12 steps to…5 principles of…7 methods of…

Most of us prefer life to be placed in neatly categorised boxes. It gives us a sense of control over things we don’t necessarily have control over. The same rings true for IT Service Management. We want a process or a tool for everything. We generally don’t like grey areas (well, most of us anyway). We prefer to live with a false sense of security instead of facing the reality of a situation. If it’s not neatly packed by the end of the show we grapple around for that elusive piece of the puzzle, which will complete the picture so we can sit back and marvel at our handiwork.

Playing rugby as a little boy, I never wanted to come from the field with clean clothes – I wanted mud or grass stains all over me – it made me feel like I played well, got tackled, got up and tried again.

Well, IT Service Management is messy – you have to get your hands dirty. In fact, if you play at all, you will get dirty. Incident Management by its very nature is messy – especially for the customer – but that is why it exists. The aim of Incident Management is just that – to make the customer’s outage or issue less of a mess so they can continue their business operations.

Sometimes we get it wrong – do we stop to consider that getting it wrong is not necessarily a sign of failure? It’s Problem Management! It creates an opportunity for growth – we try, we fail, we get up, we improve, we gain new insights and grow in experience – as long as our focus is always the customer.

In the end ITIL will never ‘solve’ ITSM – nor does it claim to – but it can help us improve. But, isn’t that sometimes what we want it to do, or do we accept that it is a framework – and yes, sometimes it is ok when a piece of the frame is skew – maybe for a reason: to adapt to that part of your business that doesn’t fit in a neat little box.

You Can Learn More About the ManageEngine Product Line By Going to manageengine.optrics.com

The original article/video can be found at Coming clean on ITSM