Knowledge Work

…for the reduced volume of blogging over here.

I’ve been working hard, but also taking a lot of training lately.

• Last month, I sat for (and passed) the ITIL Foundation certification exam.
• I’ve made a couple of quick (and very pleasant) trips to the Bay Area of California for administrative classes conducted by BMC Software, who produce the Remedy line of service-management products.
• And this month (this week, in fact) I have been immersed in a PRINCE2 Practitioner class. (PRINCE2–PRojects IN a Controlled Environment–is a project management methodology developed by the Office of Government Commerce, the same folks who brought us ITIL.)

PRINCE2: whew.  It’s a lot of material to get through–a 400 page text, plus supplementary material, in a week of classes–but our instructor (from Advantage Learning in the UK) must be doing something right, as 100% of the class passed the PRINCE2 Foundation exam yesterday.

Now, on to the Practitioner exam Friday. Once I recover from that, blogging should resume its normal operational tempo next week.
Related:

• ITIL
• PRINCE2
• Office of Government Commerce (UK)
• Advantage Learning (UK)

Robin Yearsley serves up two terrific posts this morning at the IT Service Blog.

One of them is a pointer to a white paper (in PDF format) called Root Cause Analysis for Beginners. (In a former job, I had to develop and teach a root cause analysis class to our problem resolvers, and I wish that I had known of the existence of this white paper; I would have given a copy to every student.)

I hear some of the process-challenged among you asking, “What’s root cause analysis?”  Here, let authors James J. Rooney and Lee N. Vanden Heuvel of the American Society for Quality break it down for you:

• Root cause analysis helps identify what, how and why something happened, thus preventing recurrence.
• Root causes are underlying, are reasonably identifiable, can be controlled by management and allow for generation of recommendations.
• The process involves data collection, cause charting, root cause identification and recommendation generation and implementation.

If you’re not doing root cause analysis on identified problems, then you’re not really doing problem management (as a generic concept) and you’re certainly not doing Problem Management in the ITIL sense.

The second gem is a pointer to an article from CIO, comparing ITIL, COBIT, and ISO 17799 (a standard for information security) with respect to their requirements for security and controls. (This is an area of particular interest to CIOs around the world, due to regulatory laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA in the U.S. and similar legislation elsewhere.)

It turns out that the three standards work well together:

ISO 17999 provides security controls. It does not provide implementation guidance and does not specifically address how these processes fit into the overall IT management processes.

ITIL is strong on delivery and support processes. It describes how to structure operational processes but is weak on security controls and processes.

COBIT is focused on controls and metrics. It also lacks a security component but provides a more global view of IT processes at the IT organization management principles than ITIL.

Root Cause Analysis For Beginners (IT Service Blog)
ITIL, CoBIT and ISO: Overlap or Complement? (IT Service Blog)

I have seen the future of management, and it is Indian. Vineet Nayar, president of India’s 30,000-employee HCL Technologies, is creating an IT outsourcing firm where, he says, employees come first and customers second.

“Everybody was aghast the first time I said that,” admits Nayar.

Here are some things I can say about him with confidence: He is good at motivating employees, very committed to building a great team, but a little shaky on getting things done on time. These are not my observations. They are what his employees told him in an extraordinary process of upward evaluation he implemented last year at HCL.

Every employee rates their boss, their boss’ boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see.

Fast Forward: The world’s most modern management is in India - Apr. 14, 2006

“If you do not assume responsibility for breaking the system in the way you want it broken and then integrating it to a better plateau, it will break by itself to a worse plateau. So inaction does not save you; it gives the power of your demise to outside forces.”

Ichak Adizes, Managing Corporate Lifecycles

The IT Service Blog republishes a very useful introductory article, which orients readers to the emerging ISO 20000 standard (based on ITIL.)

Contrary to popular belief, ITIL is not a service management standard, but rather a structured approach or process framework on which a growing number of ITSM standards are based. Most prominent among these ITIL-based ITSM standards are the British Standard BS15000-1:2002 and the Australian Standard AS 8018.1-2004. A South African version of the BS15000 standard also exists.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) recently adopted the BS15000 standard and is expected to publish the ISO 20000 standard for Service Management by 2006, although many think it likely that this effort will take longer…

Might as well get familiar with ISO 20000 now; you’re going to be hearing a *lot* more about it in the near future.

