- 1. Integrating IT. Delivering Value. WHITE PAPER: Leveraging
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Best Practices
to Attain Organizational Maturity An Examination of Current Trends
Thomas D. Vetterani Vice President, Program Management &
Service Quality CCSI Technology Solutions, A CompuCom Systems
CompanySeptember 2007 Executive Summary In order to be competitive
today, companies must actively listen to their customers and
innovate quickly in response to new challenges, customer needs and
business opportunities. Regardless of their industry, the
enterprises that succeed today are the ones that have learned how
to evolve continuously. They have mastered the art and science of
change management, and embrace change fearlessly. They have learned
to adapt. In short, these enterprises have attained a higher level
of organizational maturity than their competitors by leveraging the
best practices established by the Information Technology
Infrastructure Library.
2. White Paper: Leveraging Information Technology Infrastructure
Library (ITIL)TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . 1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Challenges Associated with ITIL
Initiatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.4Starting an ITIL Initiative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Gaining
Institutional Buy-in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8Evaluating the Success of
an ITIL Initiative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . 10About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11About CCSI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . 122 3. White Paper: Leveraging Information Technology
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Why Adopt ITIL?Introduction The
adoption of ITIL enablesInformation Technology Infrastructure
Library Defined organizations to put a service-The Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a widely accepted,
orientation spin on infrastructure cohesive set of IT best
practices drawn from public and private sectors around management
that improves the world. ITILs model covers service support and
delivery and is supported IT alignment with core businessby a
comprehensive qualifications scheme, accredited training
organizations processes and provides a support-and implementation
and assessment tools. ing framework that enables them to attain the
following objectives:ITIL provides best practices for IT service
management and operations, includingservice desk, incident
resolution, change management, capacity, service level Align IT
services with theand security management. ITIL is especially
popular in Europe. ITIL is a frame- current and future
prioritieswork outlining globally accepted best practices for IT
Service Management. The of the businessconcepts within ITIL support
IT service providers in the planning of consistent, Improve overall
client satis-documented, and repeatable processes that improve
service delivery to thefaction and service qualitybusiness. ITILs
greatest strengths include the following: Establish predictable
cost Its well established reductions by delivering
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Its mature Its highly detailed
Its focused on IT production and operational quality issues It
combines readily with CMMI 3 4. White Paper: Leveraging Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)Challenges Associated with
ITIL InitiativesHighly dependent on interpretation, ITIL does not
address the development ofquality management systems, and it is not
geared to software development.Additionally, many CIOs have
historically struggled with understanding ITILand how it may
benefit their organizations. Typical reservations include Dowe have
to hire additional headcount to support these new processes?"
and"Will we need to integrate all of the ITIL processes in order to
gain efficiencyand effectiveness? Nevertheless, ITIL has quickly
become the de factoapproach businesses have embraced for service
management.The reality is that it's impractical, if not impossible,
to implement ITIL ina wholesale fashion across all IT processes. In
fact, most organizationsintegrate, at most, six of the 10 key
processes into their operations. The10 key ITIL process areas
include the following: Incident Management Financial Management
Problem Management Capacity Management Change Management
Availability Management Release Management Service Level Management
Configuration Management Continuity ManagementManagement must
decide exactly where it should begin, but where tostart is not
always clear. They ask their peers in other organizations
abouttheir experiences, join local interest groups to gather data,
and so on. Whatthey dont realize is that the ideal starting point
should be determined basedon a careful assessment of practices and
a convincing analysis to quicklyidentify the greatest business
gains. This can be accomplished by conductinga Business Services
Management (BSM) Snapshot or an Infrastructure MaturityAssessment
(IMAT) to gauge the infrastructure maturity of the current
environ-ment, and compare and contrast the same against key best
practice areas.Currently, infrastructure maturity is all about
processes, best practices, metricsand the goal of continuous
improvement. According to Gartner, greater than70 percent of a
typical IT budget is invested annually on the
infrastructure.Additionally, given the heightened security concerns
today, more and moreof these investments are made to augment
support staff, training and higherlevels of certifications.
