Why IT’IL never work
You have got an ITIL certification and you know the ITIL best practices. You are aware of how ITIL is supposed to work. But that’s when you’re in for a surprise. ITIL adoption starts to go south and you’re left lurching on what went wrong!
Here’s why
Trying to incorporate ITIL ‘by the book’ is destined to fail. A lot of things have to come together, fall in place for ITIL to work- You can’t do it all at once and people don’t seem to get their heads around this fact.
And then we safely conclude- ITIL doesn’t work! Why- Because that’s the easiest thing to do.
Having spoken to CIOs who have succeeded with ITIL frameworks, I have come to a strong conclusion – For ITIL to succeed, you need more than just the framework!
So what’s the silver bullet to make it work?
And the magic sauce is……
You. As an IT person, you know your organisation better than any consultant or agency. Whilst they have a ton of experience with organisations, they don’t know the finer nuances of your organisation. What frustrates your end-users, the core culture of your workplace, attitudes of leaders, management etc are something that’s unique to your company.
They wouldn’t know much about what keeps you awake on a day to day basis and don’t have the pulse of the ground like internal IT folks do.
ITIL will not create impact. People do. No amount of budget, big bang consultancy/consultants can make a difference if IT agents lack the passion and knowledge to make a difference.
But what can I do?
Ah! Are you still looking for a one size fit all solution? No, there isn’t one.
I know you have heard this a ton of times. But sense this- Most of the IT conferences I go to, I see a ton of things- Talks, case studies, brochures, networking sessions- all centered around helping us being a better IT organization.
But why is that a problem? All of these are focussed more on IT than on the end users.
Before you establish a new ‘practice’ or a ‘framework’ like ITIL for being efficient and effective ask one thing- Did our end users ask for it? Of course, all the end users want us to be effective. But then, we figured out our own way to re-engineer process according various ‘guidances’. Of course we got more efficient yes, but did we realise what we lost?
- We lost our connection with business
- We lost our connect with end users
- Importantly and ironically, we lost the ‘service’ in service management
As result both the IT folks and our end users suffered.
So that loops back to the question- What do we do?
A simple way to make sure frameworks (including ITIL) work for your organisation is to follow the two step mantra
- Know the value
- Know the environment
Creating value- For your end users and your organization
If you cannot demonstrate or explain how a best practice (let alone ITIL) is valuable to your end users or your organisation, you’re not gonna succeed in implementing anything. For example, it’s amazing how we IT folks forget ‘Value to business section’ of ITIL lifecycle part of each process.
It’s important to think through what YOUR customers and company wants. Here’s a small example-
Your end users want their issue to be solved the first time (and not come repeatedly for the same thing), they don’t care about whether you solved it within ‘SLA’. An issue solved within SLA is of great merit for the IT agent, but is of no use for the end user if he comes coming again and again.
So here’s the biggest takeaway- Look at challenges from your end users (and business) vantage point, and alter your solution (ITIL or any framework) in a way that’s most valuable to them.
Know your environment- In & out
The biggest reason for failure of ITIL frameworks to deliver value is the shallow knowledge we have, without much context. It’s helpful to learn the ‘concepts’, but without the knowledge of how to apply or alter them to real life scenarios, the knowledge is of little use.
It’s pivotal that you understand your environment very well- the frustrations, expectations, dependencies, pivotal cogs among others and make your process gel with the environment and not over shadow it.
Remember- You should not discount hidden and inconvenient dependencies because your ‘best practices’ doesn’t talk about it.
So, now what?
Adopt, Adapt or perish
As ITSM and your end users continue to evolve, it’s pivotal we also embrace the change. Service management should be a combination
- Knowing what your end users and business wants
- Leveraging best practices to craft solutions
- Delivering value- To business and customers
It’s not an IT agent’s job to go by the book, but to ensure that the business runs smoothly, is.
If you don’t stay razor focussed on delivering value to users and business- You will never be successful with ITIL. You now know why ITIL might fail in your organisation.
This blog post was written by Praveen Ramesh, Product Marketing Manager at Freshservice by Freshworks
