, roles, positions, hierarchies, and groups. Then we have pre-populated it with a core set of roles and job descriptions from ITIL V3 Processes such as "Catalog management," "Portfolio Designer," "Service Level Manager," etc.   

Pretty cool, no?  But this is where it gets real good.  We also included a whole set of the core processes and activities that support the work of these roles according to ITIL v3, such as "Add a new service to the catalog" and provide the supporting software functionality (portals, screens, etc) to manage the specific activities for these roles. 

Finally, to roll out this model out operationally and actionably it ties to the directory systems, security and single sign on automatically.  In essence, Organizational Designer helps Activate ITIL. By providing a complete framework for pre-packaged roles, processes, capabilities and integration, you truly can design your organization.  There are dozens of roles, dozens of processes, hundreds of services, a slew of business units, and each needs to get their own view to the services that are available to them. 

For example, say you want the network group to maintain only the technical part of their services, and finance to  do the price modeling, but leave the  service owner to assemble the customer facing business service?  And you want a control process for any changes to the published catalog? That's what Organization Designer does.

I'm very proud of our newScale product team; they really have changed the game in the service catalog and service portfolio market.  Tomorrow I will discuss our new Catalog Foundation and Service Designer, which is truly awesome.

Here's the newScale Press Release.

 

Today is the day that changes the service catalog industry

Many of you know me from the blog, classes, conferences, or the book.  But as CTO of newScale (aka my day job), building software that improves people's lives and makes organizations work better is my passion.  Normally I don't talk about products in this blog, but today we have made big announcement and I'm super excited.   So I beg your leave, and for a moment, allow me to communicate my excitement about this announcement.

We are introducing the newScale FrontOffice suite!  This release includes dozens of pre-defined ITIL roles for all of the processes that link to the IT Service Catalog. It also provides new software functionality to activate these ITIL processes across the entire service lifecycle - including service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement.  There's a lot more(see press release for everything else)

One of my favorites new products in the suite is the newScale Organization Designer(tm). 

Everyone knows one of the painful parts of implementing ITIL or any process framework is  defining the roles, the processes those roles participate in and the capabilities and tools those roles need to do their job.

Sometimes this falls under the rubric of cultural change;  except it's often about changing daily practices as much as attitudes. Tools are needed to support and enforce the new daily practices brought about by new processes. I believe good, elegant tools help change attitudes; it's hard to get excited about change when it looks the same as yesterday.

So where does Organizational design play with the catalog?  Let me give you a scenario from a real customer example: this customer has 12 distinct business units, several hundred business services in the portfolio, each supported by various request fulfillment processes.  Then add a dozen of Relationship managers, several hundred service agreements, five IT organizations, 25 service areas (servers, network, etc) across 3 continents covering 150,000 employees and you get a flavor of the complexity.  Each agreement drives the availability of different potential service requests with different approval chains. This is highly complex environment, changes daily and needs to be made an operational and recurrent.

A static document for a catalog is not even feasible for this customer; the catalog has to support all the different players, each needing a different view to do their job. (See dynamic catalogs)

So, we have created the newScale Organizational Designer, a tool to model your organization al structures, accounts, roles, positions, hierarchies, and groups. Then we have pre-populated it with a core set of roles and job descriptions from ITIL V3 Processes such as "Catalog management," "Portfolio Designer," "Service Level Manager," etc.   

Pretty cool, no?  But this is where it gets real good.  We also included a whole set of the core processes and activities that support the work of these roles according to ITIL v3, such as "Add a new service to the catalog" and provide the supporting software functionality (portals, screens, etc) to manage the specific activities for these roles. 

Finally, to roll out this model out operationally and actionably it ties to the directory systems, security and single sign on automatically.  In essence, Organizational Designer helps Activate ITIL. By providing a complete framework for pre-packaged roles, processes, capabilities and integration, you truly can design your organization.  There are dozens of roles, dozens of processes, hundreds of services, a slew of business units, and each needs to get their own view to the services that are available to them. 

For example, say you want the network group to maintain only the technical part of their services, and finance to  do the price modeling, but leave the  service owner to assemble the customer facing business service?  And you want a control process for any changes to the published catalog? That's what Organization Designer does.

