Agile ITSM

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.” – Yogi Berra.

IT organizations that successfully implement ITSM processes eventually achieve three different levels of capabilities; the first level achieves infrastructure and process stability and concerns itself with gaining control of the reactive processes of incident and problem management and the associated functional areas and the operational process areas of event, fulfillment and access management. The second level is optimization, or the capability to exert physical control over the infrastructure; configuration, change, release and deployment management. The third level is the capability to continually improve services and processes and includes service level, capacity, availability and continuity management.  A conventional approach to implementing all of these processes often fails to take into consideration the culture of the organization and its ability to internalize the structure, discipline and overall rigor it takes to follow a “waterfall” implementation approach. Often an IT organization’s culture is not prepared to adapt to a formal or “process-oriented approach to the delivery of IT services. An alternative method is needed to start the cultural change that will enable the IT organization to achieve the required capabilities as well as organizational maturity to become a service provider.  For IT an organization trying to adopt and implement ITSM processes, one alternative to a conventional “waterfall” approach is the use of “agile” methods, adapted to ITSM process design and implementation.

Read the article over at ITSM Solutions here.