Do not follow prescribed frameworks blindly, says Aidan
Lewes. Understand underlying principles and adapt methods for your
business to maximise return on investment
The term best practice generally refers to the best possible way
of doing something. It was popularised in the 1980s through Tom
Peters’ books on business management, although there is some
momentum behind using good practice as a preferred term, since it
does not imply that no further innovation or revision is
required.
Whichever term you prefer, the essence of the concept is about
“an accepted way of doing things that works”.
The idea behind best practice is to create a specification for
what is accepted by a wide community as being the best approach for
any given situation. Then, one can compare job performance to these
best practices and determine if either the job performance was
lacking in quality, or if the specification for best practices
needs updating to include the job performance being graded.
Enterprises deploying systems based upon best practice will
therefore, in theory, have an optimal solution.
However, although enterprises may have great similarities in
terms of the functions that they need to perform, there is always
going to be a wide spectrum of factors that are different from one
enterprise to another. These will have a significant bearing upon
the way in which an enterprise needs to implement a system in order
to achieve success.
The truth is that best or good practice should not be seen as
something that can be “implemented”. Each enterprise needs to fully
understand the principles that underlie the approach, so that they
can adapt and adopt them as appropriate for their enterprise. Just
blindly following the documented way is no guarantee of success –
indeed it is highly likely to lead to failure.
In the field of IT service management, the recognised best
practice is documented in a set of volumes known as the IT
Infrastructure Library (ITIL). This is the accumulated, aggregated
and filtered view of hundreds of practitioners of the processes
they have implemented which have worked and delivered proven
value.
And although the publications are formulated in the context of
managing IT services, the processes that are defined are exactly
the ones that are required for the effective management of any
service. Like many other best practice approaches, ITIL has spread
throughout the IT community worldwide and is now accepted
universally.
Enterprises come to the realisation that they need to embrace
such an approach in different ways. Sometimes the catalyst is
external, sometimes from within.
In the case of IT service management, the drivers may come from
the business side seeking a more consistent, higher quality and/or
more cost-effective service, a need to meet regulatory compliance,
or simply recognising that a competitor or peer is achieving more
through such deployments.
Alternatively, the IT department itself may recognise that it
needs to improve the quality of service – not least to protect
itself from a knee-jerk outsourcing exercise.
The result will be some form of service improvement programme
involving multiple and continuous communication, investment in
education and training, and possibly consultancy and
technology.
Service improvement programmes are invariably about culture
change and, by and large, people do not like change, so it takes
real management effort and commitment to see the programme
through.
Altogether it can add up to a significant investment, so there
needs to be a real return. This means that it is essential to
define what you are trying to achieve and the benefits that will
accrue, benchmark where you are at the outset, and develop a plan
of how to make the journey.
As the programme unfolds, progress must be checked to ensure
that the sought-for value is being delivered. That value must be
expressed as a business value. Making a change that reduces costs
in IT, but causes huge user dissatisfaction and delivers nothing
extra, is highly unlikely to result in true, sustainable business
value.
Enterprises seeking to measure the value need to think wider.
What does reducing the number of repeat calls to the service desk
translate to in increased productivity in the business? What
competitive advantage is gained by introducing changes that work
correctly, first time? What is the effect on customer retention of
the service always being available when they want? Although
identifying the value may be challenging, it most definitely should
be there.
People often ask about the return on investment. In most cases,
trying to measure the return on investment on a service improvement
programme in isolation is pointless. The real long-term value is in
the total return on investment achieved across all IT-related
investments – including future developments that may not be on the
drawing board yet.
Best practice is not a panacea or even a prescription for how to
do something. Embracing best practice makes sense, not least
because it provides a starting point and a framework for the
development of the enterprise’s own systems. But use ITIL – and all
best practice – wisely. As Oscar Wilde said, “Rules are for the
guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”
Aidan Lawes is chief executive at the IT Service Management
Forum