One of my previous entries - the misuse of computers? - has sparked off lots of comments recently  so I thought I would write another one in the same vein.

I know I've been very quiet on the blogging front, and frankly that is due to the following:

 

What one customer sees as a service, another might see as a product.  As an example, a mobile phone company provides a phone, which could be seen by the customer as a product which allows them to make calls and send/receive text messages, and provides various other capabilities.  It could be regarded as a service - being able to make phone calls etc. which just happens to include the supply of a phone handset in order to use the service.  Whether the customer sees it as a Product or Service is subjective, and probably doesn't really matter all that much.  From a customer's perspective, it's what the Product or Service does for them, the value it provides, which is important.  The mobile phone Product or Service allows them to make calls and other tasks - the value is in achieving the outcome, not in buying the product or service.  If the customer didn't have the need, they probably wouldn't be buying.

 

Our industry can be guilty of spending too much time on semantics  - is it an 'incident', or should we call it something else?  There are an embarrassingly  large number of examples.

 

Surely any organization who wants to be successful, realizes the necessity for understanding this customer-centric perspective.  This awareness is absolutely necessary if we hope to design and deliver successful products and services.  Regardless of whether we're a commercial organization, charity, not-for-profit, public sector or private, isn't this completely critical?

 

People have different views, and why should we have the right to dictate how people should think, or the language they use?  I would argue this is a distraction, and not massively important.  The main point is that a good service provider, or any of us who believe they have any element of service management in what we do, should do everything we can to understand what the customer wants or needs to achieve, and how what we do makes that happen - that's what makes it a valuable service.

On Monday, Feb 20th @ 1:30PM, Bill Keyworth and I will be presenting the results of the 2011 BSM Benchmark study at the Pink Elephant IT Service Management and Expo in Las Vegas.

An abstract for the session can be viewed here.

We have a booth at the event and hope to engage attendees in a conversation about their BSM maturity, challenges and plans.

We also intend to interview a few end users and will be on the lookout for new announcements that specifically support better alignment between IT and the business.

Hope to see you there!

The first series of questions in the 2011 BSM Maturity Benchmark survey focused on evaluating BSM maturity.  The good news is there is growing clarity re: the definition/purpose of Business Service Management with movement away from the narrow focus on Application Performance and Running-IT-as-a-Business to a measurable activity for aligning IT with business goals.  The bad news is the noticeable gap identified by respondents between the perceived maturity of the "business" and the abilities of IT to support rapidly changing business needs.

There was almost universal agreement that technology is no longer an option but a critical requirement for business survival and growth ...particularly as it relates to customer relationships, profit margins, revenue growth, competitive advantage, product differentiation and time to market.  Three of the more interesting dichotomies of the benchmark related to:

1.      83% of business respondents affirmed that "technology provides us with a unique, sustained competitive advantage" while the IT view was significantly lower at 30%.    

2.      84% of business participants agreed that technology was used by their company "to create product and service leadership in our industry" while the IT view came in at 55%. 

3.      Only 42% of business users supported the idea that the company limited "the use of technology to basic business functions" while the IT view was much higher at 67%.

Why this discrepancy between the business and IT views?  Is it that business has a better perspective of how technology actually impacts business initiatives?  Is it that IT better understands what technology "could" do for the business, but isn't?   Fortunately these questions are explored in greater detail in subsequent sections of the 2011 BSM Maturity Benchmark report.  Click here to obtain a copy.

My PC is about to give up the ghost - it keeps dying and flashes its little orange light forlornly like a lost waif. I can get it going again by taking it apart, fiddling with the battery and other bits and swearing at it (the latter actually works best). However, I've decided enough is enough and time to buy a new one, which will, of course, be Windows 7 (current one is XP).

We are delighted to announce the availability of the 2011 Business Service Management Benchmark Report.
 
The survey, which was conducted in the first half of this year, measures the maturity of BSM initiatives industry-wide. The report provides unique insight into the working relationship between IT and their business counterparts, across departments and roles. It measures the effectiveness of IT service support and identifies the current use and planned adoption of ITIL v2 and v3.
 
We believe you will find the benchmark report both intriguing and insightful.
 
A few key take-a-ways from the benchmark report include:

• Both Business and IT personnel are approaching consensus on the high-level definition of Business Service Management

• Businesses are maturing at a higher rate than IT and, as such, IT is struggling to keep pace with the business

• There remains a significant "information" gap between business and IT regarding how technology could, or should be leveraged to support business growth and competitive differentiation

• Nearly half of enterprises we surveyed have achieved fairly effective alignment with their business counterparts and are meeting expectations

• Too many IT shops are in danger of being marginalized as the lack of investment in IT leads to less innovation and IT services that are inadequate to satisfy the longer term needs of the business

Click <here> to download the final report.

