Pragmatism plays a vital role in ITIL implementation

UK organisations are facing a major IT challenge. Most recognise the need to improve the quality of IT service delivery to support business needs and increase IT value. Yet they are fearful of the high cost projects associated with the implementation of robust processes.

The knock-on effect of this reluctance to invest in IT service management is that, according to a recent survey commissioned by Partners in IT and conducted by Dynamic Markets, 74 per cent of non-IT business managers spend on average 12 per cent of their time every week firefighting problems caused by IT systems.
While there is some board-level awareness of the benefits that can be generated through the adoption of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), many organisations have real concerns about its implementation.

One of the main reasons for these concerns is that only a few organisations have been prepared to fund the consultancy-led, 12-month process definition projects designed to meet ITIL’s objective of matching process exactly to business needs.
Rather than tailor every process from scratch, by adopting a best practice ITIL methodology, organisations can attain a complete best practice solution within months.

This pragmatic approach makes use of a decade of ITIL expertise, and provides processes to address the vast majority of service management requirements. The methodology adopted should enable processes to be published to the corporate intranet to ensure greater visibility than the typical paper-based ITIL process documents created by many consultancies.

As organisations increasingly look for a faster route to attaining ITIL processes, there is a growing awareness of the value of such best practice methodology approaches.

Good consultancies will deliver ITIL foundation training to ensure users understand the new common language. They will also explain the value of the new processes to all relevant areas. Yet even the most ardent ITIL proponent will fail to comply with the new procedures when it is seen as unnecessary bureaucracy.

The only way to enforce ITIL processes is to build them into a robust service management tool.

By opting instead for a methodology integrated with a service management tool configured to support processes out of the box, organisations bypass a lot of complexity and confusion. An out-of-the-box version that is automatically configured to support the ITIL processes is far simpler to implement and still retains business relevance.

Furthermore, adopting a methodology that forces users to follow the specific requirements of each process is vital to success. It is simply not possible to bypass the process and record accurate, consistent data at all times.

Strong processes and user enforcement must be supported by commitment from IT management. While a best practice methodology cuts down implementation, failure to achieve user enforcement will compromise the value of the ITIL investment.

Andy Richardson is process consulting director at Partners in IT. BCS offers a range of examinations in service management, including all levels of ITIL.