Bradley at Work

Some ITIL advocates insist that having a good process is separate from having a good tool. "If the process is right, you can do it on a post-it note. Putting it in the tool will speed things up, but it won't fundamentally change the nature of the process." This is rubbish. It may be true for small scale processes, but technology automation can open up new process possibilities that just wouldn't be possible without a technology assist. I think that we should plan our processes with a tool in mind that can accomplish the task. Think of a Service Catalog that gives an executive insight into the costs of the things he orders. He can dynamically scale up or down his order or services to meet his projected needs. He can tweak variables and make decisions because of the power of the tool. It gives him a visualization that simply wouldn't be available in a paper-based process. The NewScale demonstration (a prominent Service Catalog provider) really drove this point...

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) is a specialization of the more general practice of Service Management. I'm at a Pink Elephant conference this week and I'm been thinking about ITSM versus human biology. When you eat a sandwich, you don't need to provide advanced notice to your pancreas that a "change" is coming to the "body environment." You look at the sandwich and get a whiff of it and your body takes those signals to start the salivation process. Once you start masticating the food, you push some of it down your throat with your tongue. That triggers the peristalsis that carries the food down to the stomach. Each stage in the process keeps the coming stages apprised of what is coming and they each know what they need to do. There is a lot of communication going on all the time, but there is no master planning. Two way signals keep information where it needs to be, exactly when it is needed, and no more. We risk running into the ...