IT Service Blog - ITIL Inside: ISO20000 and ITIL - The “Need to Know” Guide

Related:

• ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005, Information technology - Service management - Part 1: Specification
• ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005, Information technology - Service management - Part 2: Code of practice

(both available for purchase from The ISO Store)

What if some of the business world’s most dearly held axioms are wrong? What if there is a better way? This is the argument Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, management professors at Stanford University, make in their new book, out this week, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management. Gathering the work of psychologists, sociologists, and management experts, the authors make a compelling case that some of business’s beloved truths are far from self-evident.

USNews.com: Management maxims in need of a makeover

Here’s a classic example of why you need writers and editors who understand the subject matter they’re writing about:

After almost 20 years languishing on the shelf, large companies are beginning to adopt ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library of IT services best practices guidelines (the British pronounce it “it-ill,” while Americans say “eye-till”). Forrester Research predicts that 40 percent of large organizations will rely on ITIL by 2006 and 80 percent by 2008, up from a mere 13 percent that had implemented it by 2004.

[Ed. note: Hand-waving and hype about the future numbers, which are anybody’s guess, and there are plenty of people in Europe who would point out that ITIL has hardly been “languishing on the shelf for 20 years,” but probably more accurate than not. So far, so mediocre.]

Addressing ITIL and related IT management frameworks COBIT and ISO, a recent Forrester report notes…

Bzzzzzz! Wrong. “ISO” stands for “International Standards Organization,” and you don’t even want to think about how many numbered ISO standards there are, more than 99% of which have nothing whatsoever to do with IT service management. “ISO,” to put it mildly, ain’t a management framework.

Such a little thing.

Such a massively important thing–if you’re trying to sell somebody on the idea that you know what you’re talking about, you just blew it.

I know that Forrester Research has better writers and editors than this, so I’m pretty sure that somebody over at “Intelligent Enterprise” dropped the ball here.

The writer, by the way, most likely intended to reference ISO 9000 (quality management) or, if exceptionally hip, ISO 20000 (IT service management) though there are other possibilities as well.

Governance Gauge: Don’t Worry, “ITIL” Be Alright [sic] (Intelligent Enterprise.com)

The anonymous blogger behind Dr. ITIL has resurfaced after a long absence with a new blog: IT Service Blog - ITIL Inside (and a related project, an ITIL-focused search engine.)

With the current corporate focus heavily on “do more with less”, customer complaints at records levels and the never ending global phenomenon in offshoring in India and China - it’s time to take a fresh look at how IT adds value to any business organization.

The adpater layer is Service.

Business folks don’t care about servers, routers, application API’s and firewalls. They just want their services to be always on, perform well and form a reliable part of their working life.

From the top however - how IT adds real value to an organization - rather than cost a ton of money and show little return (as the next project comes in late, delivers little and costs 33% more than expected) it’s clear a new agenda in demonstrating IT Service Value is necessary.

ITIL helps.

We’ll be following this one with interest.

• IT Service Blog - ITIL Inside
• IT Service Today (Search Engine)

Proof that the premier process management program in American business has crossed over into mainstream consciousness is that a rock band in Northern Kentucky calls itself 6 Sigma. Even those who know more about frets than fractions can explain that Six Sigma is a way of increasing efficiency. A less-alliterative management tool, ISO 9000, also has many fervent adherents but, alas, no rock namesake.Within the business community, enthusiasm for process management programs such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000 or their predecessor Total Quality Management (TQM) runs strong after two decades. For example, numerous consulting firms still encourage firms to adopt Six Sigma. And despite the mid-summer departure of James McNerney to become chief executive at Boeing, 3M continues to implement the Six Sigma methods that McNerney brought in 2001 from General Electric.

Yet Wharton management professor Mary J. Benner says now may be the time to reassess the corporate utility of process management programs and apply them with more discrimination. In research done with Harvard Business School professor Michael Tushman, she has found that process management can drag organizations down and dampen innovation. “In the appropriate setting, process management activities can help companies improve efficiency, but the risk is that you misapply these programs, in particular in areas where people are supposed to be innovative,” notes Benner. “Brand new technologies to produce products that don’t exist are difficult to measure. This kind of innovation may be crowded out when you focus too much on processes you can measure.”

TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma: Do Process Management Programs Discourage Innovation? - Knowledge@Wharton

A new blog that will be of interest to the IT Service Management and Business Process Improvement folks: ITIL4Real, a blog which aims to document an actual ITIL implementation project from its inception.

ITIL4Real: An ITIL project in the real world

The most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world. There are many benefits of usability testing, including uncovering pitfalls in a current system before a redesign and evaluating the usability of a system during and after design. Usability testing should be an iterative practice, completed several times during the design and development life-cycle. The end result is an improved product and a better understanding of the users that we’re designing for.

Digital Web Magazine - Practical Usability Testing