This quote by Audrey Rasmussen of Ptak/Noel and Associates does a nice job summing up the report.

"As is typical for major transformations such as BSM, progress never seems fast enough and accurately gauging progress is a continual challenge.  This BSM Maturity benchmark study provides a view of the current "state of BSM", giving BSM practitioners perspectives on their own "state of BSM" and how it compares with other BSM initiatives, as well as a benchmark to measure their progress."

Please don't hesitate to comment on the study in the BSMReview blog or send us e-mail at info@bsmreview.org.

Well, life has certainly been a bit different recently. I will ignore the week spent feeling half-dead as we caught a stomach bug, and talk about the more interesting parts of life.

Comments by Bill Moran and Rich Ptak

A little 'off-topic' from BSM per se, put we think it's worth a look at what's happening as Larry Ellison and his Oracle team try to move from software giant to full system solution provider.

The recently announced 5% drop in Oracle's HW revenues (continuing a drop that began with the Sun acquisition) once again casts doubts on its future as a hardware vendor. Before acquiring Sun, Oracle claimed the hardware division would be profitable in a very short time. We're still waiting.

 

Oracle executives (Safra Catz and Mark Hurd) insist the drop is a result of efforts to increase the profitability and margin in hardware sales. To be honest, the margins did improve. And, Ellison continues to insist they will make no attempt to hang onto unprofitable business segments - hence, his comments about exiting the high-volume x86 server market. (Ellison's stated goal is the get operating margins to around 46% where it was before the Sun acquisition. This is up from the last reported 42 %.)

 

These comments are consistent with what you would expect from executives in the midst of trying to execute a turn-around in a very tough market. None of the statements are a surprise. None appear outrageous. Vendors unwilling to surrender a costly, barely profitable attachment to a hardware platform or even a software product - tend to end up at the side of the road. Turning away customers, deteriorating sales numbers are not obviously great strategies for the long term. Let's see how this might play out.

 

In our view, once customers begin to hold back on their purchases of hardware (as they tend to do when the platform future appears shaky); the downward trend is likely to continue and expand. At the very least, until the customer perception of the prospects for the hardware division turns positive. This holds doubly true when a company, like Oracle, is moving into a totally new market space. There's uncertainty in spades when a software company attempts to become a full service solution vendor, no matter what the quality of new executives or past performance. The problem is compounded when the acquired company seemed to be having problems prior to its purchase. No one wants to invest in dead-end hardware, which is why it is most companies avoid talking of 'end-of-life' until the replacement product is available and accepted.

 

In the case of Oracle/Sun such a change in perspective will take time. It's not good when customers start publicly raising questions about the future of SPARC/Solaris. The risk increases when the platform was positioned as THE critical technology for the division. Restoring confidence will take time and money.

Oracle will have to demonstrate its commitment and willingness to make the necessary investment to restore confidence in SPARC with a detailed roadmap of its future. In concert, Oracle has to execute a credible and successful campaign to increase SPARC penetration and position not simply as a place holder for Exadata-like appliances.

 

Yes, Exadata is x86-based running Linux. But, it is a clear winner for Oracle today, with a promising future. That makes Exadata a strategic platform. The question that follows is: can Oracle be a hardware powerhouse without SPARC? We believe they need SPARC, IF they are to deliver to Larry's vision of offering a system with a fully integrated stack. The question then becomes can Oracle afford a dual-platform strategy? And, will Oracle be able to convince customers of the validity of their commitment to a multi-platform solution as other vendors have done? Both questions are quite reasonable and must be convincingly answered by Oracle.

 

When customers are convinced of the commitment and the success at execution, then they will reevaluate SPARC as a solution. We expect this process will take some time and see no obvious way to short circuit or jump start the process. Oracle needs to make a major SPARC announcement this year. (Larry Ellison announced the intention to do that at Oracle Open World this fall.) It remains to be seen how its performance improvements compare to competitor products from IBM and others. Assuming ORACLE can pull all these things together, it is possible that some time in 2012, the prospects for Sun's success will begin a recognizable turn around.

Companies that pay attention to emerging trends and adapt quickly are most likely to succeed, while laggards suffer the consequences of latecomers and miss business opportunities. The DevOps movement is one of these emerging trends that companies should be taking seriously despite numerous failures by vendors to jump start this area in the past. However, in our opinion, DevOps appears to already be taking root this time and for several very good reasons.

