How non-technical people can benefit from ITIL training -- Manage IT from a business perspective

First, I must confess that while I write about technology for a living, my background is non-technical. Just the thought of taking a math or science class in college was enough to send me into a state of panic, because only my right brain functions 24x7. Still, it was time to face the music and I decided that if wanted to continue to work on projects about the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL^®), I had to take an ITIL foundation class and get ITIL certified.

The good news: the course didn’t have anything to do with science, and I could delegate the portion related to math to my classmates. It was really a business class highlighting the value of doing the right things for the business. We learned that business cannot survive with just good people. That’s because people, processes, and technology need to be aligned to the business goals. Our goal was to run a profitable airport.

The class included an overview of ITIL processes and a test. My favorite part, however, was the BSM Airport Simulation. This exercise gave us a chance to understand what it really means to implement Business Service Management (BSM), an approach for managing IT from a business perspective. The heart of BSM is ITIL. As part of this workshop, we watched on a screen, with updates every few seconds, how much money our company was making or losing based on decisions we made in IT. Here are some of the highlights and lessons learned.

• Our class of about 10 people was divided into groups of people in IT and the business, where we assumed different roles. Our job was to solve IT problems effectively so that flights could take off on time, and that the airport, BSM Airport, could make money. If we didn’t have our processes down, and if we failed to ask the right questions, we would lose money.
• Ironically, I was assigned to work with two other people as a technical services expert. We would get a trouble ticket from the person assigned to be on the service desk, look up information in a book, and use a guidebook and our newly learned skills of ITIL processes to find the right question and solve Mensa-like math problems to get the answers needed for closing trouble tickets. It wasn’t unusual to get three or four problems hitting us at the same time. We had a budget to hire consultants if we knew that we needed assistance.
• Immediately, I knew that I wasn’t going to be much help in the math area. So, I assigned myself the role of project manager, and worked as a liaison between the help desk, business customer, and the person assigned to financing IT.

We failed miserably the first round and shut down the airport. In fact, by the second round, our cumulative loss was nearly $250,000, our mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) was over 16 minutes per problem, and availability was under 45%.

• What happened? For starters, we didn’t talk to the business. We were working on solving problems we thought were the right ones, and then learned that sometimes we asked the wrong questions. We were handling tickets as they came in, and not always based on business priority. For example, we treated making sure that catering was available at one terminal with almost the same sense of urgency as a threat to the control tower. What were we thinking????? We didn’t hire consultants when we should have. And, we didn’t always keep the help desk informed of the status of various tickets. With each mistake, we could see how much it was costing the company.

We got the system down correctly by round three, and made of up for losses with a cumulative profit of $108,000. Our revenue jumped from a low of $9,600 in round 1 to $459,000 in round 3. Availability jumped to 83 percent. MTTR dropped to just 3 minutes and 30 seconds per problem, instead over 16 minutes. Only 11 flights were able to take off in the first round. We got that number up to 55 by round three.

What did we do differently the third time around?

• First, in our strategy session before the last round started, we made sure that our processes and technology implementations were effective and understood by everyone. You learn this in ITIL training. Then we set up a clear communications strategy and defined how events would be communicated efficiently and prioritized – more ITIL basics.
• Then, most important, we learned to make sure that we were always answering the right question from the start. So, each time we thought we had identified the question, I asked the person assigned to be the “business,” if we were working on the correct question. There’s no point in solving a problem if you solve the wrong one. As obvious as this seems, we, like many real IT organizations, hadn’t initially always checked with the business enough, and sometimes we solved the wrong problems.
• We played close attention to working to business priorities instead of IT priorities, and very quickly assessed which problems we could solve in-house immediately and which ones needed to be outsourced, just like ITIL recommends.
• We also collected a knowledgebase of answers, so that if we were asked the same question more than once, we would be able to answer it more quickly. We felt the pain of what happens when IT is not aligned with the business, and experienced the benefits of BSM nirvana.
• We finally got the “ah ha” moment and started to understand the value of people, process, technology and supplier alignment to achieve business objectives. If we had done a few more rounds, I know we would have added tremendous value to the business.

I recommend that anyone interested in ITIL should take BMC’s ITIL Foundation course with the BSM Airport Simulation. The instructors are excellent and the workshop will provide everyone with a good overview of ITIL and how it can help you manage IT from a business perspective. For more information on where this course is offered, please visit www.bmc.com/education and click on your country. Also, check out these valuable podcasts as part of the ITIL certification series:

ITIL Certification Series, Part 1 of 2 - Service Support

ITIL Certification Series, Part 2 of 2 - Service Delivery