I'm very proud of our newScale product team; they really have changed the game in the service catalog and service portfolio market.  Tomorrow I will discuss our new Catalog Foundation and Service Designer, which is truly awesome.

Here's the newScale Press Release.

 

Today is the day that changes the service catalog industry

Many of you know me from the blog, classes, conferences, or the book.  But as CTO of newScale (aka my day job), building software that improves people's lives and makes organizations work better is my passion.  Normally I don't talk about products in this blog, but today we have made big announcement and I'm super excited.   So I beg your leave, and for a moment, allow me to communicate my excitement about this announcement.

We are introducing the newScale FrontOffice suite!  This release includes dozens of pre-defined ITIL roles for all of the processes that link to the IT Service Catalog. It also provides new software functionality to activate these ITIL processes across the entire service lifecycle - including service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement.  There's a lot more(see press release for everything else)

One of my favorites new products in the suite is the newScale Organization Designer(tm). 

Everyone knows one of the painful parts of implementing ITIL or any process framework is  defining the roles, the processes those roles participate in and the capabilities and tools those roles need to do their job.

Sometimes this falls under the rubric of cultural change;  except it's often about changing daily practices as much as attitudes. Tools are needed to support and enforce the new daily practices brought about by new processes. I believe good, elegant tools help change attitudes; it's hard to get excited about change when it looks the same as yesterday.

So where does Organizational design play with the catalog?  Let me give you a scenario from a real customer example: this customer has 12 distinct business units, several hundred business services in the portfolio, each supported by various request fulfillment processes.  Then add a dozen of Relationship managers, several hundred service agreements, five IT organizations, 25 service areas (servers, network, etc) across 3 continents covering 150,000 employees and you get a flavor of the complexity.  Each agreement drives the availability of different potential service requests with different approval chains. This is highly complex environment, changes daily and needs to be made an operational and recurrent.

A static document for a catalog is not even feasible for this customer; the catalog has to support all the different players, each needing a different view to do their job. (See dynamic catalogs)

So, we have created the newScale Organizational Designer, a tool to model your organization al structures, accounts, roles, positions, hierarchies, and groups. Then we have pre-populated it with a core set of roles and job descriptions from ITIL V3 Processes such as "Catalog management," "Portfolio Designer," "Service Level Manager," etc.   

Pretty cool, no?  But this is where it gets real good.  We also included a whole set of the core processes and activities that support the work of these roles according to ITIL v3, such as "Add a new service to the catalog" and provide the supporting software functionality (portals, screens, etc) to manage the specific activities for these roles. 

Finally, to roll out this model out operationally and actionably it ties to the directory systems, security and single sign on automatically.  In essence, Organizational Designer helps Activate ITIL. By providing a complete framework for pre-packaged roles, processes, capabilities and integration, you truly can design your organization.  There are dozens of roles, dozens of processes, hundreds of services, a slew of business units, and each needs to get their own view to the services that are available to them. 

For example, say you want the network group to maintain only the technical part of their services, and finance to  do the price modeling, but leave the  service owner to assemble the customer facing business service?  And you want a control process for any changes to the published catalog? That's what Organization Designer does.

I'm very proud of our newScale product team; they really have changed the game in the service catalog and service portfolio market.  Tomorrow I will discuss our new Catalog Foundation and Service Designer, which is truly awesome.

Here's the newScale Press Release.

 

ITIL v3 is bigger, brawnier, overwhelming

This maps to concerns I have heard about ITIL V3: it's overwhelming.

Distressed ITIL Trainers I am seeing quite a few messages in which very proficient ITIL trainers pour out their concerns regarding the delivery of ITIL v3 courses.

At the time of writing the only course that is being discussed is the v3 Foundation program and the concerns go along the following lines...

I've been an ITIL trainer for x years; but with v3 I am really worried that there is too much material to cover and the concepts are far too detailed for a Foundation level program.

Link: ITSM View.

There are, what, 22 processes?  Over 32,000 bullet points of text (I stopped counting after 32,443).  So there's no way that a foundation course can meaningfully and usefully cover all of ITIL V3. 

What we need, and I believe will happen, is a role or job description view of ITIL.  So if you are creating a service catalog, you can understand the core related processes, roles and activities.  No more.  This is a case of less information is better.