Combined with the typical investments in servers,operating systems,
storage and networking, these investments add significantcosts and
complexity to the environment. Throw in the need to integrate
andmanage a new breed of mobile devices, as well as refresh desktop
and laptopdevices, and you wind up with an especially daunting
array of challenges forthe enterprise. (See Figure 1.)Only after
the organizations maturity has been accurately assessed, is it
possibleto launch an ITIL initiative. 4 5. White Paper: Leveraging
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)(Figure 1)CCSIs
Integrated Infrastructure Management (IIM) SolutionStarting an ITIL
InitiativeOne of the critical first steps in any new IT initiative,
or for that matter any newbusiness initiative, is proper due
diligence. You must examine the situation onthe ground in the
organization, because no two organizations are the same.As such,
there is no single blueprint that you can purchase or follow
thatwill lead to success.To begin with, you must identify and have
a clear understanding of the following: What the IT organization
looks like at a high level and What the business organization looks
like from an IT perspectiveArmed with these two primary data
points, you can then begin gathering otherkey pieces of information
such as: What services are being offered? How mature are they? What
are their strengths, weaknesses, etc.? What formal processes exist?
5 6. White Paper: Leveraging Information Technology Infrastructure
Library (ITIL)Assessing the Business ImpactOne of the biggest
mistakes organizations make, whether internally or viaconsultants,
is to create solutions that are looking for problems, rather
thanfocusing on the problems first. The cardinal rule here is: Stay
off solutionsuntil you have a clear definition of the problem. To
do so, you need to havea fundamental understanding of: Who are the
stakeholders? Who is impacted by the problems? What are the
productivity measures used to gauge success? What evidence is there
that this is the case?As you know, ITIL describes what best
practices are and not how to implementthem. The how is left to the
practitioner. Consequently, just because youunderstand the problem
doesnt mean that your solution or process ties backto solving it.
In order to do that, you need to first create a clear problem
state-ment and validate it within the organization, define a set of
requirements, thenqualify the solution to ensure that it addresses
the problem completely.With a complete understanding of the
problem, you are now ready to begindefining a solution. Based on
key issues stated in your problem description,you can begin to map
out specific requirements for solutions. With an accurateset of
requirements for a solution, you can better control resources and
increasethe speed and effectiveness in the deployment process. This
will lead to acceler-ating the returns afforded by your new
solution by eliminating many of theirrelevant activities and
overhead that plague one-size-fits-all solutions.Moving from
problem qualification to solution qualification requires an
under-standing of the scope and magnitude of the problem, and then
how appropriateand elegant your solution is at solving it. As we
know, ITIL describes bestpractices and process knowledge; what you
need to do is marry processknowledge with situational and
institutional knowledge to ensure a strongand viable solution.The
next step is qualifying the solutiondoes it solve the problem, and
howdo you know that it does? The key factor here is the solutions
ability to addressthe real problem. Once youve solved the problem,
youll need to create metricsto track your performance over time.
You will also need to involve the keystakeholders to ensure that
they buy into the solution and that it is alignedwith key business
drivers and objectives.RecommendationsAs with the adoption of any
new quality or best practices framework, ITILfacilitates change
affecting three core factors: people, processes and technology.How
a business implements ITIL will naturally impact the end result.To
increase the likelihood of success of your initiative, you need to
do the following: Seek guidance and expertise from organizations
that are highly skilledin implementing ITIL processes where
neededespecially in areas oforganizational change leadership. Work
with organizations that have demonstrated a strong proficiency 6in
program and project management. 7. White Paper: Leveraging
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Secure the
core ITIL implementation expertise needed to help accelerateyour
organization through the transformation process. This
proficiencyisnt typically resident within businesses today. Make
communications a priority. You need to develop key messages to
bedelivered by credible members of your senior staff. Without them,
you maybe setting yourself up for failure.In identifying external
resources to support your ITIL initiatives, you needto seek out
organizations whose focus is on quality and gaining value
fromintegrating IT infrastructure. As part of the selection
process, you should askthe following key questions: How deep is
their knowledge and experience base of ITIL processes? How much
thinking and post implementation reflecting have they donefrom
assessment to assessment? Does their approach reflect a strong
emphasis on being there to learn andunderstand your problem, or are
they simply showing off their knowledgewithout a clear sense of
your issues? Have they put their ideas and knowledge to work for
other clients? If so,with whom, and what were the results? And
finally, do they have a formal implementation methodology, and
arethey adaptive and creative in their solution engineering?If
