Every year I say that I am not going to have a post on
the coming year, but I find myself starting to think about what 2016 will look
like and here I am writing a post about it. If you were to look back year after
year at posts of this type many of the same process centric activities keep
popping up, much like dieting or quitting smoking. It sounds like a broken
record. While those are still important, you might notice that the subjects I
will be focussing on this year are more general.
Focus
on Business
Do you know what your business does and what they are
trying to achieve? In some cases we make assumptions that we know, or that we have
a general idea of what they do. This level of assumption will not be enough in
the year(s) going forward. We need to better understand the five W’s of the
business. We also need to let the business know that we are interested in
understanding their needs. Have we made a visible effort in building a
relationship with them aside from the fact that we work at the same company.
Knowing what your business needs will better allow you
and your team to target the delivery of service that they get. This should be
an activity that you, as a provider, look at in the big picture sense of the
word. In many cases you might find that these efforts seem segregated from the
rest of the organization. This relationship should not be a secret; if it is it
will limit its effectiveness. Be inclusive, and have people from various teams
involved. Have the group open and not by ‘invite only’. Make sure that this is
also marketed in a way that all teams are aware of this initiative; again make
sure that this is not a secret. People should be excited about this.
Continual
service improvement
Since the New Year is filled with initiatives to improve,
it would seem like a ‘no brainer’ to have a continual service improvement
initiative in this list. The trick to getting this started is to keep your
improvement initiatives simple. Have a larger picture in mind, and build
momentum off a few small wins in the beginning. While you might want to
naturally have a large improvement which is more visible to people, you will be
better served by having several small successes which lead up to something bigger.
Each quarter review what you have achieved and don’t forget to celebrate the
successes. This is important to building momentum.
Broaden
your framework horizons
As more and more people are getting their heads around
ITIL, we are starting to appreciate that there are other approaches that can complement
and add value to daily activities. While we may use a particular framework as
the, well framework for service delivery within IT, we should recognize that
there are many other methods available that can add value. For me I will be
looking at BRM, DevOps and COBIT, and integrating them into service improvement
initiatives.
Networking
Whether it is online or in person, get to know the people
in your community. This doesn’t always mean you have to go to a conference,
although it might. Connect on social media platforms and get engaged in on-line
learning and webinars where they are available, most of the information you can
collect is free, and you can bounce ideas off one another to improve
understanding. I spoke earlier about getting to know the business better but we
can also leverage our colleagues in our communities to ask questions and see
what they did in particular situations. Find yourself a ‘mentor like’ figure to
give you some insight that you might not otherwise have. In turn you should
also considering mentoring others as a way to further develop your community. You
will find that this type of interaction will pay dividends on your
understanding of how to better serve your own business.
In addition to these subjects I look forward to
continuing to blog as well as interacting with you. Feel free to connect with
me on Twitter
@ryanrogilvie and/or on LinkedIn
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Labels: Business Relationship Management, COBIT, Continual Service Improvement, CSI, DevOps, ITIL, ITSM, Service Management