Why is it different this time?

The impermeable wall between IT development and operations is legendary. Despite numerous past efforts to encourage development and operations organizations to work together, "the wall" still exists in most IT organizations today. With this historical record of failure, is the current DevOps movement also doomed to inevitable failure? As an industry watcher who witnessed the past failed attempts to breach the wall, we believe there is something very different about today's DevOps movement that sets it up for potential success.

Past efforts were driven primarily by vendors who were trying to create a market for selling more software. Development, operations teams and their leaders were less than enthusiastic when vendors presented them with weak value propositions, telling them that development and operations teams "should" collaborate, and it was a good thing to do. It's no wonder that IT organizations chose to invest in other areas with more pressing needs, and left the wall between development and operations still standing.
 

So what's different about today's DevOps movement? One major difference is a combination of driving forces that reinforce the need for today's DevOps movement, which present strong and compelling reasons for both development and operations to work together. The main driving force comes from business leaders faced with the need to innovate and respond quickly to increasing competitive pressures. This, in turn, puts increased pressure on IT development and operations teams to deliver new services more quickly.

As a result of the changing business needs, development teams are feeling increasing pressure to create new, innovative solutions rapidly and to respond quickly to changing requirements. This is one of the reasons why development organizations are beginning to adopt Agile development methods, which increase the speed and velocity of software development and changes. It also shortens the development cycle. The velocity of software changes that must be deployed into production pose serious challenges for development and operational hand-off processes that are manual and ill-equipped to handle the frequency of new software releases. 

On the other side of "The Wall", businesses are also exerting pressure on IT operations teams to deploy new, innovative solutions and respond quickly to business needs. This is in addition to meeting existing high expectations that applications run smoothly, and are always available. This further challenges the delicate balancing act for Business Service Management, speeding innovation delivery while maintaining stability and minimizing risk to business services.

So operations and development teams are looking to cloud computing as one alternative for fast delivery of infrastructure and application deployment. Many IT operations teams are already in the process of doing the necessary leg work for cloud computing, which requires standardization, processes, and automation. This preparation work will also help move DevOps initiatives forward because manual deployment methods that worked for waterfall development schedules, with well-spaced periodic deployments, will fail to keep up with the constant and rapid arrival of agile software updates.

Telltale Cracks in "The Wall"

Cracks already appear in "The Wall", which may be a harbinger of success for the current DevOps' movement. Several IT organizations have deployed their first cloud initiatives in development test environment deployment. They have chosen the development test environment because it is a low risk, quick return project. But what is most significant about this choice is that it opens the dialog and collaboration between IT operations and development test teams. In my opinion, this demonstrates that "The Wall" is no longer impermeable.

Another indicator of significant cracks appearing in "The Wall" comes from cloud computing early adopters. The development organizations from several early adopter cloud customers saw the pressing need to streamline their service delivery processes in order to speed their time to market and to increase their efficiency.  As vendor integrations between the tools did not exist, they launched internal projects to re-engineer and integrate their service delivery processes. These efforts included integrating selected development and IT operational tools, as well as standardizing and employing automation. Through such initiatives, the companies managed to knock down substantial portions of "The Wall". What is significant about these examples is that development teams were the driving force behind the initiatives. This contrasts markedly with the past, where development teams were typically the ones resisting the change. The resulting payoff for these early adopter companies was faster, more efficient delivery of new business services.

And finally, development tool vendors and operations tool vendors are increasingly delivering capabilities to enable improved collaboration between development and operations teams. In addition, IBM is proposing the adoption of Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) integration and data exchange standards to enable easier integration across disparate tools. If integration standards are adopted, paving the way for easier integration of disparate development and operations tools, the result would be a significant step forward for the potential success of DevOps' integration.   

The Final Word

There are early indications that DevOps may be taking root this time. Several market forces are at work that place collaboration between development and operations at a critical juncture. Today's DevOps value proposition is much stronger because of the importance to the business, which moves it from a "nice to do" to a "must do".

DevOps is not a power struggle to see who wins between development and IT operations. It should be a collaborative effort between development and operations to deliver what the business needs, as quickly and efficiently as possible, as it enables the company to beat its competition.

Our friends at BrightTALK are hosting a BSM Summit on August 10th.

The summit is featuring two of our BSMReview experts, Bill Keyworth and Ken Turbit.