youve done your due diligence, interviews and background checks,
makingthe partner decision should be fairly easy. Although
businesses no longer havethe luxury of engaging in lengthy partner
evaluations, there is still no substitutefor potential partner due
diligence to ensure the right people are engaged.Adopting and
implementing ITIL processes is not an end-all answer to IT
servicedelivery problems. However, effective processes, combined
with a fully inte-grated infrastructure management solution will
ensure a much higher degreeof success and will ultimately result in
productive changes in both job responsi-bilities and daily
activities for the majority of employees. Employees need andwant to
hear about change. Communication can come from two key sources:the
CEO or the employees immediate supervisors. One thing to remember
hereis that the messages emanating from these two sources will be
significantlydifferent; the world view and the departmental view.In
summary, a key contributor to ITIL transformation is a strong,
visible, andeffective partnership with a skilled and knowledge-rich
service provider. ITILintegration is a journey over time, calling
for substantially different objectives,organizational structures,
roles/responsibilities and attitudes within the organ-ization. It
also requires an ongoing and structured training programa
solu-tions-based approach that is able to encompass skills
assessments, job roles,7 8. White Paper: Leveraging Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)the mapping of skills and
roles to specific ITIL processes, the development ofa sustainable
training curriculum path at all levels, and key metrics to
measurethe business results. Gaining Institutional Buy-inThe
benefits and advantages of ITIL and IT Service Management (ITSM)
maybe clearly obvious to those who have received an ITIL education,
or experiencedit first hand in practice. But to the uninitiated,
driving ITIL adoption can bechallenging, and demonstrating its
benefits to key decision makers isnt alwayseasy. So two fundamental
questions arise at this juncture; 1) How do you getorganizational
buy-in to launch a change management implementation whennot
everyone is on the same page; and 2) How do you change the mindsets
ofthose in opposition?One of the best ways to overcome these
mindset issues is to conduct executivebriefing sessions with the
key stakeholders as part of a two-phased approach.These 2-3 hours
sessions quickly explain the key benefits of the ITIL processmodels
in a fast-paced, fun-filled way through crisis simulations, such as
aFormula 1 race or the Apollo 13 lunar mission. Once the key
stakeholders areon board, creating a structured training and
orientation schedule for the otherkey departmental and IT staff
will get everyone speaking the same languagealong with a good
understanding of the ITIL approach, and a heightened levelof
enthusiasm and commitment. The final step should be to join one of
theIT Service Management Forums (itSMF) local interest groups in
your area(visit www.itsmfusa.org for more details). These special
interest groupsprovide local support to organizations and
individuals on any ITIL-related (Figure 2) topics or questions.From
a training and orientation perspective, we strongly encourage that
keysenior management participate in the ITIL Foundations training
in order toeffectively champion their organizations change efforts.
Participation fromcross-functional IT groups is also key. This
training drives home the advantagesof process-based approaches and
breaks down mindset issues and helps toeliminate a siloed
mentality.The bottom line here is that the increasing need for
corporate governanceand regulatory compliance has brought focus and
attention on the need toincorporate standards and proven processes
into the enterprise. PositioningITIL best practices as a logical
extension of these initiatives which can supportthe foundations of
the IT infrastructure will be received positively.The business
impact of ITIL lies not only in its well-defined processes, butalso
in its approach for continuous improvement and strong business
resultsbenefits that matter most to the business. By providing a
positive environmentfor education, training, and orientation, your
success in gaining support andbuy-in at all levels should be
assured. (See Figure 2.) 8 9. White Paper: Leveraging Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Evaluating the Success of
an ITIL Initiative Implementing a quality Executives expecting
immediate gratification are not likely to experience it
withframework is a significant process improvement initiatives, as
the results of such initiatives are not realizedstep in the right
directionin the short termin fact, cost savings are not likely to
begin to flow until 12-18toward process improvement,months
following the implementation. Furthermore, certain costs are likely
tobut it only represents about increase as much as 10-15 % during
the early stages of operational refinement15-20% of the big picture
in efforts. Sources of these temporary spikes include project and
change managementterms of IT performanceinitiatives,
communications, process documentation, and time taken out of a
re-management. Having the sources day-to-day activities. Over the
course of about three years, an organizationright service delivery
model may experience as much as a 30% ROI from its refinement
efforts. Maturation of therepresents the remaining 80%,processes
may take as long as three years. For most organizations, the most
signifi-and organizations that do notcant elements of maturity may
be experienced in as little as six to nine months.address this area
are leaving aThese elements commonly include those which evolve
from standardized processlot of money and risk on the table.
