This morning I was reading up on Marine Corps Sergeant Dakota Meyer's bravery in being presented America's highest military award The Medal of Honor.  It got me thinking about the word "Service" It is embedded as part of our Industry of IT Service Management.  There are Service Catalogues, Service Delivery, Service Strategy, Service Design and on, and on, and on.  I realized that it is a word that we have completely over used to the point of it losing its core meaning.

In the fall of 1985 I first learned a defininition of the word "Service" in relation to what it means to be a United States Marine like Sergeant Meyer.  Above all else is a Service to God, Country and Corps, in that order.  Everything else falls behind it.  It was a definition that meant something.  Something worth fighting for.  I would now of course, add Family next in line, but at 17, it was simple enough as a foundation to believe, fight and if needed die for.  

Of course this is extreme, but in comparison to the liberal use of the word "Service" in our industry, it highlights the need to take a step back, define and reaffirm our committment to it.  I took a little time today to do just that and I realized that I fight daily in the name of Service.  What I didn't realize is that I fight on as many fronts as I do to defind what I find important.  I hear those in IT profess to understand what they do.  In reality, I see many more who have lost sight of why they do it.  

It is the why which defines my interpretation of Service and that which has put me in the bad graces of some for my stubborn attitude when it comes to doing things right.  A manager I once had, broke it down to me in the most simplistic manner.  He said:

"As long as you do what you feel is the right thing to do in the deepest depths of your being, you have something to defend and no one can question your justification for doing the right thing.  It may not be right, but more often than not it will be, either way no one will question your motives and that you will be able to live with."

Despite the individuals I have pissed off in my career, there have always been those above me who appreciate my passion for doing things the right way.  For not avoiding the hard work.  For not shying away from questioning leadership in defense of what I belive in, and giving 100% when those questions have been answered clearly.  

What I have found, sadly enough is that for many, more time is spent looking for short cuts and quick fixes instead of "Putting in work."  As with anything else, you are only giving anyone a half-assed solution.  If you have a clarity of purpose and a true understanding of the many types of Service you are accountable for, both personally as well as professionally, you can move ahead with a sense of purpose, pride and confidence well positioned to defend any who are looking for the short cuts and easy answers.

So to level set; in a general sense, everything and everyone that touches your life depends on you for some sort of Service delivery.  Whether it is your kids, spouse, pets, familiy members or your business cutomers or peers in all of the technology towers you interact with.  They all want a piece of what it is you have to offer.  That is your Service.  That is the responsiiblity that you have to deliver on.  

More importantly it is your committment to all of those services which will make you successsful.  It takes work and can be overwhelming at times, but understanding your role, what you have to offer with a sense of knowledge and awareness will guide you through making the right decisions, putting in the work necessary and staying focused on what is right, instead of looking for what is easy.

What are the Services you provide in all directions?  Are you aware of them all?  Do you have a sense of committment to each of them with a passion or are you just running on a treadmil for the paycheck?  If not, then you need a gut-check.

Thank you Sergeant Dakota Meyer for winning the Medal of Honor and forcing me back to my basic understanding of Service.

Semper Fi!

Sgt., Rik Jones USMC (1985 ~ 1993)

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Managing the relationship with customers is still a problem, as Dilbert shows today. The traditional "IT expert" is not the ideal partner for the customer.

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[Via]

Related posts:

1. Web Designers vs. Web Developers: Fight!
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3. New PlayStation Move Commercial Makes Fun of Wiimote, Project Natal

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via thenextweb.com

This is quite interesting from an IT Support perspective. While the old-school big boys of BMC and HP continue to stomp around the yard while circles are being run around them by the more nimble Service-now, new players are still trying to get in for a bite of the customer support pie.

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We recently talked about how startups can go about setting up a helpdesk to keep their customers well supported. Customer support is one of those areas of your business where it’s surprisingly easy to differentiate yourself — you’d be surprised to find that very few startups are really putting much of an effort in here.

