Recently in IT Operations Management Category

Every once in awhile, something nice happens.  I was referred to Jeff Cerny of TechRepublic for an interview re: my passion and background for business service management.  Jeff did a great job of capturing the core of why I believe the time for BSM has arrived, and why it is a critical consideration in moving IT out of the geek house and into the business partner role.  He's added a few things associated with high tech marketing and presentation skills, but the essence of this interview deals with the importance of BSM moving forward.

Three years ago I had the privilege and honor to recommend to Inovis executives to implement Scrum as their core software method. The “All In!” implementation style was chosen and successfully implemented by colleague and friend Erik Huddleston. To quote Erik:

The results speak for themselves.  In addition to compelling productivity and quality improvements, we also had profound unanticipated benefits.  Within a few sprints, we were using development as a competitive weapon, bringing development to bear to influence the outcome of individual (strategic) sales cycles.  We dramatically increased our innovation through market dialog.  With almost 25000 customers, Inovis struck up quite a market conversation!  Finally, we found that Agile started driving alignment between teams and sites, facilitating tremendous cross product synergy and value.

In a recent post entitled The Agile Flywheel, Inovis’ Ray Riescher describes the effect of the Agile implementation on IT Operations. Here is an excerpt from his post:

Scrum set the flywheel in motion and caused the rest of the IT process life cycle to respond. ITIL’s processes still form the solid core of service support and we’ve improved the processes’ capability to handle intense work velocity. The organization adapted by developing unprecedented speed in the ability to deliver production fixes and solve root cause problems with Agility.

What I think we are witnessing is a manifestation of Agile Business Service Management: a holistic agile methodology running across the IT process spectrum that’s delivering eye popping change and tremendous results.

Another area that is gaining more and more attention these days is "Cloud computing" and I guess the largest issue I have is around its scope and definition. Many appear to offer hosted services and this is now renamed as Cloud computing, even outsourcing, managed services, Software as a service (SAAS) fall under this new branding. Is that all it is, a simple rebranding to allow all remotely hosted services to have a new home?

As with all new paradigm shifts the best evidence that it'll be widely adopted and accepted is by looking at the user community for this.  At this week's Westminster eForum one of the speakers, Rik Ferguson, senior security adviser at security firm Trend Micro told us that the criminal fraternity are the largest group of adopters. Well I guess if we look back to look forward, we'll see that this was the case for the early adopters of the internet (pornography being the biggest financial winner). Well Rik also highlighted that "We already see customers of Google, customers of Amazon, who are criminals and who use those services, among others, to run command-and-control services for botnets, to launch spam campaigns and to host phishing websites. They see the power, the scalability, the availability and, for them, the anonymity that is possible through cloud services and they are using it to its fullest extent."

Well the good news is that both large and small organisations will benefit from the Cloud, enabling smaller companies to automate, scale up and down depending on the market conditions whilst keeping overheads well managed. Large organisations can also reduce overheads, move into new or changing business areas quickly without being held back by in-house technology restraints. However I think that now, more than ever, process becomes king. Knowing your business services processes and IT services processes are in place, ownerships of responsibilities are understood become the key to success when the ownership of the infrastructure (including operating systems, software and applications) are left to someone who is not a part of your business. It appears to me that we are entering into the realms of treating IT as a utility, just like Electricity, gas etc. We need it to be there, we need to know the costs of utilisation, but the providers do not need to know what we run on it. This makes me think about the capacity planning and availability issues. We in the UK certainly know that the Electric providers monitor the utilisation and have to prepare for odd events like the ½ time during a football and rugby match as viewers go and put the kettle on for tea. The utility suppliers need to understand their market, its dynamics and influences, however odd, to ensure all the customers get the resources they need, when they need it without interruption. Can "the cloud" handle this now or in the future?

Who's working on the cloud right now? Well Amazon, Google, Sun, IBM etc, but some surprising companies are entering the market utilising spare capacity from their traditional business. Salesforce.com now offers Force.com to other business to host applications on. BMC software being a recent case in point. So keep your head in the cloud and watch how things develop, in particular the process issues of dual ownership and the end to end automation, but keep your feet on the ground to ensure you protect your business and understanding the current and potential risks.

The space between the cloud (hosted infrastructure (including apps)) and the end users would be the area that needs focus. Can that be called "fresh air"?

