Speed

Every organization is looking to increase speed.

Change has caused us to be more nimble and reduce cycle times.

Speed, speed, speed.

In the book, “ITIL4: The New Frontier”, I discuss this topic.

The greater the speed, the greater the need for governance.

Yes, governance is a “bad” word for many organizations because it represents bureaucracy.

These two words are related only like the words cookies and weight gain. Weight gain occurs for me when I eat too many cookies 🍪. And, I love cookies.

One easy-to-remember way of knowing whether your organization is operating under governance or bureaucracy is to ask 2 questions:

1. Are these policies and controls easily tied back to the organization’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives? Basically, are we doing things the way we have always done them or are they there to help us accomplish what we are trying to accomplish?

2. Is there a less-burdensome way to accomplish what we are trying to accomplish?

Governance is required for speed. In fact, governance supplies the guard rails for speed.

Maybe I am Dreaming …

I may be a dreamer but I am excited about the future of AI and ML within Service Management and Asset Management.

Here are two examples:

1. Help ensure Knowledge articles are current by evaluating the quality and currency of the topics most searched. Add in the ability to survey (and analyze the results of) searchers. The next step may be to – using AI – transfer “knowledge” from the project/product update documentation.

2. Now, Discovery can search for all software and hardware on the network and compare to Asset register/database. But, imagine the ability to match user patterns to licensing and hardware needs. Then, taking it a step further, the AI knows by support tickets how to incorporate into future licensing (trends, etc) and even hardware refresh cycles.

These are not that far off from current capabilities.

Change is Coming

The way we have always done things is not the way we will do them in the future.

Change is coming. Even if you think of the disruption from AI, ML, RPA, etc, it will change how we do Service Management, Asset Management, and Business Continuity.

We must start looking at how we do things through fresh eyes.

Innovation will drive a demand to do things differently and better.

How we do Change, for example, will be different. The same goes for Problem, Incident, and Configuration.

What will not change is the need to deliver optimal outcomes for stakeholders.

Disruption is Coming

Disruption is coming. No, not from the much-discussed avenues.

Most of the time, disruption comes from outside of the traditional industry.

For example, Elon Musk disrupted the auto industry as an outsider. This is the norm. Think of Apple introducing the iPhone in 2009. The first smartphone was not from the traditional phone manufacturers of the time.

Outsiders have two advantages:

1. They do not have legacy systems and processes weighing them down.
2. They are able to see an opportunity and attack it.

Disruption is coming to how we think about Service Management and Asset Management.

Consider how we have fallen into the same trap as the auto and phone manufacturers above.

I have a few ideas I will share in the coming weeks, but I would like everyone to look at how we do things through the eyes of a disruptive outsider.