It got us thinking: what will the helpdesks of the future look like? Everyone loves a good spot of future conjecture, and even if these things never come to pass, it’s fun to consider.

With that in mind, here’s are a few ideas of how the industry can change, as well as the methods by which the changes could happen. Come along. This should be fun.

Minority Tickets

You remember Minority Report, of course. That awesome computer system where Tom Cruise was able to control everything with a pair of gloves that allowed his movement to be tracked had geeks around the world drooling. With Microsoft’s Kinect, we’re a step closer to this but not quite there yet.

What’s interesting is that most helpdesk work isn’t very well suited to the large-screen format upon which a system like this would thrive. However, for a macro view, having the ability to swipe out old tickets and pick them up to move them into a different order would be welcome. Motion tracking such as what we have with the Kinect could allow this in the future, even if we’re still just jumping around in our living rooms for video games right now.

Immersive Displays

This is where the idea of motion control and true immersion could come into play. Put yourself into a position where you walk into a room, sit down at a desk and then have a 120-degree display just slightly above your eye level. It would allow you keep track of everything that’s going on, without having to address it directly. In front of you, you’d have a more traditional two-monitor setup (or perhaps a non-traditional version, something akin to virtual reality glasses).

This immersion, where you could nearly cause the world around you to disappear, would allow for a more centralized workflow. Instead of having to bounce back and forth between screens or computers, you could simply flick your hand to bring down the display of information that was relevant to you at any given time. Since we’re not speaking about physical monitors, but rather about a display that can expand or contract on demand, we’re also not limited to traditional plastic borders.

Intelligent Optimization

This is another area where I think that the entire helpdesk system could benefit. We have already seen smart-learning algorithms for Web-based content. What about one that learns the importance of a ticket by reading the words and data inside of it, effectively turning the entire process into a semantic method instead of simply first-come, first-served.

Undoubtedly there would need to be some serious work in order to make sure that things happen in the order that they should. But with learning algorithms getting “smarter” every moment, it wouldn’t be such a far stretch to imagine one that could re-order your lower-importance tickets for you, saving you time and effort.

Decentralized Process

The beauty of the system, as we’re talking about here, is that it only furthers the current trend of a decentralization. We already have employees of major corporations working from remote locations and that trend doesn’t appear to be slowing. With that remote method, studies have shown time and again that employees are happier, more productive and generally stay with a company longer.

While the technology that I’ve dreamed up here might not even exist yet, much less be affordable today, current iterations in hardware lead me to believe that it won’t take long for that to change. In the next few years, it will be cheaper, easier and continue to be more effective to have a helpdesk a few thousand miles away, staffed by the people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to work for your company.

Call it a dream list if you will, but these are some of the things I’d like to see. Have thoughts of your own? Give us your dream setup in the comments.

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Those who can't lead, manage. Those who can't manage blame others. 

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1. Don't Abuse Delegation
2. Support and Protect
3. Understand the Consequences
4. Listen and Learn
5. Champion Champions
6. Be Firm But Fair
7. Listen
8. P.O.T.S. (Part Of The Solution)
9. Teach and not lecture
10. Never forget... Its NOT all about you!

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A Scheduled Change is only a scheduled change if people know about it beforehand!

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I found an article on line that was in many ways demonstrating a revolutionary approach to Release Management. That being a truly integrated release management proof-of-concept. Box.net, the company behind the iPad application and Cloud-based service with the same name, decided to not simply propose a solution to their client, D7 Consulting, but also to demonstrate, hands on, the benefits to their product utilizing state of the art technology by providing not just the application but the hardware to run it on: iPads. In many ways, absorbing the financial risk from the hardware implementation in the short term.

In many ways this has been my point when I say that as an ITSM Professional, I need to view myself as the subject matter expert when it comes to proposing solutions to solve real-world business problems to my businesses. That is when the true business value performed by the ITSM Professional comes into play. If you are in-tune with the business you are supporting, then why not be the technology specialist who is in a unique position to discover technology solutions to real business challenges?

