ITSM Uncovered

I'm not sure why it is a general human trait to want to be satisfied with chaos. What I mean by that is in the world of technology there needs to be a certain state of order to be effective. It is for this reason that certain "Industry Standards" have been develop based on best practice.

Take for example the basic premise that the entire existence of technology is to serve the user. Somehow that concept becomes lost on those who work in technology. As long as I have been doing support, I still understand that no matter what happens, it isn't about protecting mistakes made by individuals, nor is it about throwing people who make mistakes under a bus. It is simply about making sure that the products or services that we in technology provide are available to those who make a living using it.

In order to do this, it has been my experience that you need to put in place guardrails of sorts to ensure that no matter what side of the road you travel down to get to to your destination, you are at least not going to run off of the road completely. These guardrails are the processes and policies that are developed and implemented to ensure that all is operating and being measured within a set of standards.

It is an evolutionary thing really, organizations start out small. There is no real level of complexity that demands standards, so you do what it takes to get the job done. This is the "Wild West" phase of organizational growth. At some point however, you do reach critical mass where simply doing "whatever it takes" creates more problems than it solves. The mentality is to get it to market and if something breaks, just fix it and push on.

At this point is when a serious assessment needs to be made on whether or not it is a one-off issue or a growing state of mind that needs to be adjusted or reigned in with some structure. The general perception is that there is a right way or a wrong way to do things. I would argue that there is a single way to do things. A way that is dictated by several things. The first is the tolerance of the technology deployed to adapt, the other is the tolerance of the business to accept failure from its technology.

The bigger an organization gets the less tolerance for failure will be accepted. I believe it is the mark of a good technology leader to see this coming and put controls in place to ensure that everything begins to melt down at one time. It is a serious cultural change in the way technology organizations operate.

Take for example, a service like Twitter. For years, it worked. It drew crowds. Then it began to hit critical mass and the infamous "Fail Whale" began to appear more frequently. So much so that capacity outages became almost a daily occurrence. Not having been a fly on the walls of twitter-ville, I can't say that anyone had the controls in place to see this coming. To predict when things were due to break before they actually broke. From a customer point of view, all I knew what that the uproar from the twitter community was huge. Many began to leave for other services, giving up on twitter completely.

Apply the service provider/customer model to any business and you can see where managing technology effectively becomes a higher priority than just making it through another day with a few outages. At the end of the day it is about revenue and market share. When technology understands its true contribution to this model will we then begin to see more investment in controls, governance and risk management.

These are not traditional hands on development or system administration roles, and that is probably the reason why technology departments haven’t embraced the concept of managing technology as a business. Most senior management has grown up in the very chaotic environment that they now struggle to manage. There is no experiential growth that can get them to understand the importance of running technology as a business.

The most effective leader is one who abandons "the way it has always been done" and begins to look to the industry to provide the answers needed for stability and growth. Once that happens, can the chaos begin to be managed into something which supports growth and stability in any organization.

As with civilizations evolution can seem like a daunting task to some willing to take on the challenge of growth. This is no different in the enterprise. Any major corporation started from some seedling of a company. As such every aspect of the organization evolved. Whether it be accounting, HR or the manufacturing line, it all grows, changes and adapts to the scale at which the company grows. The same could be said for Technology within that company. The interesting thing is that this growth and evolution occurs without anyone realizing; that is, until it is too late.

I recently left a global enterprise organization after 9 years and even in that short span of time, relatively speaking, I witness a substantial amount of growth and towards the end was faced with trying to figure out how we ended up in the technological mess we did. I likened it to the home entertainment system that evolves over time. At first there are a few components and wires. As more is added so to are more wires. One day one of the components breaks and needs to be replaced as you sit bewildered looking at a spaghetti mess of wires that you know deep inside will require a complete tear down and re-wire.

Most organizations hit this wall as well. It is however, the fear of tearing everything apart to make it better that proves to be the hurdle that in some cases can be very difficult to comprehend if not take on. It is a technological fear by most to abandon the way "it has always been done" for a new way of looking at things.

This is my latest challenge having joined a company that is has reached that point of maturity that demands something be done in order for growth to continue. More importantly it has reached that point where instability begins to creep in and become unmanageable. There are frameworks that abound fully aware of this conundrum and provide a roadmap on how to approach these challenges. The interesting thing is that while the fundamentals are predominantly common sense, the resistance that is put up to the change is incredible.

This makes my work so much more interesting. I used to pride myself on being a "Jack-of-all-trades" within the realm of technology. There was one non-techonogical skill however that was not part of the deal. One which I carried with me from my days as a broadcaster. That is the ability to communicate. The thing is, management is always open to advancement and changing an environment for the better. I mean why wouldn't they, the don't have to do the bulk of the work but really like to take the majority of the credit when all is said and done. So what I have seen happen is that the ITSM buzzwords have crept into the organization, management has sampled the kool-aid, bought some and begun serving it up to the staff with no clear understanding of what it will take to get the job done.

Then I walk into a very open, yet apprehensive crowd introducing them to all sorts of new terminology, concepts, ways of looking at incident management not to mention the connections between Change, Configuration and Capacity Management. But these are all taken with a grain of salt until practical examples are provided to demonstrate the gaps in the existing models. What happens next is pure 100% human nature. Defensiveness.

Phrases like "That will never work here"; "We'll never be able to get that pushed through" begging to rise up against the effort. Good thing for me I am pretty much an evangelist. More importantly I am driven to making this work because I know it can. So for anyone hoping to introduce some form of ITSM into an organization that has been around for a while, take note... be prepared for the negativity. The nay-sayers will be gunning for you. Check your notes, your facts and be prepared to take on any and all challengers. Just make sure you do it in a way that points out the benefit AFTER you show them the errors of their ways.