definitions. Achieving top-level, or Level 5, maturity may not be
necessary and may even be cost-prohibitive. For many organizations,
achieving the standardized pro- Thomas D. Vetterani Vice President,
cess definitions characteristic of Level 3 maturity will be
sufficient to meet the Program Management & Service
Qualitymajority of organizational goals. IT leaders must assess the
appropriate target level CCSI Technology Solutions,of maturity for
their specific organizations. Identifying appropriate targets,
goals, A CompuCom Systems Companyand levels of detail helps narrow
the scope of the refinement effort so the organi- zation implements
and optimizes the right processes to meet those targets. CCSI
provides its clients with access to a range of assessment tools and
professionals as part of its Integrated Infrastructure Management
(IIM) Solution that: Helps clients understand the current state and
risks of their infrastructure maturity Develops a plan to manage
the risks Provides ongoing assistance to drive continuous
improvements and manage change For client-specific IT organizations
who need to demonstrate the ability to deliver high-quality,
well-controlled service, CCSI can assist them in driving toward an
ISO 20000 quality certification or help prepare for compliance with
external audits and regulatory requirements. Our relationship goes
beyond managed services to provide ongoing expertise that helps you
achieve ongoing service quality improvements. In addition, our
support team can assist you in every aspect of your IT operations
from product acquisition through end-of-life disposalall aimed at
delivering strong business value. 9 10. White Paper: Leveraging
Information Technology Infrastructure Library
(ITIL)ConclusionAdoption of ITIL will surely increase as
enterprises struggle with the complexityof the infrastructure, its
underlying architecture, limited IT budgets, and increasingdemands
from their clients and end-users. CCSI offers a complete range
ofassessment and consultative services for ITIL, Six Sigma, CobiT,
and otherquality frameworks and processes. Our personnel have more
than 42,000certifications to support our clientele regardless of
scope. Our experienceis based on real-world implementations across
a broad range of clients invirtually all industry segments. CCSIs
solutions encompass product procurement(hardware/software),
consulting, outsourcing, support, service desk and
networkmanagement solutions and trainingall focused on delivering
the value ofInfrastructure-as-a-ServiceSM (IaaS) and grounded in
ITIL best practices. 10 11. White Paper: Leveraging Information
Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)About the AuthorThomas D.
VetteraniVice President, Program Management & Service
QualityCCSI Technology Solutions, a CompuCom Systems Company Tom
Vetterani oversees CCSI Technology Solutions service
excellenceprograms and internal quality initiatives. His team
identies process andimprovement trends, enables technology
adaptation to service delivery,and delivers best practice processes
to strengthen CCSIs outsourcingsolutions strategy. Mr. Vetterani
also directs a team of process architectsthat is responsible for
the transition and integration of new clients intothe CCSI
system.In addition, Mr. Vetterani is responsible for the melding of
CCSIs IntegratedInfrastructure Management (IIM) and ClientLink
methodologies intothe organizations service delivery operations.
CCSIs IIM approach helpsclients improve operational performance
while reducing cost and increasingbusiness value. CCSIs ClientLink
methodology is a system of processesaligned across six phases
(Assess, Plan, Design, Test, Implement, andSupport) that contain
proven documents, tools, and methods for projectmanagement, service
delivery, and ongoing operations of a clientservices
engagement.Bringing more than 25 years of demonstrated technology
and managementexpertise, Mr. Vetterani joined CCSI in 1999 from
former parent organizationSafeguard Scientics, where he provided
business and technology consultancyand leadership to a number of
Safeguards portfolio companies. Prior to that,he was Chief
Technical Officer and then President of Global Intellicoms AMComand
VirCom subsidiaries, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, as well
asbusiness development. Mr. Vetterani began his career at IBM and
spentmore than a dozen years in various executive positions at BASF
in both theUnited States and Europe. 11 12. Integrating IT.
Delivering Value.White Paper: The Evolution of the IT Help Desk to
the Service Desk About CCSI CCSI is a leading IT outsourcing
company that also provides application develoment, procurement and
management of hardware and software. With more than 20 years of IT
experience, CCSI employs more than 11,000 highly skilled associates
who have earned more than 60,000 industry certifications
company-wide. As experts in workplace services, CCSIs unique
Integrated Infrastructure Management (IIM) TM solution reduces
costs, increases productivity and helps clients gain maximum value
from information.CCSI Technology Solutions, Corp. Learn more about
CCSIs broad range of services and how seamless integration
canCompuCom Systems, Inc. help you drive greater business value
from your IT infrastructure. Visit us online at2480 Meadowvale
Blvd. www.CCSICompuCom.com or call us at +1 905.816.3000
today.Mississauga, ON L5N 7Y1+1 905.816.3000www.CCSICompuCom.com
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