Taking ITIL out of IT

The case study:

A town decides to upgrade its image to drive more business and increase revenue for the town council.

ITML (ITmeetsLaw Ltd) a Service Management consultancy – the remit of the consultancy is to analyse the services involved in the business vision, develop and implement processes that would help the town achieve its goals.

ITML aim:

Find Strategic Assets.

Develop assets where possible into strategic assets.

Design or re-design the processes to achieve the business goals.

Put in place processes that would help the town achieve its aim.

Agree on a transition process.

Long term continuous improvement of the service processes.

We found there were a number of services in existing already in the town. They are:

• Transport Services – this includes the roads, buses and waterways
• Commercial services – this includes the business parks and the town’s financial services.
• The City Council – this includes the Mayor and the elected council members, traditional land owners and area groups that form the decision making arm of the town.

Let’s look at how we dealt with one of the most important areas for the development of the town - Transport services.

The first issue we considered the strategy of the Town. They were as follows:

1. Increases the footfall.
2. Increase business thereby increase the revenue of the town.
3. Reduce travel time within the town – make travel more convenient.

The first thing we did was to get a baseline (A snapshot or a position which is recorded. Although the position may be updated later, the baseline remains unchanged and available as a reference of the original state and as a comparison against the current position) of the footfall. This helps us to gauge the progress we have made at different stages of the project.

The next thing was to decide how the service provided by the roads can be improved. We decided to freeze all road work for 6 months whilst the Road Repairs Advisory Board (RRAB) board was set up. We advised the town to appoint an RRA Manager. His main role is to convene the board meeting and make sure that all stakeholders to the road repair are informed. He also collates a list of the future repairs so that the RRA stakeholders know which repairs will affect them and which ones will probably cause a total gridlock of the town. The RRAB also considers road work to be carried out by the utility companies (e.g. water, gas, electricity, telephone companies etc) and any other company that needs to ‘dig up’ any of the roads. It also covers how long the road use is disrupted. It also looks at the proposals for new roads. Companies that need to repair or ‘dig up’ the road are approved for an appointed time and could be fined if they exceed their time unless they can provide a very good reason (acceptable by the RRA).

The process we put in place was a follows:

1. All requests for road work are sent to the Information Centre. This can be done by phone, email or in writing. These are logged by the Information Centre staff.
2. The requests are then categorised according to the level of priority. Priority levels are set at levels such as High, Medium, Low and Urgent or Emergency. These levels are determined by understanding the combined impact and urgency of the road works being considered. The impact of the work describes the degree of 'disturbance' that a work will cause on the road concerned or on the town of not doing the road work. For example, if there is a burst pipe in an area, this would be any emergency situation. Triggers are put in place on all roads to alert the information centre or a report is logged with the information centre staff. An emergency meeting is called and the repairs will be carried out very quickly.
3. The RRA Manager is responsible for categorising the requests. He can delegate this to the Information Centre Supervisors.
4. The High priority requests will need the RRAB consent to proceed. The RRA Manager will decide to call the RRAB meeting and the attendees.
5. The RRAB will consist of all stakeholders in the matter. This includes experienced Road Engineers within the Town Council who cover the affected area, representatives of the areas concern and the service provider who wants to carry out the work.
6. The meetings can be carried out by conference call, email or Video Link.
7. The board provides advice as to whether the work should proceed. They also provide information regarding ways that the work can be carried out efficiently.
8. The provider who wants to carry out the repairs will provide a justification as to why the work is essential and possible impact of not carrying out the work. This is provided the RRA manager who ensures all attendees of the meeting have the information well in advance of the meeting.
9. The RRAB may specify how the work is to be carried out. The RRA manager has the responsibility for making sure the work is carried out as required.
10. The RRA manager has develops a schedule of work and provides the standards expected by the township.
11. When the work is finished the road is inspected by the RRA team who sign it off as completed. They have a set of required documentations. These are inspected and certified. The team checks the physical work done on the basis of an acceptance criterion.
12. The road can now be formally delivered to the Roads department who over sees continuous improvement on the basis of an accepted and agreed criteria.

The above shows one part of the work done. The main issue here is that the above is based on the ITIL. It shows that ITIL as a framework of ‘Good Practice’ can be applied to Service Management outside Information Technology projects. This not a wholly Information Technology project but ITIL has been used here to design the processes required. IT (Information Technology) comes in where you need some automation. The areas that might benefit from automation are:

• Design and modelling
• Service catalogue – a list of all the services available to customers may be stored in a database with GUI (graphical user interface) interface which allows self service.
• Trend recognition and analysis – this can help in checking the type and amount of call the information centre is receiving.
• Classification, prioritisation and routing.
• Detection and monitoring
• Optimization
• Service Knowledge Management System – is the set of tools, processes, and databases used to manage knowledge and information. This includes trusted sources, Configuration Databases (CMDB’s), Configuration Management activities, the CMS, the SACM process and anything else required to turn data into wisdom.

ITML usually start a service management programme by invoking a service strategy – this provides guidance on how to design, develop and implement service management not only as an organisational capability but as a strategic asset. This is done as follows:

1. Market Space – We look into all opportunities that could be exploited to meet the business needs. We identify the possible IT Services that can be delivered to the customer
2. Constraints are assessed. This includes the costs and risks attributable to complexity, uncertainty and conflicts in the business environment.
3. Service Portfolio Management – This includes all the services that will be provided in this programme. The service Portfolio is used to manage the entire Lifecycle of all services. It can be categorised into:
• Service Pipeline – Service sponsored or in Development
• Service Catalogue – Live service or those available for Deployment
• Retired Service – Decommissioned/ retired Service.
4. Risk Management – we carry out a risk analysis before the programme starts and at regular agreed intervals.
5. Demand Management – We try to eliminate waste. This is done by removing the any uncertainty concerning demand. Excess capacity generates costs without creating value. Customers are reluctant to pay for idle capacity. We put in place an effective demand management system.
6. Financial Management – Here we manage the budgeting, Accounting and charging requirements
7. Business Case – We provide justifications for significant items of expenditure. This includes information about costs, benefits, options, issues, risks and possible problems.