10 most common mistakes IT makes

In my twenty years of IT consulting, I found following 10 most common mistakes businesses make;

1. Having no clear vision or strategy for IT (or its services)
2. Accountability is subjective than objective (tangible)
3. Select tools first and later expect it to deliver to their expectations
4. Business doesn't know what IT cost drivers are
5. No processes are defined and documented to establish well defined metrics (KGIs and KPIs), therfore can not measure achievements
6. Resources are not planned to meet demand
7. Can't allocate cost per use for each service to justify service offerings
8. Ensuring business and IT are aligned
9. Trying to cut cost without knowing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) or ROI on each investment.
10. Identification and implementation of key controls, so when their is any variance right flags are arised so as to adopt corrective actions

If you see these indicators in your organization, it is time to seek professional help, there are many companies who specialize in ITIL, itSMF, COBIT, SIX Sigma and other disciplines that can bring about positive change into your organization.

You may contact author of this blog with your comments or specific requirements.

Working on a modular approach to how to calculate ROI, TCO and IRR

If you sell ITIL, itSMF based solutions or any other business solution to organizations, you must have a compelling business justification to convince your potential customer, why they should buy from you. Most companies would tell their customers, whatever they want to hear but they don't have a processes based approach that can justify any new investment at the customers end.

Couple of things from sellers end that should be mandatory are;

1. Find as much as possible about their pain points from financial perspective, i.e.,

• What is it costing you at this time and where would you like to be?
• Why is it costing you so much?

2. How do you translate efficiency to a monetary value?

• If you add so much efficiency to "x" process what will be your cost saving "y"
• Do you what will be your transitional cost "z" to bring about this new change?

3. Do ask what is your operating cost?

This could be IT organization or departmental but asking this question will most certanly help you put a case to sell easily.

4. What is more important to you, cost cutting or efficiency gain and why?

If you want to know more about this topic, please contact me via email or by adding a comment to this blog and I will be in touch with you.

If you want to ocntribute your experience to this discussion, please we all encourage you to do so.

Twenty Five Questions to ask IT Managers

DO you know what value implementing ITIL does for your organization?

1. How do you measure your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for your Service Desk?
2. Do you specific targets on how much to save or how much efficiency that must be incorporated into the existing environment?
3. How do you provide quantifiable business results, such as lower cost, increase productivity, improved revenue and increased efficiency for your IT or Service Desk environment?
4. Please tell me who are the people (person) responsible for making the business case for new initiatives and who is responsible for the results produced by such initiatives?
5. Can you throw some light on ROI results based upon impact on productivity or costs?
6. What is high on Senior Leadership Team (SLT) ; Centralization, Consolidation or Individual (group) accountability?
7. Are there any compliance or regulatory requirements?
8. Does your organization require SOX compliance or any other specific objectives?
9. Can you account for how many licenses your organization need and how to keep the right amount of licenses within the organization?
10. Do you know what is the Mean Time Between Systems Failure (MTTBSF)?
11. How much does each incident cost to the organization?
12. What are the MTTR (Mean Time to Recover) numbers?
13. What is the cost of change for your IT organization?
14. How successful are your projects (below 50%, above 70%)?
15. How do you define your threshold values for number of employees needed at any given time?
16. How do you scale up or down on the number of employees for your IT organization?
17. How satisfied are your customers (consumers) from your IT organization?
18. How well defined are your processors for each discipline; Incident, Problem, Change, Capacity, Security and Availability?
19. Does your organization have a common repository where the documentation on Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) reside?
20. Can you name top three pain areas for your IT organization?
21. Would you say business and IT objectives are well aligned?
22. Can you give me a true success story for your IT department?
23. How satisfied are you or your support staff with the tools your use to provide support?
24. What tools does your IT or support organization use?
25. Does your organization have a full account of all the assets you manage?

Does ITIL® really prove IT’s value to the business?