Since 1994 the Standish Group “Chaos” reports have been regularly mentioned in various posts in software and IT blogs. The following figure from the 2002 study is quite representative of the data provided in the Standish annual surveys of the state of software projects:



The January/February 2010 issue of IEEE Software features an article entitled The Rise and Fall of the Chaos Report Figures. The authors - J. Laurenz Eveleens and Chris Verhoef of the VU University, Amsterdam - give the following summary of their findings:

In 1994, Standish published the Chaos report that showed a shocking 16 percent project success. This and renewed figures by Standish are often used to indicate that project management of application software development is in trouble. However, Standish’s definitions have four major problems. First, they’re misleading because they’re based solely on estimation accuracy of cost, time, and functionality. Second, their estimation accuracy measure is one-sided, leading to unrealistic success rates. Third, steering on their definitions perverts good estimation practice. Fourth, the resulting figures are meaningless because they average numbers with an unknown bias, numbers that are introduced by different underlying estimation processes. The authors of this article applied Standish’s definitions to their own extensive data consisting of 5,457 forecasts of 1,211 real-world projects, totaling hundreds of millions of Euros. The Standish figures didn’t reflect the reality of the case studies at all.

I will leave it to the reader to draw his/her conclusion with respect to the differences between the Standish Group and the authors. I would, however, quote Jim Highsmith’s deep insight on the value system within its context we measure performance. The following excerpt is from Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products:

It we are ultimately to gain the full range of benefits of agile methods, if we are ultimately to grow truly agile, innovative organizations, then, as these stories show, we will have to alter our performance management systems…. We have to be as innovative with our measurement systems as we are with our development methodology.

See pp. 335-358 of Jim’s book for details on transforming performance management systems. His bottom line is elusively simple:

The Standish data are NOT a good indicator of poor software development performance. However, they ARE an indicator of systemic failure of our planning and measurement processes.

Jim refers to the standard definition of  project “success” - one time, on budget, all specified features. His focus is usually on software development. I would contend, however, that his good counsel is much broader. IMHO it applies to any IT project.

 

With the British economy haemorrhaging £180 billion this year, mostly caused by the banking bailout, but not just the Banks are causing the problem. The National Health Service (NHS), the 3rd largest employer on the planet and an annual spend of £100 billion (that is 100 thousand million pounds to you and I, or £1,666 per Man, women and child in the UK per annum !). Just to add to this budget the UK government decided back in 2002 (and it's not due to complete until 2014) to create a "central spine" of IT for the entire NHS for:

• Patients' records to be electronically available to any GP or hospital in England, thereby replacing local NHS computer systems
• Other services include electronic prescriptions, an e-mail and directory service for all NHS staff, computer accessible X-rays and a facility for patients to book outpatient appointments online
• It is the largest single IT investment in UK - costs are expected to hit £12.4bn over 10 years to 2013-14
  

Can you a) believe the costs involved here, and b) believe that the 3rd largest employer on the planet does not have email services across all its employees?

I'm sure Microsoft or Google would have provided a stand-alone secure service to them if they'd asked! Tell me one other major business that does not have their employees reachable via Email? No wonder changes in policy and efficiencies are rare if they cannot quickly communicate to their staff. But just this week they have announced that because of the budget deficit they will need to cut this £12.4 billion budget down by £600 million.

My view is that no commercial business could afford this kind of project and more importantly if they did, it would have to be delivered well within 12 years. Now the saying goes that a week is a long time in politics, but 12 years is a really long time for an IT project, especially considering how quickly this industry evolves and progresses. I imagine that if this plan were to be considered today, cloud computing would be considered, which, again in my opinion, would speed the roll out and connectivity of all the major suppliers and NHS divisions.
 
Whilst I agree all this access to connected data across the NH Service makes sense to avoid the slow paper trial and minimise errors in typing and re-tying, it also raises the issue of privacy of data. Abuse of this information could be rife, with pharmaceutical companies willing to pay vast sums to access the data for analysis to determine which drugs they sell should be targeted at what audience. Insurance companies wanting access to determine risk and exclusions whereas today most people are entitled to medical insurance without even a check-up.

Would the Police Service  gain access for DNA matching, thus circumventing the debate over a central Police DNA database? The list goes on.

Some "selling" of the data if approved by the NHS client (the public) could actually go some way to recovering the cost of the project, a business (nasty word in Government circles!) plan.

