Pink Elephant - The IT and ITIL Service Management Experts

Let's face it - everyday, the IT professional is bombarded with numerous demands on their time. First they have what are supposedly their own jobs to complete; then, they have all of those deliverables demanded by the projects they have been assigned to. Last but not least, they are called upon to fix incidents or perform root cause analysis or to be involved in a Change. What is a guy or gal to do with all of these demands upon their time? That is exactly the question Pink Elephant is going to address in this PinkCast. The simple but profound premise is that unless a policy exists to assist an organization with this question, prioritization will always be relative to each individual and not shared. If this is the case, then the following statements are unfortunately true: There is no true ability to deliver against the SLA, ITIL Service Support integration is almost impossible, Forget trying to automate escalation and notification in your tools

In ITIL, it is necessary to establish the criteria for the success of the change in accordance with the business requirements for the change. These criteria for success are established though the release qualification criteria, or acceptance criteria developed by Release Management. Join Pink Elephant's Managing Consultant Graham Price and learn about some of the key considerations for the Change and Release implementation review.

Go behind the scenes with Pink Elephant's President David Ratcliffe, and VP of Global Events, George Spalding, and hear all about the exciting plans underway for the 11th Annual International IT Service Management Conference & Exhibition, coming Feb 18-21, 2007 at the Venetian, Las Vegas. Find out how Pink Elephant intends to offer fresh, relevant content at the largest worldwide conference for IT Service Management. David and George will discuss: What’s different for the 2007 conference? What’s available for those who are in the more advanced stages of IT Service Management, as well as for those just starting out? Who’s on the roster of outstanding keynote presenters (including the subject of a soon-to-be Hollywood movie!)? How to stay informed about conference developments. And much more! Never been to a Pink Elephant conference? This PinkCast tells you what you can expect, from the content-rich sessions to the valuable networking opportunities. But why not see it for yourself? View a clip from last year’s conference!

An ITIL implementation project requires a major cultural change and a transfer of knowledge to: Ensure awareness of the program. Provide training for the specific roles and participants. Monitor and adjust the attitudes and behaviors of the employees. Advertise the long term benefits expected. To achieve these objectives, there needs to be a formalized and comprehensive Communications Plan. This plan, if implemented effectively, can make the difference between success of the overall ITIL program, or failure through a lack of interest or understanding. Join Bill Irvine, Pink Elephant Executive Consultant, in this PinkCast which will highlight the components of an ITIL Communications Plan and provide examples of some of its key contents to be fully effective.

Since the advent of Henry Ford’s Model T and the creation of complex assembly lines, organizational designs have focused on breaking apart complex processes into individual tasks – the result of which manifests itself as silo or stove pipe based organizational charts where the right hand has little knowledge of what the left hand is doing. As technically focused IT shops transition into service organizations, we have to splice back together what has been artificially separated. In reality, what is occurring when an organization defines IT Services and Process, is that two new virtual horizontal organizational structures are being established on top of the traditional domain-based silos. The end result of this is the establishment of a matrix organization where individuals within now have multiple lines of accountability and are constantly faced with the requirement to prioritize their time. Without a doubt, a critical role to process implementation is the creation and empowerment of a single, accountable process owner whose management activities and scope of governance span across the great divide between organizational silos. The process owner plays the important role of champion, visionary, protector and advocate – without whom the process has absolutely no chance of survival.

Implementing ITSM processes always represents significant organizational change, concerns and resistance. Many of the issues raised are legitimate risks that need to be identified, documented and managed as either an issue for the project Charter or project risk log. Add to this the need for newly formed project team’s to constructively air the concerns and risks they perceive in achieving project success and we have the perfect opportunity to conduct a workshop activity called Mountains, Molehills and Dead Buffaloes. Mountains and Molehills are probably self-evident but listen to this PinkCast to find out what Dead Buffaloes are and how to address all of these issues. A problem defined is a problem half solved!

To truly understand the health and welfare of anything one must look at it from multiple perspectives. This statement summarizes the position of a best practice measurement model called the balanced Score Card documented by Kaplan and Norton. The traditional BSC method is a strategic approach and performance management system that enables organizations to translate a company's vision and strategy working from four perspectives: Financial perspective, Customer perspective, Business process perspective, Innovation: Learning and growth perspective. Pink Elephant has expanded on this approach and gone one level deeper under the Business Process Perspective and have expanded this area of measurement into four additional measurement quadrants. Value: Is the process objective being achieved? Quality: Are the process activities being executed according to pre-defined quality parameters? Performance/Throughput: Is the process being done at a rate of speed that meets targets? Compliance: Is the process being done consistently by all parties within the process Scope?

How many times have you seen the glint in the executive's eye when he or she proudly proclaims a first call resolution of 80% percent or higher? How many of us focus on this supposed key metric as the primary Key Performance Indicator for our outsourced Service Desk Contract? What if we were to say that this single metric is probably the most misleading metric of all time? This week's PinkCast examines the "First Call Resolution" myth and what it actually might be covering up. We invite you to listen to this engaging interview with George Spalding, Executive Consultant with Pink Elephant.

Want to find out more about what a company with a name like Pink Elephant has to teach organizations about managing IT? Go straight to the source! In this interview with David Ratcliffe, President of Pink Elephant, Executive Consultant and ITSM guru Troy DuMoulin digs deep to find out more about Pink Elephant including how they have been involved with ITSM and ITIL since inception and their plans for exploring the next frontiers of IT Management. Maybe you'll also find out how the company got its name...