I think the team at Box.net have raised the bar with Application Development and Release concepts. It is not just the "Wow" factor of a new toy, but more about what can this new device or application do to enhance or enable my business. Box.net nailed it with this one.

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My experience in IT Service Management has been with large, global organizations either driven by fast moving global markets or supporting highly complex infrastructure and application sets. It is easy in these types of environments to forget the main purpose of technology support. When things break, it is usually all-hands on deck. Needless to say, it is a highly reactive environment. These types of environments suck technologist in to becoming focused solely on the technology rather than the reason for being.

In 2003, I was asked to move back into my old support team to head up the group as my old Manager had decided to resign. During my absence the team had grown substantially and morale was less than desirable. The business was growing, as was the demands placed on the team. Having cut my teeth in this environment I was very familiar with the pressures of ensuring that the business was executing on all cylinders, with as much up-time as possible 24x7. This had, and was once again, taking its toll on even the senior support analysts on the team. One of the first things I did when returning to the team was to have one-on-one sessions with each and every one of the 20 team members to determine not just what they were working on, but more importantly where their heads were at.

This was something that seemed the logical thing to do as a mid-level manager of a support team, which I likened to managing troops under my charge during my 8 years in the Marine Corps. I began every session with one simple question which guided the discussion from that point forward. It may seem like a strange question, but one vital to ask anyone in a support role:

Why are you here?

Profound in its simplicity, I was set back by the general response across the team. Most of the responses began with"I support X application," "I perform monitoring on X systems" or "I respond to user calls about broken hardware." In every case, in my mind these were all wrong answers. Of course these are the functions they perform while on the clock, but as to why they were there, I wanted to hear things like "To make sure the users can do their jobs," "Make sure we can deliver to clients," anything of that vein would have been more than welcome, but it was not what I was hearing. I asked myself why these individuals had lost touch with the basic business deliverable of not only IT, but that of the company as a whole.

To me this is often an oversight of Management lost in administrative responsibilities more driven towards demonstrating delivery to leadership instead of establishing a culture of understanding as to an individuals up-stream contribution to the business strategy and bottom-line. Without that perception of self-worth any individual will quickly loose sight. As a result, you will not get the level of individual performance by a person in technology who is clear on their purpose and contribution to the corporate mission. Take someone in Sales for example, they are very clear on their goals, deliverables, contributions and value to the business. Their approach every day is to bring in new business to raise the bottom line as well as gain a commission, if that is the value structure in place. In technology, this front-line value structure doesn't always exist to drive awareness of their contribution. For this reason, it is vital that managers keep as part of their responsibility matrix, the importance of communicating the team's contribution to the overall business delivery model to its clients and how that helps the business be more successful in relation to other competitors.

Reach out to the business and try to get your hands on the annual report information. That information is not only critical for you to understand, but ot use as a motivational tool to get everyone aligned with the business drivers. We used to love hearing this type of information and where our company sat in the market against our competitors. It became a subconscious driver to feel like we were truly part of the team. Not the IT team, but the corporate team, as a result we pushed that much harder to give the business the tools it needed to help the company compete with its competitors.

As managers, it is easy to get wrapped up in the metrics and numbers in delivering technology. Just never lose sight on the PEOPLE who deliver that technology and helping them feel as a vital part of the business, not just a tool used by the business.

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When it comes to barriers in adopting ITIL as a means of managing a technology operation efficiently, it is often said that obtaining buy in from leadership is a "must have" or the "key to success." I want to dive into that for a second with some possibly outlandish observations.

In most organizations there are usually three different layers or tiers within a technology organization; Leadership/Upper-management, Middle Management and the Operational layer. Like almost anything with three layers, the outer layers are usually firm and designed to absorb what comes at them from the outside. For leadership/upper-management their role is pretty clear. Deal with the business, budget and branding of technology. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the day-to-day operational teams. These are the lower echelon of the organization who have developed a clear understanding of their role as well; the Business, Bullets and Bullsh*t.