This is a copy of blog on SourceWire Sept 09, 2009

Hornbill’s latest survey “ITIL: State of the Nation” reveals that 70% of organisations now have IT on the board but 35% of executives still struggle with resources and only 51% can measure performance IT Service Management software provider Hornbill has announced the results of the company’s latest survey, revealing some interesting insights into the role of the CIO and the relationship between IT and the business today. Over 500 executives and senior managers from both commercial and government organisations took part in the survey, entitled “ITIL: State of the Nation”, which looked into international adoption rates of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®) best practice framework version 3 since its launch in June 2007. Key highlights of the survey include:• 70% of respondents confirmed that IT now has representation on the board.• 50% claimed that the IT department holds regular planning meetings with the rest of the business (every day, week or month) with the remaining half meeting only quarterly or even annually.• The major positive outcomes from these meetings are helping IT to ‘properly understand business goals’ (78%), and to ‘plan resources to meet demand’ (65%), followed in third place by the opportunity to ‘establish clear metrics to measure achievements’ (51%).• More than one third (35%) of respondents struggle with planning resources to meet the demands of their organisation.• Over 54% of respondents do not charge the business for the delivery of IT and of those who do, 31% allocate a cost per use for each service, or divide the costs evenly across all employees and departments (24%).• 51% do not track the cost of providing IT services to the business, mirroring the number of respondents who said they do not have concise metrics in place to measure the services and therefore the costs per service provided.IT’s growing representation on the board (70%) is validation that the function is now considered essential to the business to help drive strategy forward and provide senior level sponsorship and support for service improvement initiatives such as adopting ITIL. Despite this trend, many IT departments do not interact with the rest of the business regularly enough, sometimes only on an ad-hoc basis, putting them at grave risk of either being out of tune with the business needs and drivers, or delivering irrelevant services at the wrong time, making IT a likely victim of outsourcing. The findings of the survey reveal that the UK is only marginally ahead of the US across most phases of ITIL. This is perhaps not surprising given that the UK market was exposed to ITIL much earlier than the US. Gerry Sweeney, CEO of Hornbill Systems, commented: “One notable aspect of ITIL v3 is its orientation towards business services, moving IT away from a pure technology play. What is now becoming apparent is the need to focus on people, for they are the process deliverers and receivers of service. Whichever version of the ITIL best practice framework organisations are looking to adopt, the drivers are the same: improving service quality and increasing customer satisfaction. Process can only take you so far. It is people that make the difference between poor and excellent service. The service desk is IT’s shop window and by ensuring that it is run by the right staff, with the right attitude and the right tools, IT can tackle service quality and customer satisfaction head on, instead of expecting processes alone to make a difference. The challenge for IT remains to demonstrate some quick wins to secure business attention, then forge ahead with the more strategic aspects of ITIL v3, complete the service lifecycle and demonstrate the true benefits of ITIL.”One final point is clear: the view of the business with regard to IT is changing and becoming more favourable with only 3% of business executives considering IT a ‘law unto itself’ and 32% firmly of the opinion that IT is a ‘competent business partner’, ensuring critical services are available to the organisation when needed.Hornbill collaborated with Ken Turbitt of the Service Management Consultancy (SMCG) Ltd to prepare the survey with input from the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), and it was promoted via the Service Desk Institute (SDI), Pink Elephant and ITP Report online. Mauricio Marrone of the University of Göttingen contributed to the statistical data analysis and findings.To download a copy of Hornbill’s survey and white paper, please go to: http://www.hornbill.com/itilstate

Statera Releases a CRM to SharePoint Cloud Integration Engine

Just recently, Statera went into a Beta phase for their an integration engine called Stratus (http://stratus.statera.com). It’s a really cool idea/product which integrates Microsoft CRM Online with SharePoint Online completely via Microsoft’s Azure Services platform (which means everything is running in the Cloud). Some of the capabilities Stratus provides include:

· CRM users can provision SharePoint sites for Account, Opportunity and Case records, allowing them to store documents in a location where they are easier to collaborate on and in an environment where non-sales employees may be more familiar with
· CRM users can upload documents while in CRM and they are stored directly in SharePoint
· CRM users can view associated SharePoint document libraries and their contents and pull up documents without ever leaving CRM
· SharePoint users can navigate to SharePoint sites that are associated with CRM Account, Opportunity or Case records and access uploaded documents, CRM contacts, CRM activities as well as some other general CRM information
· SharePoint users can create new contacts or activities via the associated SharePoint site that are in turn stored in CRM
· SharePoint users can save CRM contacts directly into their Outlook contacts folder with the click of the mouse

The product also works with the on-premise versions of SharePoint and CRM or any combination of Online and On-premise (e.g. CRM Online and SharePoint on-premise), though the on-premise activation is not yet available.

There are some other cool ideas that will be coming out with in the future. For more information, check out the video or sign up to use the platform at http://stratus.statera.com – it only takes a few minutes to sign up and usage is free!

DoF Abu Dhabi receives two ISO Certifications in Information Security

Here is an interesting article I found on http://www.zawa.com/ and you may read the original on: http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20090616072525

Abu Dhabi 16, June 2009:
The Department of Finance (DoF) - Government of Dubai

Today announced its acquisition of two ISO certifications, ISO20000 and ISO27001 in Information Security. This comes in line with its commitment to adopting the best quality standards at all levels of Governmental practice, especially in information security. DoF is the first local department in Abu Dhabi Government to receive both certifications at once, in appreciation of its ongoing efforts to improve its services and adopt best global practices in Information Security Management.

