Pink Elephant - The IT and ITIL Service Management Experts

In part one of this six-part series, Pink Elephant’s Troy DuMoulin explores the concept of IT Governance, and the more holistic view that is emerging: IT Governance is really about establishing a vision and direction for IT that supports the business objectives and actually establishes an organization, structures and processes that make sure the individual components and domains play nice and work together for the common goal.

Pink Elephant is humbled by the sheer number of IT professionals who convened in Las Vegas for the 11th Annual IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition at the beautiful Venetian hotel. Once again, it was the largest gathering of ITSM professionals on the planet, with over 1700 in attendance! Pink Elephant’s President David Ratcliffe, and VP of Global Events, George Spalding, recap some of the incredible highlights over the four day event, which took place Feb 18-21, 2007.

In this PinkPodcast, President David Ratcliffe speaks to two ITIL V3 authors, Pink Elephant’s George Spalding and Gary Case, about the next generation of ITIL, the new content and the proposed release date.

Listen to Isabel Feher-Watters of the Professional Services Team and Glen Notman, an IT Management Consultant, as they discuss how Pink Elephant has received status as a global Registered Education Provider (REP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI has assessed and recognized Pink Elephant's courses as having appropriate learning material relevant to the field of project management. Ten Pink Elephant courses are currently registered with PMI and are listed on the PMI website.

As part of Service Level Management, there are three underlying themes expressed in the ITIL documentation of best practices for SLM that support the goals of IT Service Management. These include: Partnerships, Simplicity, 'What'...not 'How'. In this PinkPodcast featuring Pink Elephant consultant Jim Wright, explore how these themes support the two objectives of IT Service Management: IT services should align to business needs; and IT should act as an agent for change to facilitate business transformation.

The goal of Problem Management is to minimize the adverse impacts of incidents and problems on the business that are caused by errors in the IT Infrastructure and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. Problem Management seeks to get to the root cause and initiate action to remove the error. How can we use Problem Management to improve the service that we offer to our customers? This Podcast takes a look at the benefits we can gain by implementing efficient Problem Management.

One of the challenges for any ITIL implementation is building the Business Case. Many organizations are comfortable with identifying the Value of implementing ITIL while others want to conduct a full business case complete with a Return on Investment (ROI) statement. The latter is often difficult in many organizations due to a lack of consistent metrics and measurements that can be used as a baseline to start building a ROI scenario. This Podcast will discuss the need for and the challenges of developing a Business Case for implementing ITIL.

Continuity planning - flavor of the month or an afterthought? We all know we should do it, but have you? It's easy to bury your head in the sand and think it can't happen to you, but it could, and if your business is dependant on IT, how can you not put plans and countermeasures in place to reduce or eliminate the risk of a disaster? Let's take a look at what ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) says about IT Service Continuity. This podcast will identify some of those areas that are easy to miss when you're planning.

With less than four weeks to go, Pink Elephant's President David Ratcliffe, and VP of Global Events, George Spalding, discuss some of the exciting final touches for the largest ITSM event ever - the 11th Annual International IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition, coming Feb 18-21, 2007 at the Venetian, Las Vegas. Hear all about: The complete line-up of pre and post-conference courses, Sunday Primer Workshops, including the fun and interactive PinkSim session, Daily highlights in the conference program, ITIL Awards, Other global Pink events coming in 2007

Are you Being Served? Have you ever stopped to consider that ITIL is a Service Management Framework? Well, consider that if ITIL is a service management framework, this means that all of the processes have only one goal: To Plan for, Deliver and Support IT services! But what if you don't have services defined? Then perhaps ITIL in its full glory has limited to no value at this point of an organization's maturity. However, if it is understood that no technology component exists for its own right and that the individual components from various domains actually work together in connected systems that support IT services, then this is another story altogether. This being the case, then perhaps the Service Catalog is much more than an a la carte menu or brochure for the business customer. The truth is that the Service Catalog is the foundation for ITIL implementation projects! The Service Catalog is the central theme of the upcoming book that Pink Elephant is co-authoring with NewScale - Defining IT Success Through The Service Catalog.

Employee Compliance is the degree to which employees adhere to the organization's defined policies, processes, and procedures. You have spent the last six months developing your policies, processes and procedures with as much stakeholder involvement as feasible. You purchased a state of the art Service Management tool. You have defined roles and responsibilities and made sure your communication plan has made everyone aware of what is coming. Why do you think anyone will change what they are doing today and follow these new methods? If there is one constant in the universe, it is that people don't like to change unless they feel personally accountable or are changing to what is perceived as somehow better than what they were doing before. Employee Compliance refers to developing a proactive management strategy around ensuring that the processes, policies and procedures are actually being followed after they are deployed. Without a planned approach to employee compliance, the deployment and ongoing adherence to defined polices and procedures is a cross your fingers and hope affair. Listen in as Troy DuMoulin, Director of Product Strategy, discusses employee compliance, then visit his blog where you will find additional information on this subject. Note: Please be advised that this is an Enhanced PinkPodcast that contains a slide presentation and is best viewed with iTunes or QuickTime.

Designing and building new processes are only part of the IT Service Management (ITSM) puzzle. There is still the challenge of implementing new processes in an organization that is accustomed to working with whatever it has defined as today's processes. Thus, the challenge comes down to changing behavior and changing not just an individual or a team, but the behavior culture of an organization. So how do you do that? Here at Pink Elephant, we have turned to the eight-step approach espoused by Dr. John Kotter in his book, Leading Change. Take a quick tour of these eight important steps to make a difference in your organization and to help make your next process project a success. Note: Please be advised that this is an Enhanced PinkCast that contains a slide presentation and is best viewed with iTunes or QuickTime.

Do you implement too many changes everyday? Are there conflicts when scheduling changes? Could you have grouped changes into some sort of bundle? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you need to consider implementing a Release Policy. ITIL describes many types of possible Releases; yet, many organizations still struggle with translating these definitions into reality. Listen to this PinkCast by Pierre Bernard, Manager of Education Services, and learn: What is a Release? What characteristics comprise a Release Policy? What are the differences between Release categories: Minor, Major or Emergency Release? What are the differences between Release types: Delta, Full or Package Release? How do you populate a Release Policy? What is the best method to use? Note: Please be advised that this is an Enhanced PinkCast that contains a slide presentation and is best viewed with iTunes or QuickTime.

Using an illustrative story to review the goal and activities of Security Management, Pink's Executive Consultant Rich Petti discusses the various aspects of Security Management, a Service Delivery process. Rich also delves into how Security Management is linked to customer satisfaction, how it is related to Availability, Continuity, and Service Level Management, and how it plays a key role in meeting governance requirements. The focus of this PinkCast is on a high level view of the key definitions including CIA as applied to appropriate protection of data. Security Management Goal: To meet the security requirements of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and external requirements further to contracts, legislation and externally imposed policies; to provide a basic level of security, independent of external requirements, Key Definitions mentioned: Security Awareness, Security Incidents, Security Level, Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Activities: Planning, Implementation, Control, Evaluate, Maintain

Many Service Desk Managers struggle with the concept of conducting annual performance reviews for their staff members. Usually this exercise happens in a very short period of time just before they are due and creative writing becomes the method for completing them. This turns out to be very painful for all involved. The ITIL framework can be a big help in making these performance reviews more accurate and meaningful to the Manager, the staff members and the company. This PinkCast is designed to summarize the steps that need to be taken to make Performance Management easier and more relevant to all that participate.