Now, I believe, that we in the IT Service industry should get involved in these debates, perhaps through bodies like the ITSMF, British Computer Society etc . we have a lot to offer in terms of experience and insight. These large multi-year projects need to be reviewed and revised annually to ensure that they keep up with technological advances and prevent the completed project being outdated and almost inoperable.  IBM's market capitisation today on the Nasdaq is around $166billion, approximately the size of the NHS annual budget and with less employees. Perhaps they could provide infrastructure and service advise based on their own internal connectivity and I'm sure they did not spend 12years to obtain it at a cost of £12.4 billion!

Government really do live in a world of their own with no concept of business acumen or reality, if only they were held accountable by the people to the same extent that shareholders hold businesses accountable, we may actually achieve value for money, in a timely, cost effective manner. Look out America, if you go for Health reforms, consider who will run it, and those hidden costs and data debates!

Colleagues Rico, Sayani and Sone recently published a book entitled The Business Value of Agile Software Methods: Maximizing ROI with with Just-in-Time Process and Documentation. Based on hundreds of systemic research studies, the authors cite some very impressive numbers. Even their least impressive numbers are awesome. For example:

• Agile methods ROA 1.6X more than traditional [software] methods
• Agile methods NPV 2.3X more than traditional [software] methods

We do not have anything like this rigorous study in the nascent field of Agile Business Service Management. I would, however, allow myself to suggest that the gains to be had through Agile  Business Service Management might be as impressive. The three main reasons for my suggesting so are as follows:

• Deja vu. Much of the gain in applying Agile methods to software engineering comes from breaking the metaphorical wall between development and test. Likewise, the application of Agile principles, technologies and practices to Business Service Management leads to breaking the metaphorical wall that seperates development and test from operations.
• Life cycle economics. As observed by Boehm, defects fixed during the Operations phase can be two orders of magnitude more expensive to fix than during the Requirements phase, one order of magnitude more expesive to fix than during the Code phase.
• Data-driven decision making. Agile deployment enables "real time" customer feedback. Hence, the quality and timeliness of business decisions are greatly improved.

I don't really know whether colleague Dr. David F. Rico might have an interest in Agile Business Service Management. I will most certainly try to induce him....

Back in 2007 when I was still at BMC Software as Global Best Practices Director I worked with their CTO, Tom Bishop who worked on setting up an industry taskforce to set a standard for CMDB connectivity. As always these taskforces take some time to document their goals and objectives and then to actually release a specification. Well it did take 2 years for the specification to be released. Back in July of this year, the Distributed Management Taskforce (DMTF) gave its approval for the CMDBf specification for supporting federated CMDB systems -- or as ITIL v3 says, a federated Configuration Management System (CMS). In this vision, multiple reconciled sources including management data repositories, discovery systems, etc. can provide a cohesive frame to support more effective service management in its broadest, cross-discipline sense.

The CMDBf specification was first released by the CMDB Federation Workgroup in August of 2007, and the DMTF announced the creation of a working committee around the CMDBf specification on November 27, 2007. The Workgroup included BMC, CA, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft in Q3 200. Some vendors left out wondered why they weren't included, but in this case small is beneficial. Keeping the group small was considered essential if progress was going to be made. Knowing how difficult it is to get busy people from different organisations together, I would agree that keeping it small and focused was the only way to get results, and 6 of the largest software vendors in the ITSM space is small, but powerful.  

Looking at the specifics, the CMDBf specification leverages SOA (Service Orientated Architecture) standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol ), XML (Extensible Markup Language) schema, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol ), and WS-I (Web Services Interoperability). It describes how APIs (application Program Interface) and calls to CMDB registration APIs can be pre-built into the management data repositories (MDRs) of management tool set providers. In this way, a federating CMDB can access data from a multiple MDRs using the query service defined in the specification. MDRs can push data to a federating CMDB using a registration service. The specification also supports CMDB-to-CMDB federation, as CMDBs can extract data from each other using the query service. In essence, the specification supports data access in a federated mode, as well as bi-directional data sharing across federated CMDBs.

Boy we like using acronyms! This is the first time I've really seen the term "Management Data Repositories" (MDR) used seriously and it's really what the CMS is all about, in my opinion. A term we should use when explaining the CMS to the Business, as it will resonate much more with them.

If such a vision is to become reality, then the industry needs a more consistent approach for federating multiple sources than the current rag-tag mix of adapters, APIs, and other technologies that still make federation, especially federation across multiple brands, such a painful experience.