When it comes to any change in the way any organization operates, it is usually mandated by the top layer, and implemented at the lower layer. Where it is driven from, in any successful implementation of not just ITIL but any mission, should be at that middle layer. It is at this layer where I believe success or failure lives and I don't make this comment lightly.

Having spent 8 years in the U.S. Marine Corps and a Sergeant, I can tell you first hand that the success or failure of any unit's mission lies squarely on the shoulders of its Non-Commissioned Officer Corps. That Middle Management layer of the Military, also referred to as "the back-bone" - The Sergeants, Staff-Sergeants and Petty-Officers, is where true change is managed and effected. It is where the Orders or Goals are received, interpreted, planned for and executed.

Now I am not suggesting that every business middle management layer operate like the Military. What I am saying, is that without middle-management buy-in and acceptance, any implementation of ITIL or any other endeavor will generally fail. Often what we see is Leadership or Upper Management attends a conference about ITIL or some other framework, becomes sold on the talking points, returns with the mission to have those benefits within their own organizations. They are essentially setting the goals of the organization. In most cases, not how to achieve the goals, just that this new destination is where they want the organization to be leaving it up to middle management to sort out the delivery.

At this point is where the fear of change begins to kick in. I have been astounded to enter into organizations where many within the middle management layer had risen through the ranks in an organization where small scale process had organically grown to a point that could no longer sustain the scale of business growth. Changing the only method of operations known, strikes fear into many. Diving into a new way of thinking or operating does not always spark the passion and drive needed to move a organization into a new way of thinking. So what happens? Not a whole lot. There may be a few Overview sessions or training courses put in place, but in terms of mapping out a strategy, plan and then delivering on it proactively, there isn't the push needed. The leadership needed is stonewalled by the fear of change.

Interestingly enough, it is the operational layer that after a couple of these training or overview sessions sees the benefit of adopting a new way of operating, even if it means a certain amount of pain to get to a place where fewer things break, service is delivered faster and their daily lives move from fighting fires and being door-stops to being more proactive in finding solutions to not only make their own lives easier, but also contribute to moving the organization forward.

If you do not address the resistance of adoption at that middle management layer, you will end up with a dysfunctional and sometimes hostile environment of change. Deadlines to leadership are not management, then at the last minute it becomes another exercise in jumping through hoops at the operational layer which breeds contempt and a lack of respect for what appears to be mis-management of the organization as a whole. In-turn there is a drop in morale and, well everyone loads into the hand-basket for the trip to hell.

The self-fulfilling prophecy of failure is the responsibility of middle management. To be fair, I am not referring to all individuals in middle management, you do have your champions. The problem is, these individuals are not always put into a position to drive the movement forward. These are the believers, the visionaries, the ones who "get it." Empowering them is the key. Placing them in positions that are either directly backed by leadership with authority or given the illusion of authority will go a long way to silence the resistors in the organization.

I have to admit that I have little tolerance for those who choose to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution; call it the Sergeant in me. On the up-side however, in my position to implement two key ITIL processes I have developed the unique ability to remain 'at-ease' when I hear "Yea we know it is supposed to be like that and we will get there, just not now because it has never been done that way." Back in the day, those would have been words which called for an immediate blanket party to sort the situation out. Ooh Rah!

So my advice is this for anyone in a leadership/Upper-management position thinking about implementing ITIL or any other change that results in a significant thought process shift for the organization; Find your motivators, your proactive, open-minded individuals up front. Develop a program outside of any specific department or team, empower them, supply them with the tools and training necessary to succeed, communicate your support for them to the Organization then turn them loose and get out the way. You may be surprised how much can get done.