Bill's session entitled "Can BSM Navigate the Turbulent Air Currents of Cloud Computing" is focused on the widening gap between IT and Business as more services are pushed out to the cloud and provisioned by business.

Ken's session entitled "Five Steps to Ensure BSM Works in the Cloud" describes what he believes are the 5 critical capabilities required to effectively support BSM in the cloud which are aligned with ITIL best practices.

The virtual summit features 5 additional industry experts that discuss how cloud computing is affecting BSM and ITSM strategies and processes. A few of the thought provoking session titles include:

How to Take the BS out of BSM?
How to Catalog your Cloud?
Can 140 Characters or Less Really Impact IT and the Business?

I think you will find this summit worth your time and it may, in fact, be quite entertaining.

I would also like to point you to a BSMReview article entitled "A Service Model for Cloud Computing" that is a worthwhile read as you prepare for the BSM Summit.

Cheers.

At a vendor-sponsored event earlier this year, I spent some time with IT and business managers that had participated in a simulation workshop. The object was to help managers and operation staffs become familiar with a private Cloud operating environment, ITIL v3 best practices and a new set of integrated management solutions. It was an interesting and informative experience in and of itself. Reviewing the lessons learned during the workshop, it occurred to me that there were some too often overlooked insights that apply to organizations and enterprises pursuing a BSM operational environment.   

In any simulations involving multiple different groups, one of more effective lessons learned is about gaining new perspectives. This workshop took place in a room-sized environment that meant all of the participants could witness how different groups in the "company" were affected by different events, as well as where each group focused their attentions. In this case, IT operations staff were 'shoulder-to-shoulder' with service desk staff, business and IT managers. Unlike the 'real world', the efforts, interaction, inefficiencies and the impact of decisions made by each group were visible to all parties very quickly. When a newly introduced service failed, the disruption was compounded by the fact that no one had told the Service Desk that the new service existed. Both business and IT management knew about the new service, and IT operations implemented it. But no one thought to notify the Service Desk. The importance of a communications process was immediately apparent.

 

Each round brought new insight into the interdependencies, interactions and need for well-defined processes to make sure things were done that needed to be done and that communications between the group was open, effective and complete. Business managers gain insight into just what IT does along with a better understanding of their fundamental value and contribution to business performance. IT staff gain an understanding of how their business counterparts' focus on revenue, cost and profitability is central to the operation and success of the business.

 

It becomes clear that realizing the potential to positively impact business performance requires IT managers to understand and focus on business priorities, in order to make the right decisions for the business. Both functions need a better understanding and appreciation of their colleagues' perspectives and the metrics by which their colleagues are measured if they are to successfully work together to maximize business performance.

 

A major tenant of BSM it facilitate and accelerate a shift in IT focus from simply providing access to and maintaining the infrastructure (essentially 'fixing things when they break and managing to operational performance goals)' to an environment where IT promotes and orchestrates the application of the infrastructure in support of business (whatever the business is - education, retail, government, etc.) goals. The shift is from monitoring to assure things are up and running to creatively managing and applying IT infrastructure to assure that business goals are met.

 

If IT is to focus solving the problems and delivering services that advance and facilitate business success they must understand the metrics for success. They have to know what it takes for their business user/client to be successful - then focus on providing the IT and technology services that contribute to that success. 

Another lesson learned, that applies to BSM, is the need for well-defined processes. Operational efficiency and effectiveness  result from  following and taking action based on well-defined processes and having defined and documented those processes  a head of time makes all the difference when operating under pressure. However, don't let consistency become a trap - review and update to eliminate what's not needed. During one session, a manual process introduced during an earlier round - almost sunk the revenue stream because it interfered with a newly defined automated process. Review, evaluate, communicate - all applicable in implementing any BSM program.

 

In short, if BSM is to pay off, it is important that IT and business works as teams. Today, emerging technologies in IT are more likely to penetrate the consumer space before they hit the enterprise (think iPads, Smart phones, etc.)  As this consumerization of IT continues, business staff will demand more from IT operations. IT needs to be pro-active in identifying where and how they can contribute to business success. In commercial enterprises, this requires being knowledgeable about how, when, why of how revenue (or the major success metric) is earned. Be and act as a part of a team that includes both business and IT personal. Know and understand the relationship, interaction and interdependencies between IT and business operations, that is the path to successful Business Service Management.