For more information check out the DTMF announcements here >>

I don't generally tell people that a report from a vendor is a "must read," but in this case it is. 

I'm referring to IBM's The New Voice of the CIO report, a global study of 2,598 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) released back in September of this year. 

The report (registration required) highlights the somewhat schizophrenic roles that CIOs the world over are under pressure to take on, depending, of course, on the nature of the burning issue at hand.  The report identifies six distinct roles that CIOs must learn in order to keep up with the requirements of the job:



The bright side of the report:

The voice of the CIO is being heard in new ways--as CIOs are increasingly recognized as full-fledged members of the senior executive team. Successful CIOs are much more actively engaged in setting strategy, enabling flexibility and change, and solving business problems, not just IT problems.

Today's CIOs spend an impressive 55 percent of their time on activities that spur innovation. These activities include generating buy-in for innovative plans, implementing new technologies and managing non-technology business issues. The remaining 45 percent is spent on essential, more traditional CIO tasks related to managing the ongoing technology environment. This includes reducing IT costs, mitigating enterprise risks and leveraging automation to lower costs elsewhere in the business.

These may not be the latest and greatest, but we found two more depictions of maturity models related to Business Service Management from HP and IBM. 

I'm sure they have others, but this is what we found (scroll down to the end of the post).

Stay tuned for more.

Business Service Management, Six Sigma and your IT Compliance Program
by Chrisan Herrod
Institutionalizing a culture of continuous monitoring as an essential part of IT compliance management can be achieved using the best practices of the Six Sigma methodology.  IT compliance should be treated as a critical corporate program and to that end Six Sigma can be used to assist organizations in implementing a robust and effective information technology compliance program and culture. »

Business Service Leadership: The Time is Now! [Part 1]
by Peter J. McGarahan
Business Service leadership is about doing the right thing for the right reasons and making fact-based decisions. It's about challenging conventional wisdom and having the moral backbone to stand up for doing the right thing for your customers and the people that serve them. »

One of our unstated goals at BSMReview.com is to create a maturity model for Business Service Management and beyond. Of course, this maturity model may differ slightly by industry, but the idea is to create a model which is good enough to create a "common roadmap" for IT and its business partners (yes, we will include cloud services).

To start the discussion, I've brought together some of the traditional thinking from IT 1.0, and some "edge insights" from people like JSB.

To start, let's look at Gartner's IT Management Process Maturity Model from 2005. Looks familiar, doesn't it? What should Level 5 and Level 6 look like? 

Goodbye ITIL v2.

The OGC has announced the date and time of the end:

OGC has considered these findings alongside its own requirements for the maintenance of the ITIL product set, and agreed that:

a. Withdrawal will be product based, with all language variants for individual qualifications and publications being removed at the same time.
b. Removal of version2 will complete on 30 June 2011. Specific product withdrawal will be as follows:

• V2 Foundation to cease 30 June 2010
• V2 Manager to cease 31 August 2010
• V2 Practitioner to cease 31 Dec 2010 
• Foundation Bridge to cease 31 Dec 2010

I wonder if they followed the ITIL v3 guidelines for a Service Lifecycle, specifically the part about Service Transition:




They must not have read Bill's Mitigating Risk for End-of-Life Technology.

Business Service Management (BSM) is a process, a mindset, not a product (as Peter Armstrong would say) so it is not a technology in the first place.  It is strategic, however, so let's take a quick look at each of Gartner's choices and ask:

"What has this got to do with BSM?"

Gartner's Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010

Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. Cloud-based services can be exploited in a variety of ways to develop an application or a solution. Using cloud resources does not eliminate the costs of IT solutions, but does re-arrange some and reduce others. In addition, consuming cloud services enterprises will increasingly act as cloud providers and deliver application, information or business process services to customers and business partners.

My two cents: Managing cloud services demands that companies must have a BSM strategy which can monitor and manage the physical datacenter, virtualization, and the cloud - whether it be public, private, or hybrid. We need ITIL in the Cloud and robust Cloud Service SLAs.

Advanced Analytics. Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximize business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action. The new step looks into the future, predicting what can or will happen.

My two cents: OK, so now we know how to compete on analytics. But the decision-making process is much more complex than most people expected. Analytics are fine, but what we need is refined insight and critical understanding.  The Big Shift Index tells us about what we haven't thought about measuring yet! Where's BSM in all of this? Well, if your CRM and yoru ERP systems are mission-critical, then BSM ensures they deliver on their promise when you need it.