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The word of the day boys and girls is "INVESTMENT." In the implementation of an ITSM strategy for an organization, it always seems to be that the initial strategy by technology leadership is to look at investment focused on bringing in external resources. I would argue that maybe this is not the single smartest approach. Now, I am not implying that the role of a consultant is without value or merit. What I am saying is that outsourcing the implementation of such a large shift of culture and process is not something that can fairly be dropped on a consultant or two and expect them to wave their wands as if they have an MBA from Hogwarts Institute of Technology. This is usually quite a challenging endeavor to expect someone from outside an organization to come in and change to a culture they don't necessarily understand or are not willing to embrace that change.

In my own experience I have heard rumblings within an organization of many staffers viewing ITIL as leadership's attempt at trying out the latest "buzz-word" framework or attempting to force it down the throats of the IT staff who have seen these types of initiatives fail in the past. In these types of environments, the US vs. THEM mentality combined with a lack of understanding by the organization as a whole form a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

Why is it then, that in other industries, membership into these organizations is accepted if not required. Auditors, CPAs, Lawyers, Doctors and the list could go on. But in Technology there is still the legacy belief in many organizations, more prevalent in the larger ones, that the in-house experience and knowledge pool can achieve anything that will improve the organization as a whole. After all, who knows the organization better, right? Wrong.

The problem is that as with or any organic entity which grows or evolves, it brings with it naturally that which it has learned before. If that base of knowledge is mis-management, inefficiency and dysfunction, then it will only become compounded as it grows. I call it my IT Evolutionary Theory. IT spawns out of an immediate need to conduct business, to that which grows quickly as work arounds are put in place to give the appearance of functionality. Then there is the survival mode where you begin to see the failures in technology due to a lack of awareness early on to put in place structured process designed for growth. You have now entered what I affectionately refer to as the "Wild-West." Any and everything goes in keeping the business up and running.

It is usually at this point where the business tolerance for failure reaches its limits. IT leadership is given the ultimatum to fix it, or be gone. In comes the interest Industry Frameworks! Often viewed as the silver bullet to make everything better again based on white papers, magazines or some presentation seen by senior leadership. However, as previously mentioned the organization at this point is so rooted in a culture of disorganization and inefficiency that finding anyone who actually understands how to begin to dig out of the mess is near to impossible. Leaderships answer? QUEUE THE CONSULTANTS!

Now, rewinding things a bit. What if, early on in the evolutionary chain, IT management encouraged membership in industry organizations like HDI or the ITSMf? Better yet, what if these companies spent the relatively minimal amount of funding to become corporate members, allowing staff to attended regular meetings and annual conferences? The upside is not often analyzed from the top down. What these individuals get from networking while attending monthly meetings, conferences, seminars and training events brings back into the organization a wealth of knowledge BEFORE things get too far gone. Proactive involvement from the ground up begins to take place, the culture itself evolves, far eclipsing anything a consultant can bring to the table during the "zero hour" knee-jerk make-or-break point. This is where a relatively minor investment over time in the very fabric of an organization can save a large investment to un-fluck a cluster.

Like any knowledge base, there is wealth in the sheer numbers of individuals who contribute content to it. These Industry forums are a gold-mine of information, experience and reassurance to any organization looking to improve or enhance their overall IT operation. So, note to Technology leadership... continue to provide relevant training, but more importantly, encourage and support organizational membership in external industry organizations and events. The return on THAT investment goes much farther than believing that you can manage evolution in a bubble. In most cases you already employ those "consultants" you need as you evolve. Give them the opportunity to champion growth and stability through supporting them. Who knows, they may just surprise you and save you a lot of pain and revenue in the long run.

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There are mainly two core elements to technology: infrastructure and development. The deployment of these elements and understanding how they are leveraged together is key to any successful organization. Each contains various flavors of implementation that are fundamentally designed to service the business mission. Some provide competitive advantages while others are generally designed to keep the plant operating and are not unique to a specific corporate business process.