ISO 20000 is the world's first international standard for IT Service Management, which defines the essential requirements for a service provider to deliver managed services. This certificate allows for effectively conveying the managed services which meet business and customer requirements, therefore implementing the department's strategic plan of 2009-2013.

ISO27001 is one of the global certifications with an elemental purpose of assisting to establish and sustain an effective Information Security Management System using a continual improvement approach. It concentrates on confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and executes the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development values, prevailing security of network systems and information. This certification offers essential security measures to face potential menace.

Salem Al Rumaithi, Head of the IT Directorate at DoF clarified that the international German group TUV Rheinland used a 2-phase-audit process to ascertain DoF's readiness to get both international accolades. During the first phase TUV Rheinland reviewed the existing security measures and documents such as the Information Security Policy and the IT Security Management and Risk System at DoF. In the second phase, the group conducted a scrutinized audit to test the surveillance tools stipulated in the IT security Management System's regulations and supporting documents.

'We are proud of the Information Security team's great achievements. These milestones come in line with the directives of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, Chairman of Department of Finance, to enhance the level of IT performance and security" said Al Rumaithi.

Al Rumaithi praised the IT directorate's efforts to build the capacities of staff that have been trained for the international Information Technology Infrastructure Library certification (ITIL). Currently, over 25 employees have achieved this certification which falls under the ISO umbrella. ITIL is a set of concepts and policies intended to assist organizations to develop a framework for IT Service Management and to manage their operations.

DoF adopts the highest quality standards throughout its network which encompasses over 40 governmental entities. DoF strives to enhance its human resource skills and employs the finest IT applications with the aim of supporting the department's different activities. The aim of DoF is to accomplish sustainable economic growth for the Abu Dhabi government and rank it amongst the top five governments in the world.

An overview of the Finance Department
The Department of Finance (DoF) was established in 1962, and plays a vital role in providing all local government entities with the best of breed of financial services. DoF aims at enhancing the prosperity of the Abu Dhabi community by contributing to economic growth and promoting private sector participation. DoF includes 5 main directorates and they are: Budgeting, Customs, Government Accounts, Support Services and Information Technology. DoF is adopting the latest processes and technology to further strengthen the effectiveness and efficiency of its services.

UAE Governmental Institutions Strategic Plan encompasses the following 10 priorities:

• 
  Identify efficient ways to finance priority projects of government entities including the concept of public-private partnerships
• 
  Develop a common and standardized financial framework to ensure financial stability of Abu Dhabi Government
• 
  Define decentralized financial-management model and assure its gradual transition
• 
  Establish a fiscal policy unit to develop strategies for efficient government spending and to cooperate with the federal level on all financial frameworks and policies
• 
  Introduce a performance measurement approach to enhance efficient use of government funding
• 
  Establish DoF as the reliable and comprehensive source of Abu Dhabi financial data and analysis by building a process for the collection, analysis and reporting of all financial data
• 
  Enhance world class treasury function to optimize short term cash debt management
• 
  Strengthen and develop DoF employee competencies by state of the art HR management with special focus on nationals
• 
  Enable and maintain state of the art IT technologies to support the future role and activities of DoF
• 
  Protect borders and citizens, facilitate trade, and collect revenues through effective customs

ITIL Assessment

What are the deliverables for one week ITIL Assessment? And how long does it take to complete a typical assessment.

My take is: A Matrix Assessment Report that will assess People, Process and Tools for each discipline under assessment.

=Maturity Score
=Score for each process assessed based upon maturity level
=Risk & Implication Report
=Recommendations

Time wise I would say it is an open ended question, one can do two to three disciplines in a week, i.e., Incident, Problem, Change, Service Management or others but in case of V3 Strategy, Design, Transition, Operation and Continous Service Improvement may take one week each.


With The Complete ITIL V3 Readiness Assessments, you can put any or all of the assessments to work in your company:

• Service Management strategy and value planning
• Linking business plans and directions to IT service strategy
• Planning and implementing service strategy

• Service design objectives and elements
• Selecting the service design model
• Cost model
• Benefit/risk analysis
• Implementing service design
• Measurement and control

• Managing organizational and cultural change
• Knowledge management
• Service knowledge management system
• Methods, practices and tools
• Measurement and control
• Companion best practices

• Application Management
• Change Management
• Operations Management
• Control processes and functions
• Scaleable practices
• Measurement and control

• Business and technology drivers for improvement
• Justification
• Business, financial and organizational improvements
• Methods, practices and tools
• Companion best practices