What is the problem with problem management?

“Problems are only opportunities in work clothes”, Henri J. Kaiser

Problem solving is a very human specific capability that can be honed as time elapses. Most of us are great solvers yet have difficulties isolating what really is the problem. Lets look at the root cause for this and how organizations take it.

Roots by Eva the Weaver at Flickr - Some rights reserved

More context for problem management is in order. On Rob England’s Review of recent ITIL studies paper, one of the studies analysed gives this quantitative information:

“problem management – a process that requires organizational maturity and commitment – is the ITIL process most firms are currently [2010] implementing (24%) or planning to implement (24%). Furthermore, 43% currently follow ITIL problem management processes, reflecting a 91% adoption/soon-to-be-adopted rate among those surveyed.”

Have a phenomenal 2012! And three things

My three things for this week... inspired by J.D.Meier

From a quotation I read this morning I met again J.D.Meier’s blog and found his 30 days of getting results manifesto [in J.D. Meier words this ebook "is a collection of little lessons you can use to improve your personal productivity and personal effectiveness"].

Broke the rules. Read day 1 and day 2 at once! I will tell you how it went for me next Friday. And in 30 days.

Have a phenomenal 2012!

Até já,

Rui

On security for IT services

Security by Loopzilla at flickr - some rights reserved

[from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/loopzilla/2073400408/]

How should one go about regarding security for IT services?

One can look at it taking in account the service lifecycle approach from ITIL and concentrate on the Design phase, when we can invest early in order to achieve that honorable goal of having the minimum (avoidable) surprises and rework when service finally goes live. In other words, reduce operational costs by designing services right.

Some ideas (in no particular order):

1. Ensure external partners and suppliers that contribute to the services know and formally agree to their responsibilities (Underpinning Contracts)
2. Also get internal groups/teams formally agree on their responsibilities (Operational Level Agreements)
3. Changes to the services must include security impact assessment
4. A procedure for receiving and acting on security vulnerabilities reported from vendors of components that support the service
5. Include an explicit security section regarding security requisites in the initial analysis phase for new or changed services
6. Link the security requisites to service level targets so the SLA covers them
7. Check those requisites with customer when feasible (or at least with yourself if you’re a good candidate for using the service)
8. Make sure security tests are covered in the test plan
9. Then, while transitioning the service, perform the security tests
10. Have experts trying to break your service from outside and inside
11. Use the tools. There are technical tools and best practices you can apply thus avoiding reinventing the wheel or forgetting important checks
12. If a security incident happens is it clear for everybody who must be involved and what to do?

Yes, some of these will happen in the Transition and Operation phases even though their planning occurs before.

Love to hear about more ideas!

ISO/IEC 20000:2011 Diagram

ISO/IEC 20000:2011 Service Management System and its Processes diagram

This time you can have the ISO/IEC 20000:2011 diagram showing the current structure for this service management standard.

ISO/IEC 20000:2011 Processes Diagram (PDF – English)

Use and share.

InformationWeek/HDI Service Desk survey interesting findings

Topics I found interesting at first glance after reading the  State of the IT Service Desk report  by John Custy, InformationWeek/HDI (June 2011):

• Mobile devices support on the rise, security issues and work/personal frontier
• Lack of information security management processes in place (even though awareness and investment in specific tools)
• Low investment on standards and frameworks for quality management (ISO/IEC 20000 got 12% utilization out of 1214 professionals surveyed))
• Unclear costs and benefits of Service Desk – IT does not know how much it costs

Also, latest technology trends drive changes and incident volume (desktop virtualization, server virtualization and cloud computing at the top).

40% of respondents stated Service request management (request fulfilment using ITIL terminology) being implementing or followed – meaning that requests are treated under incident management. Event management is in place for 1 out of every 4 organizations surveyed. Opportunities for improvement here in these two areas.

ITIL v3 2011 edition: Official Glossary is out – a handy, free reference

Infinite Wisdom by Ksioninc at Flickr - Some rights reserved

As before, this official Glossary is a quite useful and free reference on ITIL. You can get this on other languages here (on this post date the list included: Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, German, Korean, Romanian, Russian and Latin American Spanish).

ITIL v3 2011 edition Glossary  [English]

Mush and Room #32: Extra! Extra! ITIL v3 2011 edition

ITIL v3 reloaded (the 2011 edition)

Mush and Room #31: ISO 20000:2011 has landed

Room for a timely review on ISO 20000

Brightalk’s ITIL “v4″ (2011 edition) highlights

Took short notes on what Vernon Lloyd shared during Brightalk’s “ITIL v4? -What’s new? webinar

Service Strategy

• Key concepts and diagram clarification
• New two processes: Strategy Management and BRM (at last! Business Relationship Management existed on ISO/IEC 20000 and was missing on ITIL)

Service Design

• New process: Design Coordination
• Service Catalogue clarification

Service Transition/Operation

• Little changes to Service Transition/Operation
• Some workflows were corrected (e.g., incident management)
• Proactive Problem management expanded

CSI

• CSI Register: New concept, to register all CSI initiatives going on
• 7-step improvement process changed
• CSI/Deming cycle and Knowledge Mgmt links clarified

ITIL v3.1 - 2011 edition covers

The ITIL v3, 2011 edition comes out next 29th of July.

Drive: Mastery – Learning versus Performance

While rereading the mastery chapter (Daniel H. Pink’s Drive book) what hit me today was this: Learning versus Performance. Both are valid for goals on our life. But performance only goals may come from a limited view of our own intelligence (limited) while learning denounces a growing attitude – even with significant effort we can always improve our intellect.

Drive: Mastery

So. So as Daniel H. Pink states I suggest one approaches all in life with a learning attitude, regardless of how mundane and repetitive the task you’re focusing on may be .

Drive: Mastery - Learning versus Performance