Moses introducing Service Catalogue v1.0

While reviewing a few requests for change to be submitted to the weekly CAB meeting, I told my manager about 2 of them in which there was no affected service recorded; well, in fact there was something written in the field “Affected Service”, but it was not present in the Service Catalogue.

My boss didn’t want to change it for one of the services that actually exist in our Service Catalogue as he says “the Service Catalogue is not closed yet”. I thought he meant our current Service Catalogue was only a draft pending of validation or whatever, but he didn’t: what he meant is that our Service Catalogue has not been carved in stone yet, if you let me put it that way. That’s what he means with “closed”. Well I’m afraid I have to tell him that’s never happening, if we do things the way God dictates…

The Service Catalogue is not an easily attainable, but it’s so maybe because it’s utility is poorly explained. Or maybe, the way I see it, what is not widely spread is from which point of view we should look at a Service Catalogue: it’s a tool meant to be created from a customer focus, customer oriented, and that’s the weakest point of many service providers, whether they’re in-sourced, outsourced, co-sourced or whatever combination of the previous.

“Customer oriented” and “customer focus” mean to me something beyond servility some practice, neither accepting whatever request a client makes crazy as it might be or absolutely out of the scope of a contract or an agreement. Customer focus is wanting to deliver the services the customer needs (and has bought) in the most adjusted way to what’s been considered a functional, economic, capacity, utility or availability requirement in the contracting process and on the day-to-day client’s business operation. The Service Catalogue must reflect accurately this customer orientation; the best example of what this means I found it on this post of Joseba Enjuto’s blog (sorry, only available in Spanish, you may try this -I decline any responsibility on the results…)

This customer focus and an ever-changing world as IT world is by nature, requires the Service Catalogue to be something organic, flexible and dynamic enough. The Service Catalogue is not to be engraved in stone as the Ten Commandments; ITIL V3 picks up with this brilliantly (and is IMHO the star feature of V2 revision) putting the Service Catalogue Management on the Service Strategy phase as the core of the Service Lifecycle, as the axis around the whole life cycle spins, as the genuine rotor.

And now, for someone who can tell about it far better than I do.

Now, let’s wait and see who’s first achieving it…

Now, the OGC and the Stationery Office are recruiting participants to update the five core publications (the Service Lifecycle books) and the “Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle” book. The participants will be two kinds: authors and reviewers.

Check out for the official announcement. It’s not quite clear what you get in return, aside from prestige of being credited in the books. Hey, it would be OK and more than enough for me. Maybe they could even handle out an all-inclusive invitation to the next ITSMF congress… it would be worth the effort (they could think of an exotic destination next time, Barcelona is not really appealing to me…).

What about you? Would you like to participate? Do you think a public announce is a good step on broadening ITIL scope and incorporating new trends (and, more important, new realities) to its core books? Please share your thoughts on the comments.

I smell your abandoned Sharepoint site from here...

I read on CA on Service Management blog a funny post by Dave Wilt remarking how important is continuous Service Catalog and Service Portfolio management, and the need to keep them up to date to avoid what Dave Wilt calls “zombies” in our organizations: those IT assets or CIs no longer needed that wander around our datacenters. According to Dave’s definition of “zombie” in an organization:

Where are the zombies in your enterprise?  How about virtual machines that were quickly and easily spun up but are no longer needed or used?  SharePoint sites?  File shares, intranet pages, user desktop software?  User accounts? How about entire business or IT services?

Dave Wilt thinks of Service Catalog as a weapon to fight zombies, with a closed-loop approach on provisioning using a Service Catalog. One of the points he insists the most is “cost transparency”, that means: whether or not a formal chargeback model for IT services provisioning exists, users that request a service (and their managers) must be informed of the cost of delivering that service through time. It might be tough for some IT shops who are just starting to deal with their very first Service Catalog to think of setting up Financial Management, but I believe that, unlike IT jargon, money is a universal language that everyone in the company will understand.

Nobody wants to be expensive; nobody wants their department to top the Big Spenders list at their organization; so let them know how much a new virtual machine costs when someone asks you to spun up “3 or 4“. I don’t mean you should use bills to frighten away the beggars, but you must collaborate on making them become conscious about what they are asking and maybe rethink if they really need that many and that big.

It’s quite interesting to read the full post, just in case you need one more reason to be convinced that Service Catalog is the cornerstone of healthy IT Service Management.

You can read it here.

Cause Map - ain't it hot???

The guys from ThinkReliability are offering an Excel template that can be used to track and document any problem investigation, including the tools needed to draw a root cause and process map -yes, in Excel. As they say:

Most people think of Excel as only an application for creating spreadsheets, but it’s an excellent tool for capturing each element of a complete root cause analysis. By changing the way details are documented, a facilitator can improve the entire investigation process. The drawing tools are simple, flexible and Excel is probably already on your computer.

I must add to that: you don’t even need Excel on your computer, you can use Google Docs -it’s free and a solid tool for work teams.

It’s not specifically addressed to deal with IT problems, but it’s not really that important; after all, IT problems are problems anyway. The main advantage to me of this template is it can be used to draw a cause map easily in a few clicks; on a tab you can find a lot of basic shapes (boxes and connectors), you copy them to the tab labelled “Cause map” and you’re done. Detailed instructions can be found in the template. Worth having a look at it.

You can download The Cause Mapping Template in Microsoft Excel here for free (no money and no registration required), and the list of advantages using MS Excel brings according to ThinkReliability.

