Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
1
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are
Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
by Malcolm Fry
Recognized industry luminary Malcolm Fry outlines the reasons
organizations fail to effectively implement ITIL, and discusses why a
philosophy of continuous improvement is paramount to success.
pg_0002
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
Table of Contents
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are
...............................................1
Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
.......................................................1
Top Ten Reasons for Implementation Failure
................................3
The Impact of IT Failures
...................................................................5
The Need for Continuous Improvement
..........................................5
High-Level ITIL Benefits
.....................................................................6
What ITIL Is Not
...................................................................................7
Time To Reap the Rewards
...............................................................8
About the Author
Malcolm Fry is a recognized IT industry luminary with over 35 years
experience in Information Technology. He serves as an independent
executive advisor to BMC Software. Malcolm is the author of four
best-selling books on IT service and support, has had many other
articles and papers published, and is regularly contacted as a source of
information by technology journalists. In addition, he is the solo
performer in a highly successful, best-selling video series made for the
Help Desk Institute. He is an original contributor to ITIL and has
Masters level ITIL certification.
® ITIL is a registered trademark of OGC - the Office of Government
Commerce
2
pg_0003
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
IT Service Management has become both more sophisticated and more
critical to the business. We are now in an era in which an IT failure or
error can interrupt critical business processes, severely damage a
corporation’s image, affect the bottom line, and even impact a
company’s stock valuation. As organizations become more reliant on
technology, the need for reliable, well-managed services continues to
increase. With this increased demand on IT performance, IT needs
well-defined processes to ensure that IT operations are maintained at
optimal levels.
The Information Infrastructure Technology Library (ITIL®) is the de
facto industry standard framework for providing guidance specific to
IT service delivery and support processes. ITIL can help IT
organizations improve Service Management processes, as well as
enable them to deliver benefits that matter most to both the IT
organization and the business.
The ITIL books are comprehensive and clear, yet many organizations
are unsuccessful in implementing ITIL. Why is this?
I’ve worked with numerous organizations through the years, and have
concluded that many factors contribute to failure in implementing ITIL
successfully.
Top Ten Reasons for Implementation Failure
Below I’ve listed my top ten list of reasons that organizations fail in
their attempts to implement ITIL:
1- Lack of management commitment – No project can succeed
without management commitment and drive. You can achieve isolated
wins with ITIL without management commitment, but these wins will
be few and far between. Commitment itself is not enough; those in
management must show their commitment to ITIL by their presence
and involvement.
2- Spending too much time on complicated process diagrams –
When you start to approach ITIL, there is a great temptation to produce
complex and detailed process maps. This is not necessary for most of
the processes, and wastes valuable time and resources. Many of the
processes, such as Incident Management, are performed hundreds of
times every day and do not need rigid process maps. However, you
should create simple process maps for some of the ITIL processes.
3 - Not creating work instructions – Too often, organizations fail to
establish written work instructions because they spend too much time
on creating complex process maps. Work instructions include
escalation rules, priority definitions, and change categories. These
work instructions must be written, published, and continually
reviewed.
3
pg_0004
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
4 - Not assigning process owners – IT, like most other departments, is
often silo-based and not process-oriented. A process owner should be
assigned to each of the ITIL processes that cross functional silos. The
process owner should concentrate on the structure and flow of the
process, without having to focus on staffing and other departmental
issues. Quite simply, the process owner’s job is to carefully monitor
and manage the assigned process so that it can be continually
improved.
5 - Concentrating too much on performance – Most IT monitoring
activities concentrate on performance, while ignoring quality and
processes. For example, most Service Desks can report how quickly
they escalate incidents, but few can report how often they escalate
incidents to the wrong person. Organizations need to spend more time
on improving quality as part of implementing ITIL.
6 - Being too ambitious – ITIL consists of ten Service Management
processes. Many organizations attempt to implement too many
processes at once, causing confusion, staff unrest, and poor integration
between the processes.
