I attended a stellar day of seminars courtesy of the National Capital Region chapter of the ITSMF. (IT Service Management) The seminars and keynotes were great and I will be writing a little more about them in the future.
There is one quick note that I wanted to make. One of the speakers at this event, an IS Process Manager for Jazz aviation gave a talk on their ITIL journey. I thought the talk was superb because it outlined in a hands on fashion some of the challenges and obstacles that existed, and that had to be overcome.
I won’t cover all of the steps they made, but wanted to point out this;
They started their journey in 2007.
Started the next phase by 2009.
And now in 2011 they may be getting somewhere close to starting the 3rd phase.
Four years and counting.
The SMB Takeaway
If some consultant or vendor tells you that ITSM or ITIL is a quick silver bullet, they are ITIL snake-oil salesmen.
It is a journey – not a destination, and it can be a long one.
The presenter made one other excellent point about this journey – your business does not stop while you make it. Stopping business initiatives and strategies for a four year IT improvement, even though it will be beneficial to the business, is a career limiting move.
An initiative like this is pretty much guaranteed to be a part time project as key initiatives and projects still must be rolled out across your entire business.