Business Executive Series #3

Operational Stability, Access to New Capabilities, Variable Cost for Services

Representative goal statement – “I need IT to stabilize (IT) Operations and be able to introduce leading edge IT capabilities on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

If there was one theme that was submitted for discussion in the BES that screamed out for the implementation of ITIL-based Service Management, it was this one. It would be ideally suited to solve for both the stability issues and enable a multi-sourced capacity for access to new IT capabilities with variable cost.

But just leaving it at that probably doesn’t help too much in the short-term.

Let’s say that you are the new guy in charge of IT and are given this task by the CEO. It would be logical to assume that the priority would be to fix things first and then get to the enabling piece, but don’t be too leisurely about it.

Some basic triage of the situation is Job #1.

First, you’ll need to see where the arterial bleeding is coming from. If there is some sort of Incident Management process in place, look at the Severity 0/1 Incidents and validate the sources of pain with your senior staff and executive peers. If there is no IM process, or if the data does not exist, look for the folks in IT Operations that are the most sleep-deprived and ask them what’s going on (then validate as per previous).

Once you have determined the most urgent issues affecting stability (a.k.a. Service Delivery Failures), you can set about performing Root Cause Analysis. It is imperative that you lead – or at the very least actively participate – in these sessions. Chances are that they will need to have priority assigned to them so that the right folks attend them. If you are not familiar with RCA tools and process, by all means bring in someone who does to drive the meetings. 

Please remember that this is a problem-solving process that needs to have direct participation from all the component technology/engineering groups (short list: apps, middleware, database, os admin, network, end user – plus vendors, as appropriate). If at all possible, make sure that the IT customer or interface team is there as to add that perspective as well.

At this time, isolate the RCA teams. Chances are that Mr. Murphy will try and influence your ability to do this, but at least try and have a backup for each skill set that can handle incidents for the primary RCA resources until the process is completed.

At the end of the sessions, you will have a list of “true” root causes (I use 5 Why’s as limited by ability to act) from different dimensions (e.g. 4 M’s, P’s or S’s). Discuss the root causes and frame the work in the context of a program that provides permanent corrective action to the discrete failures. The results of this step should be summarized and validated at the executive level, with time frames for resolution and ongoing communications on status set as well.

Most of this work can be queued and prioritized by the program manager as regular course of IT work orders. A wrinkle may occur when a capital investment is required as one of the permanent corrective actions and will need to be managed through whatever process is appropriate for IT investment funding.

Now that the bleeding is staunched, take this opportunity to make whatever improvements are necessary to the Incident and Problem Management processes to provide some assurance that you are effectively managing incidents and problems in the future.

Creating access to leading-edge capabilities on a variable (pay-as-you go) cost basis has a less well-defined path. Because you’ve already been given a hard economic constraint of “pay as you go,” let’s confine our discussion to externally provisioned options.

First, you’ll need to be able to identify the capabilities that the business will likely have demand for, because that may drive how you need to create the capability, as well as a time frame. Because these were loosely defined as “cutting edge” they could be as simple as BlackBerry services in a week to the forefront of machine learning in the next few years.

The best method to accomplish this is dialogue with the business through the IT Business Value Discovery function. That should lead to a more concrete definition of what capabilities are expected and when. Also, build a weighted scorecard from this information that will enable you to compare the ability of different alternatives to meet the business need.

Depending on the precision of the articulated business need, you can then begin to survey the market options for these capabilities (generally in conjunction with the Procurement function). Because different alternatives may require varying degrees of service support, delivery and vendor management, it makes sense to do this market diligence before undertaking the task of setting up these processes.

Once the market options are known, use your scorecard to determine which are most likely to meet or exceed your business objectives. Simply rank them by score and determine a cut-off so that you have a short list of three potential providers.

If the services and delivery models are similar enough (and the providers of roughly equal competence), the decision may boil down to cost. Make certain, however, that the economic comparison includes the internal management cost for each alternative.

If the services or delivery models are substantially dissimilar, you may wish to take this opportunity to discuss elements of each service solution with the potential vendors to arrive at a more common/comparable set of alternatives.

Once you have selected the provider, you’ll need to build your own ability to integrate these new capabilities into the service delivery environment and manage them on an ongoing basis.  During the selection process, allow for time to understand what level of service support and vendor management you will need for the selected alternative and build to those requirements. Using an ITIL framework (v3 supports multi-sourcing more explicitly) will help. 

This process will work in the short-term and will become less suitable (and complex) as more capabilities are needed to be integrated into your delivery model. Before this occurs, it would be wise to develop an enhanced Managed Services capability for multi-sourced services.