Infrastructure is the true foundation upon which all technology rides. In many ways it is not unlike the plumbing, electric, foundation and framing of a house. It is the base that technology depends on to exist. For a start-up, simply getting the business off of the ground distracts from the longer term vision for the company. A technology trap many fall into.
As with a home, designing the right infrastructure will make or break how your technology evolves to meet the business needs both in the immediate and long term. Imagine designing and building a two bedroom home for a newly married couple. It suits their immediate need in starting their new life together. But what happens four years later when they are planning on their second child? That two bedroom begins to not seem as appealing as it once did; a true problem of capacity planning.

Plan, design and build for growth. If you don’t get these right, chances are the results will be both painful as well as costly. Infrastructure however, has an image problem. The power of infrastructure lies not with what the business or end users can see, touch or experience. Because of this, it is often overlooked in terms of investment. This fault is usually what bites most businesses in the ass when system failures begin to occur.

Development on the other hand, is usually the most visible and highly touted. It is these products that ride on the users desktop and provide the entry point to business functionality needed to complete the corporate mission. Whether that development is provided internally, via large commercial software houses or 3rd party vendors, the role is clear: Deliver core business process functionality.

It is assumed, although not always the case, that developers understand the business processes and are able to work it into their design to develop effective solutions. Internal development takes that concept even further as these groups exist within the company to provide custom solutions that deliver a presumed competitive advantage within a specific industry. For those companies who can afford this option, the value is clear as it can provide an edge over competitors in the never ending fight for market share. More importantly, it comes down to control. Proprietary applications that may contain functionality based on processes developed from within an organization can leverage the business knowledge in a way that drives development into very specific directions. The disadvantage with any software application regardless of who develops it, is that like Infrastructure, when it fails, there is a direct impact to business.

In the new-world order of Technology, there is a third element to IT which, like the Infrastructure, goes relatively unnoticed until something breaks. This is not software, nor it is hardware, let’s call it what it is; People. Yes, people run the infrastructure and people write code, but then there is Jack O. All-trades. The individual who knows a lot about infrastructure and development, yet also has that special skill to be able to communicate with the customer. Jack is not a Systems Administrator, nor a C# or C++ coder. Nope, this individual knows about Command Windows, X-Terms, Consoles, Windows Scripting Host, SQL Queries, HTML and Java development, tools of the trade. Jack knows how to run IP Config on a Laptop and understand what DNS servers it is connecting to, while running a shell script to recursively remove files from at TMP directory.

More importantly, Jack knows how to explain to the customer that their computer isn’t connecting to the web because when they booted their machine up, it did not pick up a new IP address or DNS settings from the DHCP servers which might be due to a faulty Ethernet cable, port, DHCP isn’t configured or the LAN may just be down. No, Jack will simply say “Let me take a look and see what I can do to get you up and running again.” Take a second or two to run IP Config /all to check under the hood, discover that all network connections appear in order, see’s the lights on the Ethernet port flashing, confirming network connectivity; run IPConfig /release + IPConfig /renew, Ping a few hosts or websites and viola~! Turning back to the user, simply says “There you go, back up and running. If you have any more problems, please let us know and we’ll get right on it.” Jack is on his way again.

This is an example of customer service and support skills in action, leveraging the basic tools of the trade that go unrecognized as a valid technology field in it’s own right. Of course this was a very basic example which does go much deeper than that in terms of ensuring that business services and users are not impacted by infrastructure or development system failures. It is not some individual with English as a second language behind a desk reading from a script calling themselves IT Support (I’m sure I will have more to write about in that space.) I am referring to that undervalued and overlooked position on the front lines of technology, leveraged as a critical element to an effectively run technology environment. This group of individuals needs to be recognized as the not just a “IT guy/gal”, but that bridge which binds a business to its technology.