 

ITIL v3 is bigger, brawnier, overwhelming

This maps to concerns I have heard about ITIL V3: it's overwhelming.

Distressed ITIL Trainers I am seeing quite a few messages in which very proficient ITIL trainers pour out their concerns regarding the delivery of ITIL v3 courses.

At the time of writing the only course that is being discussed is the v3 Foundation program and the concerns go along the following lines...

I've been an ITIL trainer for x years; but with v3 I am really worried that there is too much material to cover and the concepts are far too detailed for a Foundation level program.

Link: ITSM View.

There are, what, 22 processes?  Over 32,000 bullet points of text (I stopped counting after 32,443).  So there's no way that a foundation course can meaningfully and usefully cover all of ITIL V3. 

What we need, and I believe will happen, is a role or job description view of ITIL.  So if you are creating a service catalog, you can understand the core related processes, roles and activities.  No more.  This is a case of less information is better.

 

ITIL v3 is bigger, brawnier, overwhelming

This maps to concerns I have heard about ITIL V3: it's overwhelming.

Distressed ITIL Trainers I am seeing quite a few messages in which very proficient ITIL trainers pour out their concerns regarding the delivery of ITIL v3 courses.

At the time of writing the only course that is being discussed is the v3 Foundation program and the concerns go along the following lines...

I've been an ITIL trainer for x years; but with v3 I am really worried that there is too much material to cover and the concepts are far too detailed for a Foundation level program.

Link: ITSM View.

There are, what, 22 processes?  Over 32,000 bullet points of text (I stopped counting after 32,443).  So there's no way that a foundation course can meaningfully and usefully cover all of ITIL V3. 

What we need, and I believe will happen, is a role or job description view of ITIL.  So if you are creating a service catalog, you can understand the core related processes, roles and activities.  No more.  This is a case of less information is better.

 

Service Catalogs: ITIL V3 readings, part 1

Esteban wrote an interesting comment in response to my article here

I've always struggled to make sense of this with ITIL. BMC seems to treat the service catalog as a request catalog, though a lot of documentation seems to talk about a service catalog as a service portfolio. It has been difficult for me to bridge the gap elegantly.

I think I can help, but you may not like the answer: BMC's (or HP's) request catalog is not an ITIL Service Catalog. 

To refresh, you might want to read these prior notes:

1. Gartner Report – Know the Difference between Service Portfolios and Service Catalogs
2. What is a service (part 2) Service bundles

In ITIL V3, the term Service Portfolio encompasses all services through the lifecycle: from strategy (what should we do), to design (what are the characteristics of the service to be), to transition (how do put into operations), to operations (how do we manage it, and then retire it).  Service Catalog is the "visible part of the service portfolio".

To make this Service Catalog actionable, customers enter into agreements, which expose services to be requested. This latter part is the requestable part of the catalog and would consist of the "viewable" and "requestable" services. 

And Esteban, you are not the only one confused. The people who wrote the Service Operations book, where Service Fulfillment is located (where is Service Request?@!) refer to the ability to give the user a "menu" of options. Boy do they twist themselves to avoid using the word catalog! But in fact it's a catalog of service requests that need to be connected to the Service Portfolio. 

That's why you are confused.  Hopefully this helped a bit.

Service Catalogs: ITIL V3 readings, part 1

Esteban wrote an interesting comment in response to my article here

I've always struggled to make sense of this with ITIL. BMC seems to treat the service catalog as a request catalog, though a lot of documentation seems to talk about a service catalog as a service portfolio. It has been difficult for me to bridge the gap elegantly.

I think I can help, but you may not like the answer: BMC's (or HP's) request catalog is not an ITIL Service Catalog. 

To refresh, you might want to read these prior notes:

1. Gartner Report – Know the Difference between Service Portfolios and Service Catalogs
2. What is a service (part 2) Service bundles

In ITIL V3, the term Service Portfolio encompasses all services through the lifecycle: from strategy (what should we do), to design (what are the characteristics of the service to be), to transition (how do put into operations), to operations (how do we manage it, and then retire it).  Service Catalog is the "visible part of the service portfolio".

To make this Service Catalog actionable, customers enter into agreements, which expose services to be requested. This latter part is the requestable part of the catalog and would consist of the "viewable" and "requestable" services. 

