2013 Calendar...

Hello,

My blog calendar for 2013 is available for download at the following location:

Click here...

Regards,

Musab

Honoured to be on expert review board of new publication...

Hi,

The TSO have published a new title as part of their ITIL publications; Designing and Transforming IT Organizations: Roles, Responsibilities and Organization Structures.

Authored by Job Ten Hagen, I was honoured to be part of the review team assigned a section of this prodigious project. The author has kindly made a preview of the book available at the following:

• http://bit.ly/sampleORG - I'm mentioned on the acknowledgements page as part of the review team.

We may be familiar with the conundrum of people, processes, products and partners. However, as ITSM continues to mature, more detailed and prescriptive guidance is needed to address the 'people' domain. This book provides beneficial recommendations and tools related to the human factor in organisational success; ones that are based upon academically sound principles and that have proven to work in the real world. 

Some of the areas covered are guidance on roles, job descriptions, responsibilities and authorities, skills, accountability and governance.

The book may be purchased directly from the TSO at the following:

• http://bit.ly/organize-IT

Or from Amazon at the following:

• http://amzn.to/S9QzcC

Your comments as always are welcome; musabqureshi4@yahoo.co.uk.

Best regards,

Musab

How to (and how not to!) perform effective SLA reporting...

Hello,

The experience based guidance provided in this posting although intended for Service Level Agreement (SLA) reporting, is in the large applicable to many of the reports management are tasked with. 

The IT Organisation of today is positioned all the more as a layer between the Customers and Users (beneficiaries) of the service on one side & the internal organisations and external providers on the other. 

The SLA therefore represents the capabilities of the service provider to meet agreed service levels.

The agreement written in a language intelligible to the customers and users, the SLA contains as a minimum the following:

• A description of the services being provided;
• Agreed targets for delivery and support, and
• Responsibilities of both the service provider and customer.

Following are some tips to help obtain value from your SLA reporting:

• Take time to understand who will be reading the report and what they need to know. One method is to sub-divide the report across multiple layers of abstraction. If the reader wants more detail, they should have the option to drill down thru further levels. Consider views of the report customised for each customer group.

• Keep in mind human nature; when information is processed by the recipient, they're constantly asking 'so what?' - address his/her concerns. Your SLA report need to elucidate  what happened, what was done to rectify where service levels were breached & what actions are being taken to prevent recurrence.

• Beware of misinterpretation; a picture is worth a thousand words, but are you portraying the right words? The staff collecting the data and the staff preparing the final report need not be the same. The former ensure timely and completeness. The latter ensure the end-to-end service reporting is relevant and complete & conveys the intended message without leaving any room for ambiguity.

• A historical perspective of performance is important as it shows trends and helps demonstrate the value of the processes and the impact of their implementation on service quality over time. More importantly, use the report to showcase how IT dealt with historical issues and managed to resolve them effectively.

• Reports need to be future looking as well as historical; this is achieved through development of sensible targets and the measurement of actual delivery against these planned and agreed targets. Consider using 'agreed' targets and 'stretch' targets; the latter help emphasize where IT went the extra mile and delivered a fair bit beyond what was agreed.

• Provide a reference section that provides definitions of all terms used, the basis of calculations, the reporting schedules, report distribution and meeting schedules (to present the report).

• Use tools to help automate and streamline the process, but keep in mind the intent of Bill Gates when he said that 'automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency'. My advice when it comes to tools is always to start with people, ensuring they understand why it's important, their role and clarify how the measures are to be understood or interpreted. Once these foundation aspects have been achieved, the transition to powerful reporting technologies is far more effective.

• Depending upon the frequency of reporting, meet with your customers/users to present the report. Tweak the report to meet their needs, while at the same ensuring no important areas are neglected.

SLA reporting and infact ITIL and ITSM overall is a journey, it isn't a project. It's about building a culture where we each person is a cog in the machinery. They need to comprehend their area and perform it to a level such that the overall machine can function and deliver what has been agreed and promised in the SLA.