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To compare a "Core" technologist to that of a general technologist will always garner the contempt between various IT fields. My background is in support for example. I love technology and make every attempt to learn about the technology behind the products I have supported. Now, further on in my career as an Incident, Problem and Crisis Manager, I have to know about all areas of the products and services that IT delivers to the Business, including the likes of Storage, Database, Applications and Networking/Voice. I am not a specialist any any of these core technologies, but I am a GEEK for driving to understand them and how they work together to enhance our deliveries to the business.

Having said that, it is also one of many roles which requires soft-skills in dealing with core technologists, leadership on both the IT and Business side, I would probably not be employed if I didn't learn to interact and maneuver around the politics and personalities at all levels, in getting anything done in IT. So to say there is a back-lash or that I am a weenie for possessing soft-skills is somewhat an oversight as to how Technology needs to function in the modern business environment regardless of industry.

In short; all roles in Technology play their part in delivering on a business strategy. If we are failing in anything it is not ensuring that technologists "core" or otherwise do not think of themselves as better than any other technologist and that each requires different skills to serve a higher purpose. The cog in the machine if you will. Maybe then we can begin to leverage these different skill-sets instead of further instigating a "who's better than who" battle in IT. This is no longer the 1980's.

To compare a "Core" technologist to that of a general technologist will always garner the contempt between various IT fields. My background is in support for example. I love technology and make every attempt to learn about the technology behind the products I have supported. Now, further on in my career as an Incident, Problem and Crisis Manager, I have to know about all areas of the products and services that IT delivers to the Business, including the likes of Storage, Database, Applications and Networking/Voice. I am not a specialist any any of these core technologies, but I am a GEEK for driving to understand them and how they work together to enhance our deliveries to the business.

Having said that, it is also one of many roles which requires soft-skills in dealing with core technologists, leadership on both the IT and Business side, I would probably not be employed if I didn't learn to interact and maneuver around the politics and personalities at all levels, in getting anything done in IT. So to say there is a back-lash or that I am a weenie for possessing soft-skills is somewhat an oversight as to how Technology needs to function in the modern business environment regardless of industry.

In short; all roles in Technology play their part in delivering on a business strategy. If we are failing in anything it is not ensuring that technologists "core" or otherwise do not think of themselves as better than any other technologist and that each requires different skills to serve a higher purpose. The cog in the machine if you will. Maybe then we can begin to leverage these different skill-sets instead of further instigating a "who's better than who" battle in IT. This is no longer the 1980's.

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Service and Support, long the beaten down step-child of any industry, has taken no more public abuse and ridicule than in the world of Technology. In today's modern internet driven society, the presumed "elite" are those who can write code, de-tangle the inner workings of a UNIX kernel, design and manage relational databases or architect a global WAN. However, when all hell breaks loose with those core technologies, who is that one person responding to a business user to take the bullet for the failure? It is the Service Professional who is dispatched to take up the challenge of facing the end user impacted by the failure.

By no fault of the industry as a whole, the relatively young business of technology has been one designed to enable the users as quickly as possible to provide the business with a technological advantage over its competition. Over the years this has meant a rapid deployment mentality which translated to throwing out all sorts of technology solutions with little thought being given to how that technology would be supported after it is in place. The result of which has been an environment cultivating a culture of reactivity.

The goal of these writings is not to address the importance of technology nor the business as the concept of Service can be applied across any industry or technology, but rather the service minded professional that is long overdue in being recognized for their contribution to every industry. The IT Service Profession however, is unique. It is a field that many feel can be performed by any person with a deeper than average interest in technology. "Do you have an email account?" "Yes." "You're hired."

What is being realized as of late is that the Service-minded individual is one that not simply understands technology, but has a unique view of how it should be implemented in a manner that may be more effective than one of the core technologist or the pure business user.

A cultural shift is in the works within most technology dependent businesses today. The ability to stop viewing technology as purely a body of development and engineering elements, but also that of a third piece, which is a people driven function outside of those core roles. We all know technology breaks. It is the management of those breaks through to the restoration of business processes in which the true value player can be found..... The IT Service & Support Professional.

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