And Esteban, you are not the only one confused. The people who wrote the Service Operations book, where Service Fulfillment is located (where is Service Request?@!) refer to the ability to give the user a "menu" of options. Boy do they twist themselves to avoid using the word catalog! But in fact it's a catalog of service requests that need to be connected to the Service Portfolio. 

That's why you are confused.  Hopefully this helped a bit.

Service Catalogs: ITIL V3 readings, part 1

Esteban wrote an interesting comment in response to my article here

I've always struggled to make sense of this with ITIL. BMC seems to treat the service catalog as a request catalog, though a lot of documentation seems to talk about a service catalog as a service portfolio. It has been difficult for me to bridge the gap elegantly.

I think I can help, but you may not like the answer: BMC's (or HP's) request catalog is not an ITIL Service Catalog. 

To refresh, you might want to read these prior notes:

1. Gartner Report – Know the Difference between Service Portfolios and Service Catalogs
2. What is a service (part 2) Service bundles

In ITIL V3, the term Service Portfolio encompasses all services through the lifecycle: from strategy (what should we do), to design (what are the characteristics of the service to be), to transition (how do put into operations), to operations (how do we manage it, and then retire it).  Service Catalog is the "visible part of the service portfolio".

To make this Service Catalog actionable, customers enter into agreements, which expose services to be requested. This latter part is the requestable part of the catalog and would consist of the "viewable" and "requestable" services. 

And Esteban, you are not the only one confused. The people who wrote the Service Operations book, where Service Fulfillment is located (where is Service Request?@!) refer to the ability to give the user a "menu" of options. Boy do they twist themselves to avoid using the word catalog! But in fact it's a catalog of service requests that need to be connected to the Service Portfolio. 

That's why you are confused.  Hopefully this helped a bit.

What does blow up mean?

I've been reading the ITIL v3 books. It seems that the CMDB is now blown up. What does that mean?
It means that there are many new sources of truth beyond the CMDB. Here are some from the ITIL V3 books:

The Service Portfolio is the main source of information on the requirements and services and needs to be very carefully designed to meet all the needs of all its users. The design of the Service Portfolio needs to be considered in the same way as the design of any other IT service to ensure that it meets all of these needs. This approach should also be used for all of the other Service Management information systems, including the:

    * Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS)
    * Configuration Management (CMS)
    * Service Desk system
    * Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)
    * Availability Management Information System (AMIS)
    * Security Management Information System (SMIS)
    * Supplier and Contracts Database (SCD).

This is what I mean by blown up:  The notion of one ring to rule them all is dead.  One CMDB that has all the data is dead.

What does blow up mean?

I've been reading the ITIL v3 books. It seems that the CMDB is now blown up. What does that mean?
It means that there are many new sources of truth beyond the CMDB. Here are some from the ITIL V3 books:

The Service Portfolio is the main source of information on the requirements and services and needs to be very carefully designed to meet all the needs of all its users. The design of the Service Portfolio needs to be considered in the same way as the design of any other IT service to ensure that it meets all of these needs. This approach should also be used for all of the other Service Management information systems, including the:

    * Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS)
    * Configuration Management (CMS)
    * Service Desk system
    * Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)
    * Availability Management Information System (AMIS)
    * Security Management Information System (SMIS)
    * Supplier and Contracts Database (SCD).

This is what I mean by blown up:  The notion of one ring to rule them all is dead.  One CMDB that has all the data is dead.

What does blow up mean?

I've been reading the ITIL v3 books. It seems that the CMDB is now blown up. What does that mean?
It means that there are many new sources of truth beyond the CMDB. Here are some from the ITIL V3 books:

The Service Portfolio is the main source of information on the requirements and services and needs to be very carefully designed to meet all the needs of all its users. The design of the Service Portfolio needs to be considered in the same way as the design of any other IT service to ensure that it meets all of these needs. This approach should also be used for all of the other Service Management information systems, including the:

    * Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS)
    * Configuration Management (CMS)
    * Service Desk system
    * Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)
    * Availability Management Information System (AMIS)
    * Security Management Information System (SMIS)
    * Supplier and Contracts Database (SCD).

This is what I mean by blown up:  The notion of one ring to rule them all is dead.  One CMDB that has all the data is dead.