Client Computing. Virtualization is bringing new ways of packaging client computing applications and capabilities. As a result, the choice of a particular PC hardware platform, and eventually the OS platform, becomes less critical. Enterprises should proactively build a five to eight year strategic client computing roadmap outlining an approach to device standards, ownership and support; operating system and application selection, deployment and update; and management and security plans to manage diversity.

My two cents: Anytime, anywhere, on any device. BSM must be an integral part of managing virtualization to avoid virtual sprawl, if nothing else. Of course there's the end-user experience that needs monitoring as well.

IT for Green. IT can enable many green initiatives. The use of IT, particularly among the white collar staff, can greatly enhance an enterprise's green credentials. Common green initiatives include the use of e-documents, reducing travel and teleworking. IT can also provide the analytic tools that others in the enterprise may use to reduce energy consumption in the transportation of goods or other carbon management activities.

My two cents: Virtualization and Cloud computing will help IT become greener faster, by reducing the datacenter footprint.  And virtual collaboration can reduce carbon emissions. Isn't optimizing asset usage a BSM function?

Reshaping the Data Center. In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-based approach to data center construction and expansion. If 9,000 square feet is expected to be needed during the life of a data center, then design the site to support it, but only build what's needed for five to seven years. Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the overall IT spend for most clients, frees up money to apply to other projects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.

My two cents: See previous two cents <<

Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work - one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing "external" information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities. Do not ignore the role of the social profile to bring communities together.

My two cents: Have you noticed that Twitter is having availability issues lately?  I wonder if they use ITIL or BSM?  Same story on Facebook. Maybe they use ITIL-Lite.  There are unfortunately, some documented productivity issues with social computing, but we have an effective solution for improving knowledge-worker productivity.

Security - Activity Monitoring. Traditionally, security has focused on putting up a perimeter fence to keep others out, but it has evolved to monitoring activities and identifying patterns that would have been missed before. Information security professionals face the challenge of detecting malicious activity in a constant stream of discrete events that are usually associated with an authorized user and are generated from multiple network, system and application sources. At the same time, security departments are facing increasing demands for ever-greater log analysis and reporting to support audit requirements. A variety of complimentary (and sometimes overlapping) monitoring and analysis tools help enterprises better detect and investigate suspicious activity - often with real-time alerting or transaction intervention. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of these tools, enterprises can better understand how to use them to defend the enterprise and meet audit requirements.

My two cents: See this survey on security management best practices.

Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive, however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages including space, heat, performance and ruggedness.

My two cents: Wrong? We're going to see cloud storage take over this area, and it may or may not use flash memory.

Virtualization for Availability. Virtualization has been on the list of top strategic technologies in previous years. It is on the list this year because Gartner emphases new elements such as live migration for availability that have longer term implications. Live migration is the movement of a running virtual machine (VM), while its operating system and other software continue to execute as if they remained on the original physical server. This takes place by replicating the state of physical memory between the source and destination VMs, then, at some instant in time, one instruction finishes execution on the source machine and the next instruction begins on the destination machine.

However, if replication of memory continues indefinitely, but execution of instructions remains on the source VM, and then the source VM fails the next instruction would now place on the destination machine. If the destination VM were to fail, just pick a new destination to start the indefinite migration, thus making very high availability possible. 

The key value proposition is to displace a variety of separate mechanisms with a single "dial" that can be set to any level of availability from baseline to fault tolerance, all using a common mechanism and permitting the settings to be changed rapidly as needed. Expensive high-reliability hardware, with fail-over cluster software and perhaps even fault-tolerant hardware could be dispensed with, but still meet availability needs. This is key to cutting costs, lowering complexity, as well as increasing agility as needs shift.

My two cents: Now this is a BSM play if there ever was one!

Mobile Applications. By year-end 2010, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing a rich environment for the convergence of mobility and the Web. There are already many thousands of applications for platforms such as the Apple iPhone, in spite of the limited market and need for unique coding. It may take a newer version that is designed to flexibly operate on both full PC and miniature systems, but if the operating system interface and processor architecture were identical, that enabling factor would create a huge turn upwards in mobile application availability.

My two cents: Anytime, anywhere, on any device.  Didn't I write about that a few seconds ago? And don't we need our CMDB to track all these diverse devices and apps?