 

In her recent post Getting Ready for Agile 2011, Anne Mullaney gave an outline of my forthcoming sessions at the conference. Specifically, she highlighted the emergence of new forms of Agility:

"Super-Fresh Code" is a term Israel coined (an extension of the "Super-Fresh Web" concept) to describe code that results from seizing upon the opportunities opened by combining recent advances in Agile software methods, cloud computing, mobile applications, and social networking. With the right mix, a company can outgun, outclass and outmaneuver its competition through real-time requirements management and superior business designs. Essentially, super-fresh code becomes the source of competitive advantage. This is a workshop that will make you think about Agile in ways you never have before.

Viewed from this perspective, devops becomes an integral part of Agile methods. One starts an enterprise level Agile roll-out in order to, well, gain Agility. The metaphorical wall between dev and IT ops puts a damper on end-to-end agility. Hence, applying Agile principles to the cusp between dev and ops becomes an essential part of the Agile initiative. In fact, Cutter recommends to its clients to integrate the two all the way down to the backlog stories.

Rapid, breathtaking technology advances are forcing radical changes not only in how IT organizations function, but also in terms of their culture, leadership, and even careers. Combined with business, social and global trends, as well as technology investing (spending), IT organizations must accelerate their organizational change plans in order to survive and thrive. They must assess and plan for complete transformation - strategy, structure, people, processes, and tools.

Are we preparing our IT professionals to plan for and make these changes? Are we helping them position themselves and their organizations for success in this dynamically evolving world?

This Cutter Consortium article assess and addresses the impacting wave of the rapidly changing IT and business trends on traditional IT careers, positions, and skill sets.

This wake-up call is best described by a quote from four-star US General (Ret.) Eric Shineski: "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."

This direct and powerful call to action for the BSM Review audience focuses on: 

• The urgent and undeniable need for IT professionals to examine their skill sets today against those required tomorrow;

• The significance of industry and business changes as they radically impact IT organizations, cultures, professionals, and careers over the next five years; and game-changing developments, including cloud computing (hosted services and software solutions), the virtual desktop, mobile computing, IT sourcing, and remote / virtual workers.

"As IT leaders, we must coach our IT professionals out of and beyond their comfort zone, raise the bar on their expected ingenuity and vision to meet future challenges, and establish a sense of urgency in them. We must help them reevaluate and retool themselves for the limitless opportunities and possibilities in front of them to deliver business value, competitive advantage, and customer loyalty." 

A free download registration page is available for you to receive a complimentary copy of my article entitled the IT's Change Imperative in PDF format.

It's located here: http://www.cutter.com/offers/changeimperative.html.

Embrace the change.

Peter

An recent article at CIO.com entitled "How to Argue with the CEO - and Win" offers 13 tips, culled from current and former CIOs and communication consultants ...with the goal to get the CEO to see the CIO's perspective when arguments about IT spending ensue.

All 13 tips are relevant to BSM, but the one that sticks out to us is #3 -- CIO must Speak in Business Terms. We have heard this loud and clear from CIO's who fought for, and succeeded at getting a seat at the table with the CEO. To succeed at this level, the CIO must be respected for his knowledge and ability to contribute to the discussion about business strategy and operational excellence.

Our interview with Robert Urwiler, CIO at Vail Reports, brought this to the forefront very early on in our discussion. In the interview, Robert demonstrated a deep understanding of the business and discusses the collaborative role of IT regarding resort operations. Robert's story is a great example of the benefits of alignment, but not all CIO's can make that transition.

According to a number of sources, the argument between the CIO and CEO often are a result of poor business communication skills of the CIO. Another CIO,com article entitled "10 Communication Mistakes CIOs Still Make" highlight these communication challenges.

We have been discussing this communication gap at BSMReview for some time. We think there needs to be a new vocabulary that serves as the  bridge for this communication gap. Some people think the responsibility lies solely with the CIO ...that the CIO should develop the business skills required to learn the business.  I disagree in that I think the business also needs to learn something about IT, not at the level of the CIO, but certainly enough to know what IT services and trends directly affect business operations and competitive differentiation. Perhaps an IT 101 course for the CEO and line-of-business executives, and the equivalent course for the CIO on the dynamics of the business.

I have often thought that a set of business-oriented key performance indicators (KPIs) would be a step in the right direction -- linking IT investment and performance to business performance. Sounds a bit like Business Service Management.

At any rate, I wanted to bring this CIO article to your attention. It is well worth reading if you are interested in aligning your IT investment with your business strategy.

Finally, another must read that is related to this entry is the recent interview with Mark Settle, CIO of BMC Software.

Vance Brown, CEO of Cherwell Software, makes the case for changes IT organizations must make to survive in the new economy in a recent BSMReview article.