PS: have a look at their blogs, plenty of useful examples on how to perform an RCA and its deliverables.

There are plenty examples of poka-yoke devices and how to implement them on manufacturing chains and industrial processes, but I wonder: could they be useful on IT processes and procedures and how could they be implemented?

It’s important as many incidents raise in an organization due to human error; frequently, some RCA on those incidents conclude that an operator hit the wrong key or inserted the wrong tape on a drive… So, as to me poka-yokes look like a sound error-control mechanism, I’m looking for ideas on how to implement them on our IT Operation.

Like them, I applause how transparently Fisher’s Plaza have dealt with this incident, specially regarding their tenants, as they really deserve an explanation.

You can read the full report here.

Your users also deserve an explanation when an IT service goes down; you don’t have to give them a 12 page report for every problem you manage, but you can’t simply shrug your shoulders and tell them “shit happens”.

So, he has introduced a new type of change: urgent changes. Nothing to do with emergency changes: urgent. What’s an urgent change? A change to be done ASAP. But not in an emergency case, ie: a project manager wants to deploy his new version of app X, and he wants it now. This new version doesn’t solve a major issue with the previous release or adds functionality that the business imperatively needs due to legal issues or whatever reason you can think of for an emergency change, because, and that’s the point, it’s not an emergency. Usually, it will just be a project deadline too close and a project manager unwilling to take the blame for the delay of the release (why take the blame when you have the IT crowd to take that blame as “they won’t deploy the app until next week”?).

Where I see nothing but fighting what a best practices framework dictates, my manager and his mates think they’ve had a great idea because with urgent changes they show how customer oriented they are. Bullshit.

And WTF, where the hell have they read on ITIL core books the term “urgent change”???

Sometimes the best work meeting is the one that never took place

I’m back from one of the most surreal work meetings I’ve ever attended, with my boss and a fellow worker, to plan the moving of three branches to a single building. I had my list of topics to be covered at the meeting, including which changes we would have to do at our servers and network configurations (and the changes we would have to raise to our external providers) in order to get everything up and running by the end of the 4-days time frame we’ve been allocated to complete the moving, that is: for all applications and services to be running at normal levels for all users.

But my boss has told me to put it aside and we wouldn’t talk about it at the meeting, because he prefers to deal with other issues of the process of moving (such as connecting users’ computers and relocating an incredibly vintage -but resilient- AS400 server). About those other things on my list… he wouldn’t worry a bit; once the users begin their work at the new building, they would report us what’s wrong and what they miss and what app is crashing or won’t print or won’t connect to the database server, and then we’d get fixing and changing all those configurations we could have made in advance.

That’s a deathly strike for anyone aiming to reach high quality levels at his work, as he’s asked to put aside his will of continuous improvement and work on downgrading the quality level of the IT services instead.

Sadly, I must admit this is not the first time I’m faced with such an awful attitude at other jobs I’ve had, and I wonder if this need to turn down quality for no reason, this need of continuously claim the need to change “something” to improve but, when the chance to effectively do something to improve comes, do nothing, is just an Spanish syndrome or it’s pandemic.

I switched my bank account to Caixa Galicia early this year, as it looked like a modern savings bank: no fees for domestic or international transfers or cash withdrawal at any cash point, automatized phone service, and what seemed, at first, a solid online banking system.

Well, today I had to place a money transfer to a French bank account in order to book the studio apartment, and to my surprise, I noticed:

• It’s not possible to order it through Caixa Galicia’s website
• It can only be made at Caixa Galicia offices or on the phone; my account belongs to “Virtual Office”, it means: it’s not associated to a physical office; I’m supposed to make any operation available to any regular customer through the web or on the phone
• In case you place the transfer on the phone, you don’t get a receipt for it, nor does the payee, until 3 or 4 days have passed; then you can access it through the website to a PDF file of the receipt. You can’t ask for a notification sent by email or SMS to the payee at the moment the order is placed.

So, what does it mean to me? That Caixa Galicia have might made an effort to stand up to their competitors by offering online banking, but it’s not truly this what they offer; they bring the possibility of doing some transactions through the web, although it shows up clearly, with situations like mine, that the undergoing processes are not “online” designed, they do things the old-fashioned way. That must be why I don’t get a receipt immediately after placing my money transfer: the girl on the phone who asked me the details for the transaction wrote them down on a paper form, then she passed it along to the in charge department whatever it is and then they do their magic with figures and bring out a receipt of it… on paper. A guy scans it and attachs the digital file to my customer account. That would take aproximately 3 days to be fulfilled.

I’m only an individual and the rent agency has been kind enough about not having a transfer receipt, and will simply wait for the money to arrive to their bank account and trust my word. But I was feeling ashamed while telling them I couldn’t give them a receipt because my bank didn’t gave me one either. What if I was a company? How was I to say a customer or a provider something like that?

This is a thumbs down for Caixa Galicia and all those banks who offer online banking just because they are supposed to, but their processes have not changed at all and keep everything as it was in the 90s. It’s a matter of honesty, after all; they call it “Virtual Office”, but you don’t get that, you just miss the benefits of going to a bank office and doing things the old-fashioned way.

Now I’m asking my friend Monica to write a complaint for Caixa Galicia, she’s better (and far more experienced) at doing that.  And I think I’m going back to ING Direct, which had always worked for me and I still don’t know why I left…