7 - Failing to maintain momentum – It’s a huge effort to implement
all ten ITIL processes and maintain the momentum, especially if the
biggest gains come early in the ITIL implementation. A complete and
successful implementation of ITIL takes most organizations between
three and five years –a long time to maintain momentum. Remember,
to maintain the momentum from those early achievements, you must
implement all of the ITIL processes. Think of it like a taking a course
of antibiotics when you are ill--after a few doses, you feel better. But,
if you fail to complete the whole course of the prescription, you will
soon be back to square one—feeling ill again.
8 - Allowing departmental demarcation – Some of the processes
cross more than one department. This often causes conflict among
departments, especially in organizations where department boundaries
are rigid and ownership is important. All departments need to
understand that ITIL is a joint venture and success comes from all
working together; that is, the “power of one,” and not from ownership
of a process.
9 - Ignoring solutions other than ITIL – Although ITIL is regarded
as the industry “best practice” for IT Service Management, many other
best practices and frameworks exist to facilitate Service Management,
such as Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
(COBIT), Six Sigma, and CMMi. Corporate control requirements,
such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, can also affect ITIL. These other
components are often ignored, which can delay ITIL implementation.
Even worse, if you don’t focus on these components, then you are not
maximizing ITIL’s potential.
4
pg_0005
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
10 - Not reviewing the entire ITIL framework – Although there are
ten basic ITIL processes, look at the entire ITIL framework when
putting ITIL best practices in place. In particular, review the Security
Management and the Information and Communications Technology
(ICT) Infrastructure Management books, because ITIL success is
dependent upon other IT processes.
The Impact of IT Failures
I’ve just outlined the reasons that organizations fail in implementing
ITIL, but let’s take a step back to understand why we need the well-
defined processes as defined by ITIL. Two examples show the impact
of two critical IT failures in the same week, first when the National Air
Traffic System failed to operate in the UK:
“NATS’ Flight Data Processing System failed at around 0600 BST for
an hour, after overnight testing of an upgrade.” Extract from a BBC
(UK) report dated June 3, 2004 (
www.bbc.com
)
As a result of this failure, virtually all flights from commercial airports
were grounded for at least an hour beginning at 6 a.m. on June 3, 2004.
Can you imagine the chaos? Not to mention the cost and image
damage. This failure was obviously caused by the testing of a future
change. Note that the change was only being tested, yet it still had an
enormous effect. It appears that poor change management was the
cause of this failure. Now, for the IT failure at the Royal Bank of
Canada in the same week:
RBC’s computer woes began on Monday, May 31 with what it
described as a routine programming update to one of its computer
systems. The bank’s national system failed to register withdrawals,
deposits, and payments against customer balances.” Friday, June 4,
2004(
www.globeandmail.com
)
Again, this looks like a failed change, but is described by the bank as a
routine programming update, suggesting that this type of change had
been performed many times before. Surely, a routine update shouldn’t
fail, should it? Sometimes, the lack of attention to the “routine” can
cause the worst problems. The impact to RBC was huge, because it
was a full working week before IT was fully restored.
The Need for Continuous Improvement
Ensuring successful IT Service Management is like becoming a martial
arts expert. To maintain your martial arts level status, you have to
continuously practice and train, because laziness breeds failure and
incompetence. To maintain your IT Service Management at the
highest level, you must practice continuous improvement, or you will
breed failure and incompetence. No IT Service can rely on previous
successes, so it is important for IT Service Management to embark
upon a continuous improvement cycle.
5
pg_0006
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
The power of ITIL lies in not only in its well-defined processes, but
also in its philosophy of continuous improvement. To gain the full
benefits of implementing ITIL, IT staff and IT management must meet
this challenge of continuous improvement. Both the ITIL Service
Delivery and Service Support books include a list of ten benefits that
you should achieve as a result of following ITIL Service Management
processes. The philosophy of continuous improvement is reflected in
the following list:
•
Improved quality of service - more reliable business support
•
More focused IT Service Continuity procedures; more
confidence in the ability to follow them when required
•
Clearer view of current IT capability
•
Better information on current services (and possibly on where
Changes would bring most benefits)
•
Greater flexibility for the business through improved
understanding of IT support
•
More motivated staff; improved job satisfaction through better
understanding of capability and better management of
expectations
•
Enhanced customer satisfaction as service providers know and
deliver what is expected of them
•
Increased flexibility and adaptability that is likely to exist
within the services
•
System-led benefits, e.g. improvements in security, accuracy,
speed and availability, as required, for the required level of
service
•
Improved cycle time for changes and greater success rate.
