ITIL Business Requirements
There are two very important factors which have to be understood for a successful implementation of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL).
- The first factor is to have dedicated, trained and committed process owners.
A successful Incident Management process, which icontinues to show improvement, will require an individual who is takes responsibility for it’s success, and who can make sure it actually happens. Included in the mistakes made by many organistaions are:-
- There is not a process owner dedicate to driving the process forward.
There is a process owner, but he or she is bogged down in day to day reactive activities or other "more important" business-driven projects and thus have no time for unnecessary "red tape" like ITIL.
- There are more than one process owner for a specific process. The idea of ITIL is to have a single consistent process throughout the organization and having two head cooks in this "process kitchen" is sure to mess up the cake. If there is more than one owner, who will ultimately be responsible? Major companies who have successfully implemented ITIL have only one process owner throughout the company, even if there are numerous divisions spread across the globe. This ensures that the process is consistent everywhere within the company. and consolidates co-operation 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. If this role is not too time-consuming, then this may not be an issue. The same person can also be made responsible for more than one process. Although these processes should be of similar focus. In small companies, the Change, Configuration and Release roles can be shared by one person. 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, make sure you have commitment from the top; otherwise ITIL might just become another failed IT project throwing time and money down the drain.
And management commitment does not mean, "the manager says his committed". The manager must walk and talk ITIL and continuously show his commitment. This requires empowering staff through such methods as professional training, tools, demanding the right reports and taking action. Additionally it requires the appointing of the right people in the right roles and managing by means of ITIL.
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. This is the reason why a lot of ITIL implementations fail.
There are a lot of IT managers who are under the misconception that ITIL is a silver bullet to fix all their problems. Many believe everything will be OK if they just install ITIL and don;t appreciate that there is more to ITIL than this. Many managers need to understand is that ITIL is a a culture change as well as a major organizational change. We used to focus only on technology, but now we have to focus on the customer.
Because ITIL is not a direct requirement from the business, it can someties have a low management commitment, especially if it is seen as just an internal IT department endeavor. It must be remembered that ITIL is not the sole focus of the business and is merely a methodology for improving the IT aspects for the business.
This is why an ITIL project requires committment from the top and should become a business requirement.