As you can see, I've attached Business Service Management (BSM) as an enabling IT strategy for just about all ten of Gartner's Strategic Technologies for 2010. And of course if it's a service provided by IT or even an external service provider, we're still going to need a Service Catalog for 2010. More on that in a later post.

Israel, where do agile practices fit into this? Just about everywhere as well?

If you are of the same generation as myself, then you probably think this is an article about Pink Floyd - sorry, it's not. It is, in fact, the title of a book I read recently, which investigates what it cost to put a man on the moon. Now I happen to be related to Neil Armstrong (we are both descended from the same notorious Scottish cattle thief - please see this for details), and this year was the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, so the book was of great interest to me.

The cost of putting my relation on the moon was $35 billion, and the question which the book raises is the very valid one: Was it worth it?

In my opinion, and the book's, the answer is no.

This does not mean that I think the whole space programme is a waste of time and money, I happen to think the unmanned space programme has been extremely beneficial. Just think of some of the information or services, which we take for granted nowadays - the first communications satellite was launched in 1958, the first TV satellite in 1962, the first weather satellite on 1st April 1960 and the first navigation satellite 12 days later. However, when I challenge people to tell me what the manned space programme brought us, I get answers like:

•    We (the US) had to prove our superiority to the Russians and it raised morale throughout the country. I agree with the latter, not the former (as that way of thinking tends to lead to conflict or war), and why does the US now want to go to Mars - what will that bring?

•    Teflon - untrue,  PTFE was accidentally invented in 1938, patented in 1941, and Teflon was trademarked in1944

•    Velcro  - untrue, invented by a Swiss engineer in 1941 by looking at the hooks on the burdock (arctium lappa) plant. Velcro is actually short for velours crochet, which means velvet hook.

•    The upside-down biro. You don't actually need an upside-down biro in space, as there is no gravity. There is a great story that the Russians saved millions by using pencils, but I don't believe this is true as broken bits of pencil / pencil shavings floating round in a spaceship would be liable to get into all sorts of places they shouldn't and could lead to a plethora of problems.

And this for me raises the fundamental questions, which have to be asked at the beginning of any project, especially in these times of limited financial resource:

•    Why are we doing this?

•    What is it worth?

If these questions cannot be answered, then IMHO the whole project should be shelved.

Just because something is technically possible, does not in any way mean that it is justified from a business point of view. There is, of course, a counter argument that this will stifle innovation and creativity and that sometimes the great ideas come out of something that looks like it is a total waste of time at the outset. True, and if possible a budget should be set aside for blue-sky thinking and experimentation, but my point is that investing huge quantities of money in something with no justification is a luxury, which we currently cannot afford.

Hence, I would like to see the same principles applied to IT projects. Every project should be presented in business terms, not in some boring technical jargon, which no-one understands and which no-one cares about. For this to happen, IT strategy and business strategy need to be joined at the hip. I have seen, far too often, the IT department which decides what its strategy should be and presents it to the business as a fait accompli; I see IT reporting into a CFO, who can only see the bottom line and nothing beyond, and I see too many businesses, which decide a business strategy, don't bother to tell IT what it is and then complain that IT doesn't deliver what they wanted.

What the current financial crisis has brought home for me, and I hope for lots of others, is the painful truth that you can't have everything today. Good stuff costs hard work and money, and if you haven't got enough money then you need to prioritise your requirements. Too many people say "I need", when they really mean "I want" or "I would like".

The same thing applies to IT. As a bedrock, I require sound business policies and a strategy that lays out the requirements and the priorities. If I don't have that, then I have a system that will collapse under pressure.
 
It is very easy to run things efficiently in IT - there are loads of tools for people to play with and tune stuff for hours - all of which is a total waste of time and money if they are working on the wrong thing.

The first step is to be effective. Then you run what matters efficiently.

In today's (and any) economic climate it is imperative that IT delivers what the business needs, and this can only be achieved with an open dialogue between the business and IT, where the two parties are equals, explain what they truly need, how much it will cost and what it is worth.

Chrisan's friends over at the Enterprise Strategy Group shared this security best practices report with us. Let us know what you think.