Comments most welcome on musabqureshi4@yahoo.co.uk.

Best regards,

Musab

The inextricable link between budgets and strategy...

Hello,


In the 1920's James McKinsey defined some core budgeting principles and practices in his book 'Budgetry Control'- the design of today's general ledger is based around that. Financial corporate and business unit performance is also structured around this pervasive system.

This poses some interesting challenges for today's management. A Corporate Planning function typically plans and develops the over-arching strategy, the vision and mission for which the organisation exists and the objectives against which resources are to be prioritised, aligned and re-aligned.

Financial resources are established as a key component that impact the success of strategy implementation in today's fast-paced, and somewhat unpredictable business environments.

However, a challenge bears to weight when strategic planning traverses upon one path; that to understand and delineate the why, what and how of the organisation's focus over a defined period. And the budgeting organisations traverse a path of managing the financial element. Each of these paths often make some inroad into the territory of the other. However, gaps continue to remain.

There are some important points of consideration that can provide useful guidance in this area:

• Organisational change is a natural process that takes time, requires leadership and a concerted effort. The unfreeze-change-freeze cycle if rushed leads to blunders that may not be realised until some time has passed.
• Astute organisations look for ways to help close the gap. One proven approach is the Balanced Scorecard. The Financial perspective can define objectives, measures and targets that are integrated with the Budgeting policies and processes. This way adjustments needed impact both the strategic planning and budget control simultaneously. This leads to more diligent management of financial and non-financial resources alike.
• This mechanism provides another benefit; the ability to visualise the link between budget spend and key initiatives; thus demonstrating the business value of dollar-spend.
• The mapping of budget spend against the strategic objectives brings another perspective; it permits the discerning of budget spent on keeping the engines running cf budget spent on strategic initiatives.

As mentioned, the balanced scorecard is one method of achieving this, along with other similar methods and approaches.

Regards,

Musab

What is E-Government?

Hi, 

A Google or Bing on the subject will yield a wide plethora of definitions; many of them surprisingly different; each genre facilitating a unique emphasis or perspective.

Some definitions tend towards focusing more on the technology used, others look towards societal aspects and yet others give more weight to the supporting business processes.

Coming up with a balanced definition that considers not only the diversity of perspectives but one that also is up to date with current research and development is challenging to say the least.

Nonetheless, here's my tuppence worth on formulating a definition on e-government that strives to meet these criteria to some degree.

"E-Government is the use of technology (Internet, portals, mobile computing and so on) to provide innovative platforms for Citizens (G2C), Businesses (G2B), Visitors (G2V), peer Government agencies (G2G) and so on to interact and communicate better."

Some of the benefits therefore that may be accrued from e-Government may be outlined as follows:

• Increased transparency as users (citizens, businesses etc.) can directly log into electronic systems to track and manage their requests without relying upon human actors thru every step of the process flow.
• Greater empowerment of citizens thanks to access to the information, new channels of communication and a multitude of automated e-services.
• Improved security as requests and information are held on secure and managed networks.
• A consequent decrease in corruption overall.

Despite these advantages, there are numerous barriers that continue to pose a challenge to the more widespread use of e-Government. These include the following:

• The digital divide where people simply do not have the access to the requisite technologies that access to e-Government services needs.
• The knowledge divide; many services mandate a particular level of literacy and PC know-how to avail e-government services. There is a dearth of IT skills in some geographies and also in segments of society who may be greatly in need of the particular e-service.
• Disproportionate Internet connectivity across countries and areas within a country (city vs. rural for instance).

Research continues to highlight dilient approaches for addressing these areas and astute governments are already making headway. No doubt this trend will continue to enhance maturity levels until the gap is reduced even further. 

Your feedback us welcome; musabqureshi4@yahoo.co.uk.

Best regards,

Musab Qureshi

;

Questions you wanted to ask about ITIL but were afraid to ask...