But change is hard -- it requires people to alter their behavior, processes to be reinvented and technology to support the new business process. Vance states that "the cornerstone to effective change in information technology is to harness the necessary information to proactively make the right business decisions-at anytime from anywhere-and thereby truly aligning IT with business objectives."

With today's technology, business unit managers can utilize an iPhone or PDA device to proactively receive, and then act upon, the right information-at anytime, from anywhere. This enables people with sound processes to make the right business decisions. In order to make right, or "RITE" decisions, management must have data and information that is:

1. Relevant to the mission, strategies, and objectives of the organization
2. Integrated across all department "silos" and geographic locations
3. Timely, so that the issues can be addressed and resolved before they become crises and
4. Efficient, so that with the mounds of data, organizations can "manage by exception" and the automated best business processes can be enforced

What we all know is that Change is Inevitable .. How you control and manage it is optional.

More >>

As IT becomes increasingly important to business operations more and more IT organizations are turning to ITIL and other such ITSM frameworks to bring IT under control and provide services that deliver business value. ITIL V3  sums up perfectly what we in IT need to deliver "Value to customers in terms of outcomes they want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks."

Unfortunately, too many  ITSM improvement programs fail. Reports vary, stating that between 70% and 80% fail to deliver value. A Forrester report revealed that 52% fail because of resistance. These failures cause wasted costs and increased business risks. These failures are no longer acceptable.

Paul gives us the "Top 10 Types of Resistance" you had better keep an eye out for. And if you catch yourself resisting with one of these techniques... well, then.

More >>

Having slagged off computers in a previous post, I am glad to report that I have recently come across an intelligent implementation of computing.

I was helping out a friend with their TV system, and as a part of that we had to ring up the help desk. I am not a great fan of help desks normally, as the ones where I live are typically situated in another country and manned by people who don't understand a word I'm saying. Furthermore they are given a script to run through, which has obviously been written by someone who graduated from the Marquis de Sade school of customer diplomacy. 

Look at this, you wait ages for a blog entry to come from me, and then two come at once - just like London buses!

Sorry for lack of blogging in recent months, but the birth of our first granddaughter changed all our priorities! Wonderful to have a cuddle and then hand back the problem - wish computer systems were like that!

Fit for purpose, fit for use.

When ITIL v3 came out, so did some industry terms that really made sense and needed to be fully understood and taken on-board. "fit for purpose and fit for use" is one of those terms.

So often people just focus all their energy and attention on the "fit for use" element and ignore, at their peril, the fit for purpose factor. Let me give you some simple example to highlight the point.

Over the past few weeks I've been involved in the planning (and expense) of refurbishing a house I purchase as a "buy to let" investment and some of the team have focussed too much on the fit for use factor and ignore the fit for purpose.  Downstairs the house already had a cloakroom with a small wash-hand basin and lavatory. The room was large enough to allow me to add a shower cubicle in and change the "purpose" of the room from a guest facility to a tenant shower room facility. The builders changed the existing Loo and basin to new ones, but the basin was tiny, just about large enough to get one hand in to wash! So it was "fit for use", one could wash your hand in it, but it was not fit for the new purpose of a shower-room. It was too small for someone to wash their face in, or to be used for a man shaving etc, it was not fit for purpose and so I got it changed to one 3 times the size. Now it was fit for use and purpose. Something the designers should have got right from the initial briefing.

The second example is the opposite. My car. Now I've had the car for 5 years and when I purchased it I was still with BMC and travelling the world, so it was a car for fun, not for trying to collect and move furniture around from one house to another! It was fit for use and purpose at the time. It took me from A to B, it had 4 doors and a boot (trunk) it was large (16 feet long) and wide. So, on paper it was ideal for using. However it was designed as a four door coupe and had very sloping roof and narrow doors and windows, making it impossible to get solid things into, only flexible people! It is no longer fit for the purpose I now require.

Things do change and over time what was right for one period in time is not longer right for the existing environment and tasks at hand. This is so true in the Service Management world too. Too many organisations keep trying to "shoe-horn" existing software, applications, servers, desktops, laptops and even processes into doing things they are not made for. They take the view that it was fit for use and initially fit for purpose, therefore they believe it must still be still for purpose, yet our purpose changes over time. We need to constantly review our Asset base and ensure we use them, at the right time, in the right place, for the right tasks and the right usage. This is utility. Something that can be fully utilised, unlike my nice car! Don't complain to Service Management if you're using assets Fit for one element and not the other, review and get the Utility right.