Malcolm Fry does a nice job with his parable of the “Keeper of the Forms.” It starts off a bit slowly, but really picks up around the 3:40 mark. And, as usual, with everything Malcolm says, there’s a real lesson to be learned for IT:

Reminds us of Peter McGarahan’s post just a few hours ago, doesn’t it? >>

More from Malcolm: How to Improve Productivity by 40%

It's not rocket science.

Service and Support organizations that deliver exceptional customer service and business value have, at their core, something in common:  Leadership.

But what does leadership look like?  It's business-focused people who approach their responsibilities with energy, passion, and intelligence.  They never forget where they came from and what it took for them to get to where they are.  They take with them the lessons they learned and the people that influenced them along the way. They are resourceful and thoughtful.  They are unafraid to seek advice, direction, and support.

Most importantly, they share the most important characteristic of all - they are servant leaders. They never let their egos convince them that they are the smartest people in the room. And they never let arrogance stand in the way of being a good listener and a continuous learner.

Servant leadership is about doing the right thing and making fact-based decisions. It's about challenging conventional wisdom and having the moral backbone to stand up for doing the right thing for the customers and employees who serve them well. Servant leaders continuously look for innovative ways to leverage industry best practices, technology, and people. They treat every customer like they were their only customer.

I challenge all service leaders to become servant leaders.  Set the bar high for your team, constantly measure your progress, and continuously improve. Create a rewarding and healthy service culture that is driven by your daily examples of your servant leadership.

Its strange how history repeats itself, fashions go in cycles, and every generation comes to them for the first time thinking these things are new, innovative and revolutionary. I guess it's because we're still human and we still need to learn the same lessons over and over again. We want to listen to advice, but can't, we want to learn from the past, but don't, we all want something that's called "common" but is far from it - sense!

May years ago now the company I worked for at the time brought a new concept to the marketplace. The analysts jumped onto it and made it their own and the market hype was all over it, it was the direction all business had to get to. Eight or more years on and we're still moving in that direction, the buzz died down, but the capabilities slowed and the term used changed from IRM to BSM.  However BSM was actually only a subset of what IRM aimed to achieve. With the complexities we find ourselves in today, with Virtualisation and Cloud computing the issues are still the same only in some cases magnified and the responsibility of ownership is moving. More and more the Business is, and will continue to, relinquishing ownership of the delivery of services to the employee (who make up the business) and allow suppliers to take over. It's something that has happened for centuries now. We moved from self-sufficiency to being reliant on others. Once, we all had wells in the garden to provide water for the household, now it's all provided through piped services. Once, we had to make our own small generators for the electrification of the Home, Farm or estate, now it's all provided through piped services. The list goes on, and so it is and will continue to be within the IT environment. Hence the need for Service Management to ensure we all have the disciplines, controls, standards and processes in place, controlled and managed to ensure delivery as required by the customers, whomever they may be.  Why did we move this way? Well for various reasons, economies of scale, cost savings, and to allow us to focus on our core competency without being dragged down by day to day necessities of life.

A slide on my website shows what is required to support the employee, who is at the centre of the business, and how these are more and more being delivered via services as depicted around the circumference of the sphere.  This slide goes back 8 years or more, so not new, but it appears it was rather a vision of the future, and more and more I can see it being fulfilled. Whether we use the same term or not is irrelevant, what matters is the end goal. Something that Geoffrey Moore of Crossing the Chasm fame predicted at roughly the same time.

Check out the slide and let me know if you see it being slowly fulfilled:

Says Annie Shum:

IT professionals should underscore the critical roles played by integrated virtualized service oriented management, governance, performance assurance, and analytics-based feedback loops. Together, they can safeguard the successful adoption and, ultimately, the viability of Cloud Computing in enterprise IT.

Read: A Measured Approach To Cloud Computing: Capacity Planning and Performance Assurance

Explains Richard:

Initially, compliance was an externally imposed distraction, representing just one more burden on an over-stretched enterprise and IT staff. But now, compliance activities not only provide data about current practices but also highlight areas where increasing the level of control could yield greater efficiencies in operation.

Read The Path to Compliance as a Business Strategy »

When development, deployment and operations evolve in parallel from a business services perspective, we get Agile Business Service Management. That's according to Israel Gat, in his article: The Case for Agile Business Service Management >>

Israel, for those of you who don't know, is a founding member of the Agile Business Service Management movement, which in his own words is "the fusion of modern software development methods with the prevailing preference to run IT from the perspective of the business customer."

In this related interview, Israel talks to the illustrious Jim Highsmith on the same subject >>