1
High-Level ITIL Benefits
This is quite an impressive list of benefits. If you are not currently
achieving these benefits, then quite possibly you are suffering the
losses and impacts of not implementing ITIL best practices. Here are
some additional high-level ITIL benefits that are not mentioned in the
ITIL publications:
Common terminology- Apart from standard processes, ITIL has a
standard set of terminology that allows IT to communicate more easily
with customers. This is especially useful to large, multi-site
organizations in which all sites perform the same IT Service
Management functions, but are using different lexicons to describe
their actions. In addition to simplifying communication with IT,
standard terminology also improves training, improves reporting, and
reduces confusion.
1
Best Practice for Service Support, ITIL. The Key to managing IT services, Page 17.
Published for Office of Government Commerce under license from the Controller of
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office ©Crown Copyright 2001.
6
pg_0007
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
Narrower gap between management and practitioners—Senior
management often does not understand many of the processes under
their control, for a variety of reasons. There may be too many
processes for management to understand them all, or a manager may
not have performed some of the processes. Also, the processes may
have changed. One of the benefits of an ITIL shop is that senior
management can use the ITIL books as a guide to help them ensure
that Service Management processes are being performed according to
best practices.
International standards – ITIL has a BS15000 British Standard, is
allied to ISO9002, and is awaiting ISO ratification. Reaching the
standard required for ratification is a great vision for the improvement
of IT Service Management, even if you do not wish to become ratified.
Staff certification – ITIL has independent staff certification comprised
of two main levels of certification: foundation and managers. If you
are certified at the foundation level, you show a general understanding
of the ITIL processes and terminology. To pass managers-level
certification, you need a comprehensive knowledge of ITIL, along with
the ability to implement and manage ITIL in the workplace. It’s
important to note that ITIL certification examinations are set and
marked by independent examining boards that cannot teach or profit
from ITIL certification. A by-product of ITIL certification is that you
can gauge the quality of your training by the percentage of your staff
hat passes the exams.
t
What ITIL Is Not
Your organization can realize many important benefits by
implementing ITIL best practices. In most organizations, there is still
much good work to be done. Be careful, though, to draw a line
between looking for tangible benefits and merely tinkering with
technology. It may be useful to look at what ITIL is not:
•
ITIL is not a methodology for implementing IT Service
Management processes. Rather, it is a flexible framework that
you can tailor to meet your specific needs.
•
ITIL does not contain detailed process maps. ITIL provides the
foundation and information that you need to build and improve
your processes.
•
ITIL does not provide work instructions. For example, the ITIL
Incident Management process tells you at what point you must
escalate the incident, but it doesn’t tell you how to escalate the
incident, or who you should escalate the incident to; only you
can determine this.
It is refreshing to discover that, while ITIL is not the complete answer
to everything, it does provide a solid foundation. Think about it like
this: memorizing the rules to baseball does not mean that you can play
the game. To play baseball well, not only must you follow the rules,
but you must also learn to utilize your strengths and abilities.
7
pg_0008
Top Ten Reasons Organizations are Unsuccessful Implementing ITIL
Similarly, memorizing the ITIL books does not mean that you can
effectively implement the ITIL processes; you can successfully
implement ITIL best practices only by understanding your IT strengths
and abilities.
Time To Reap the Rewards
Knowing what you know about ITIL, and the benefits it can bring to
your business, aren’t you ready to see what it can do for you?
Let this industry framework guide you as you implement IT Service
Management best practices in your IT organization—and begin to reap
the rewards that ITIL can bring—to IT, to users, and to the success of
your overall business.
8