Discussing the New Incident Management model, plus the sale of Axelos to PeopleCert.

This SPECIAL episode discusses the big issues and questions of the day, with our special guest Ken Gonzalez..! Ken is a well-known and respected voice in the industry, as a practitioner and analyst. Ken works with Gartner, although he is expressing only his personal opinions here. We hear about Ken’s previous lives as a Marine and musician, then dive straight into looking at the big issues of the day – the new IT Revolution Incident Management Framework, plus the sale of Axelos to PeopleCert. What do we say about these things?? – listen in to hear..! We also hear that Ken enjoys beers, porter, stout and a good Belgian…?! (you need to listen to the end to get that..)

Doug Tedder is a highly experienced consultant and trainer, who always speaks his mind with clarity, good sense and great insight. Doug’s view is that ESM should not repeat the mistakes that have been made with ITSM – i.e. to ‘inflict’ people to do things, with good intent but often without explanation. We need good governance to make this work and we shouldn’t just rely on the IT team to do this. Digital transformation, Ai and automation also need to be viewed from beyond IT. Also, we can’t just expect the tools to deliver value and collaboration. We also discuss the tough question of who is the owner of this…is it COO, CIO, CEO..? We also learn about some very good bourbon…

We are joined by Roman Jouravlev, the Axelos programme manager for ITIL 4 and the conscience and brilliant mind of ITSM. The discussion moves from various current flavours of service management, to identifying these as being part of the same thing. We shouldn’t need ITSM and ESM – all organisations deliver and consume services to and within each other. This moves imperceptibly on to a fascinating and fundamental discussion on long term sustainability.! We also learn a number of new terms and about Roman’s move to London for Axelos. There’s also a surprise in his choice of drink.

The Kentish-Texan Daniel Breston, who claims to be ‘retiring’ joins and provides some sage insights. We dip into Dan’s 50 years of IT stories and discuss Lean, which Dan has been closely involved with. A key point is the need for all to participate in using and applying things like ‘Lean – including the CIO and board. On drinks Dan dons his tuxedo to sip Casino Royale…

If we can’t define services in IT what chance do other teams have..?

We start off talking about agile and how we might apply that way of working to service management - also how huge the opportunity is (with ESM) and how much bigger this is than IT..

Our guest is the sci-fi geek/rocker Akshay from Axelos who also gives us his entire life story – obviously rivalling Barclay’s long questions. Actually Akshay is a key part of the ITIL 4 team and ITIL product ambassador/evangelist. We explore the key question about how we can use service management principles outside of IT – is ESM actually a thing? Akshay clarifies his commitment to ‘service management’ as a broad concept, with some scepticism around what we are calling Enterprise Service Management. After talking about service management for 30 years its worrying that we still struggle to define ‘service’ as in service management – how can we expect people in other teams to get it..?  There is then a great discussion around the practical definitions of service and products – is service management also about improvement? Ultimately we talk about spades and shovels, nouns or verbs and how language matters! Soon we move on to drinking of course (including a non-alcoholic drink..!) and explore multiple types of cardamon pods.

Margo is the Product owner for ITIL 4, which has been built using product management techniques, as well as being about product and service management.

We discuss eating our own dog food, using blueprints, journey mapping and personas. We also discuss how there is a real ‘marriage’ or convergence between product and service management, in a way that develops a balanced and sustainable approach to work and business life.

This also leads into how we can develop service management beyond IT – and how we get the (ESM) message across. The discussion also keeps returning to people and the need to hold on to talent. As ever we move to discuss drinking – Margo suggests 2 - a first for the podcast..! A brilliant discussion on the future direction for ITSM.

In this episode we learn that Ian has X-ray eyes, but is not an Avenger. We are joined by David Cannon. David is a leading writer and consultant in the service management world. He has a great work goal – to drive the business skills of IT people - much needed! David’s experience includes recent and past authorship in ITIL – recently with the DITs book but also in V3, which he sees as a product of its time, like all best practice.. We also discuss the real meaning of Digital Transformation – not just to convert what we previously did into a digital format. ITSM/ESM also needs context and intelligence – obviously these are rare.. The discussion includes some great examples and insights from David, whilst Ian and Barclay focus on drink as usual….

Can AI help us to be better humans?

Dan is a highly experienced product leader and entrepreneur in the automation and AI area. He brings a huge amount of experience an insight in to how Ai will change how we work – for the better. We discuss how technology can help us to be better people, spend more time with our family etc. Ai is not just about robots taking over our world – AI means ‘artificial’ i.e. not real / not human intelligence, and as leaders we have the opportunity to use this technology to replace work that is dull, dirty or dangerous. The challenge for real success is still around culture and what organisations can expect from tech - and this must be more than just saving costs and removing people. The message needs to be clear and we all need to clarify it… We also discover what a ‘quarantini’ cocktail is..! A really profound discussion on the future of work..!

Sami is CEO of Happy Signals and brings his vast knowledge and understanding of the user experience and employee experience of IT to the podcast. We discover the amazing fact that IT support services are doing really well - better than HR and Finance for service and satisfaction. Also that internal IT does better than external managed services - and that the experience varies noticeably across countries too. Some fascinating discussions around these stats and analysis, from perception not just hard transactional metrics. We also learn about Finnish gin for the podcast bar..!

In which we discover Erika’s past short career as a microbiologist and how she found her way into Service Management, ITIL and consultancy…and now of course as an ITIL 4 author. Her scientific approach really helps in how she works with clients to develop a practical and flexible approach – the value of using hypothesis...! Barclay asks the longest question ever, but Erika still answers all of it – everyone is exhausted and requires a drink. Erika’s suggested drink is the very colourful and appetising Aperol Flip. This is a great high energy discussion which focuses on the value of leadership and the need to change, even when this is challenging, In IT now we are improving people’s lives – ‘I want to change work life’ – Erika Flora.