Important Factors For ITIL Implementation
In the IT Service Management arena, many IT managers want to implement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), and it is important for them to understand a couple of very important factors.
- The most important factor is having committed, dedicated, and well trained process owners.
You will need somebody who is ultimately responsible for it’s success and who can dedicate the time and focus to drive it and to make sure it actually happens if you want to have a successful Incident Management process which is under continuous improvement, A lot of organizations make one of the following mistakes:
- No process owner is dedicated to drive a particular process.
Other reactive tasks are deemed more important than unnessary red-tape type operations such as ITIL.
- A classic mistake is to have more than one process owner for a particular process. The idea of ITIL is to have a single consistent process throughout the organization and having multiple process owners makes this difficult to achieve. If there is more than one owner, how will the responsibility be determined? Many companies who have successfully implemented ITIL into their operations will have only one process owner throughout the company. This ensures that the process is consistent throughout all divisions and helps the break down barriers between departments and divisions.
Providing dedicated resources to teh process owners can be an issue for many companies. Often, a process owner can have many tasks, with the process being only one of many things he must do for the company. As long as that other role is not of a reactive firefighting nature. One individual can take responsibility for more than one process. It would be beneficial if these processes are be of similar focus. Many times it is not unusual, for one individual to share the Change, Configuration and Release roles. I believe in a large corporate these roles should be fulfilled by dedicated people, and companies who does not fill these roles are not serious enough about ITIL and are most probably lacking the management commitment.
Management commitment is the second and probably most critical factor.
If you are responsible for an ITIL implementation, and don't want it to just become another failed IT project, make sure you have commitment from upper management.
And management commitment does not mean, "the manager says his committed". The manager must continuously show commitment to ITIL. This requires empowering staff through such methods as professional training, tools, demanding the right reports and taking action. Managing by means of ITIL and appointing the right people in the right roles is also crucial.
Kotter's 8 steps to organizational change is actually a good guideline for top management to follow.
Probably the most important success factor for ITIL is management commitment, although this is also probably the most difficult to obtain. Many ITIL implementations fail and become money pits for this very reason.
There are a lot of IT managers who are under the misconception that ITIL is a silver bullet to fix all their problems. They think they can just install ITIL (almost like installing a new technology) and everything will be OK. Many managers need to understand is that ITIL is a a culture change as well as a major organizational change. Managers have to understand that they must focus on the customer as well as the technology.
Because ITIL is usually seen as just an internal IT department endeavor, it may only achieve a low management commitment. It must always be born in mind that ITIL is just a methodology for improving IT, and that it is not the sole or primary focus of the business.
To overcome this, an ITIL project should become a business requirement and commitment is needed from all the way to the top, from the CEO.
