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Tue, Aug 19, 2008 0:05 EDT

Making ITIL Fit Your Org Chart

Advice on IT Service Management / ITIL Implementations, and how to assign roles to existing staff

Topic: IT Organization Management

Current Rating: 5 Comments: 5

ITIL makes sense in concept: focus IT efforts on the support and delivery of services that meet the needs of the business. Manage risk. Improve. Rinse and Repeat. It’s really a common sense approach, and it’s hard to argue with that.

The CIO who attends a 60 minute talk about IT Service Management likes what he/she hears, but at 2:00 AM she wakes up with some nagging questions:

So… How do we actually DO this? ITIL talks about all of these different types of Managers… Change Manager, incident Manager, Problem Manager, Configuration Manager, Availability Manager, IT Service Continuity Manager, Capacity Manager, etc, etc… Does ITIL require us to hire an additional management team? If we repurpose the managers we have, how will all of the existing managers’ work get done? They’re already overwhelmed as it is!

Indeed, this is a common dilemma. The IT organization already has a number of Managers, but they’re arranged in a different way. For example: a Director of IT Operations, a VP of Engineering, Several IT Managers (broken up by technical and functional group – i.e. Linux Manager, Desktop Support Manager, Network and Telecom Manager, Storage Manager, etc).

The problem is that the majority of the IT organization is currently built around delivery of technology, not services. Even if everyone wants to deliver end to end service, the daily activities of the staff are focused on delivering the technology that they are responsible for. The Network team is focused on network throughput and uptime, the Unix / mainframe / storage teams work on the equipment of their particular type, and so on. Everyone has their own set of metrics to concern themselves with, and problem solving efforts often focus primarily on proving that the root cause lies elsewhere.

Specific projects bring resources from the separate areas together, but projects are, by definition, temporary. Moreover, these cross functional projects are often seen as a nuisance and an interruption to the “normal” workflow, since they require one or more members from a given team to be pulled out of the rotation.

To address this issue, start by writing job descriptions for everyone in IT (your legal and HR teams will likely agree that this is a good exercise anyway). What you’re likely to discover is that the existing managers all perform a LOT of different roles, and that there is a lot of overlap.

To illustrate, here are some of the tasks I performed as Manager of the Linux and Enterprise Storage teams at a well known Domain Name Registrar:

  • Select hardware and software vendors, evaluate solutions, manage contracts
  • Develop reporting tools and forecast future purchasing needs
  • Develop operating and capital expenditure budgets
  • Hire and manage staff, conduct performance reviews, develop quarterly MBO’s for each staff member
  • Serve as Project manager for any storage or Linux related project
  • Develop system architectures, including software, OS, hardware, and network concerns with a focus on business continuity and high availability
  • Evaluate and approve changes to the Linux and Enterprise Storage Infrastructure
  • Lead team in scheduling and deploying new applications to the live environment
  • Troubleshoot incidents and determine root causes “often with only a portion of the information necessary to make a decision” (quote taken directly from my job description)
  • Manage software and OS licenses and support contracts
  • Research and evaluate new technologies, make recommendations, purchase when appropriate
  • Work with corporate accounting team to track physical assets from purchase to retirement and schedule
    You do not have flash or javascript support.
    Average (3 votes)
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Tue, Aug 19, 2008 18:30 EDT
Posted by: Mark Cummuta
Rating: 90

Brian,

You bring up some excellent points, not the least of which is executive buy-in, which must include a realistic understanding of the time to delivery to this transition! Both of these are vital, else the existing staff will balk at the additional efforts ... and business users will not support the changes needed.

Mark Cummuta

 
Tue, Aug 26, 2008 10:13 EDT
Anonymous user
Posted by: Anonymous
Rating:

Thank you so much for writing this! I have been searching for information on how this actually works in the real world, and there isn't much out there. The tip about writing job descriptions is a good one. I can see that it's probably true that my staff already perform a lot of the ITIL tasks, but the re-org is still going to take some time.

 
Thu, Aug 28, 2008 19:55 EDT
Anonymous user
Posted by: Anonymous
Rating:

Also important to separate Incident Management from Problem Management, since they have opposing goals. Nice article.

Cheers!

-leanonme

 
Sun, Apr 26, 2009 19:45 EDT
Anonymous user
Posted by: Peachy
Rating:

Hi,

Nice article. Not only does this provide some indications on how Senior Mgmt buy-in can be achieved but also it covers the transition by which an enterprise can re-structure itself to more efficiently deliver against business services.

Nice work.

If you have time, I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on ITIL transition or implementation for smaller organisations (say around 20-30 people). The company I'm due to join is a young organisation, international so infratructure complexities exist however the organisation has no ITIL to speak of.

What would you introduce, at what point, when etc.

Look forward to your response.

 
Thu, Apr 30, 2009 11:09 EDT
Posted by: ChrisMatchett
Rating:

Nice article and thank you for not falling into the trap of creating job titles named after roles. You quite correctly recognise that one job description could have responsibility for several roles. The other thing to consider should be obvious but be careful to consider the workloads as well as capabilities when allocating the roles.

I don't quite agree with a user comment above that Incident and Problem Management should be kept seperate. The role may have different goals but that doesn't mean to say that someone holding one or both roles cannot resolve the conflict. Most good techies will want a service restored but also find the cause and take measures to prevent reoccurance. The two processes do need managing but not always by different people. It depends on the size and complexity of the organisation.

Chris Matchett ITIL V3 Expert

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