Isn’t ITIL about all about fixing broken things and data centre policies?

Well, the first version of ITIL that was launched in 1989 grew to 40 publications; these were somewhat focussed on IT operations. However the ITIL v3 2011 update is a far cry from this. It provides a best practice framework for managing the complete lifecycle of services across 5 stages; these are:

I.                    Service Strategy

II.                  Service Design

III.                Service Transition

IV.                Service Operation

V.                  Continual Service Improvement

In order to comprehend the breadth of ITIL, it helps to consider the questions which ITIL helps answer; these include:

• What business services do I offer as a service provider? 
• If my business expands by 10% next year, how much more will IT cost? 
• If there was a disaster, how long would it take to resume normal service operation and what would that cost? 
• Are my customers/users satisfied with the services and support they’re getting and if not, where do I need to improve? 
• If there is a failure of my network, how will it affect the services we’re delivering today? 
• What roles are involved in root cause analysis? 
• How will we define and measure service quality?

  

What is the benefit and what needs to be invested to get this?

There are a number of interesting case studies that demonstrate tangible gains achieved from ITIL; following are some examples (source: the Pink Elephant ‘Benefits of ITIL’ paper):

• P&G saved $500 million over 4 years by improving processes
• Nationwide estimated a 40% reduction in system outages and $4.3 million ROI over 3 years 
•  MeadWestvaco claimed a $100, 000 reduction in annual maintenance costs.

These are some of the tangible benefits; what about the intangible? Consider the following as examples:

• The ability to learn from past errors through Problem Management 
• Reduce and manage one of the primary causes of failure today; that of unauthorised change
• Enhance customer satisfaction due to the improvement in service quality 
• Increased staff motivation due to cognisance of roles and responsibilities of all parties.

What are some of the costs associated with ITIL?

ITIL does involve some up-front investment, but as case studies consistently demonstrate, where you have good processes that are implemented well, the value gained from this far outweighs these initial cost outlays. The main costs are in developing the processes and automating these on a system, producing the required documentation and their dissemination and implementation across the organisation.

Regards,

Musab Qureshi

Lead vs. Lag Indicators

Hi,

You will often come across discussions regarding the difference between lead and lag indicators.

Lead and lag indicators come into play with balanced scorecards; Norton and Kaplan refer to them as Outcome measures. The cause and effect flow of goals and objectives with the balanced scorecard (BSC) lends itself well to producing actionable strategies.

It is worth looking at this chain effect across the BSC perspectives:

• Effort at the Learning and Growth perspective in terms of 'enhancing organisational capability' leads to... 
• More 'efficient and effective processes' at the Internal Processes perspective; these consequently result in...
• 'Increased customer satisfaction' at the Customer/Partner/Stakeholder perspective; which ultimately leads to...
• 'More profit' in the private sector and 'more satisfied stakeholders' in the public sector at the Financial perspective.

The similar chain effect is shown with indicators; hence satisfied or motivated employees are a lead indicator for customer satisfaction. And happier customers are subsequently a lead indicator for increased revenue.

Goals are represented as bubbles on the strategy map; they have associated measures which gauge progression towards the defined targets. Formulating suitable goals and appropriate measures or metrics can be a formidable task to embark upon.

One important element is to maintain a level of balance between the lead and lag indicators. Put simply, lead measures are pro-active, in the future and track what is done to pre-empt; in other words you can influence their outcome. 

By contrast, lag indicators measure what has already happened; hence are captured for reporting purposes.

Consider the following as examples of each of them:

Lagging:                                                      Leading:
- What time I woke up                                 - What time the alarm clock was set for
- Revenue                                                   - Orders received
- New customers                                         - Number of proposals submitted
- Budget spend by Q2 end                             - Forecast budget spend by Q2 end

Hence devoting time to ensuring the correct balance between the lead and lag indicators is an important factor for consideration when developing suitable balanced scorecard measures.

Regards,

Musab Qureshi