WTF is ITSMaaS

ITSMaaS - what the feck is that?

As a marketing acronym, we’re not convinced that it works very well - it's quite the mouthful!

But, the idea of IT Service Management (ITSM) delivered as a Service, really does work and it can be of great benefit to those organisations looking for improvement in any area of ITSM.

Let’s consider the array of practices with the current version of one of the ITSM industry’s global standards, ITIL (ITIL4) and other ITSM standards and frameworks could apply.

With over 30 different practices that organisations are encouraged to master, ranging from Availability Management to Workforce Talent Management, the journey for not only qualification, but actual real hands-on mastery, is quite frankly, a lofty goal for any proficient team of IT professionals.

Obtaining all the shiny badges and certificates is one thing, but the hard-knocks experience from the coal-face of real-world ITSM is an entirely different matter.

Many organisations are still only beginning their ITSM journey and so consideration for ITIL4 might appear too far away. It is common to see organisations start their ITSM maturity journey’s with the Service Desk, but regardless of ITIL4, in any ITSM maturity journey there are still many other practices to be considered in addition to the Service Desk.

Let’s take an example technology organisation that is tasked with having to improve the delivery of technology services to its external customers. What does that mean? Improve the delivery according to who? What approach is correct? What practice should we focus on first? There are myriad questions with equally myriad answers!

Many of the answers to the possible questions are typically consultative in nature and not entirely useful, and often look like this:

“It depends!”

Great! So now what? Where do we start?

This is where we’ll steal some good advice from ITIL. “Start where you are”

As the second of the brilliant seven Guiding Principals of ITIL4, this is great pragmatic advice. In other words, don't stop the good work already underway and let’s find out what works and what doesn’t work, and let’s do that quickly and define a plan for improvement.

This will typically mean some form of assessment. Someone (or multiple people) must determine the current state of ITSM delivery in order to understand where an improvement initiative can yield the greatest value from opportunities, or mitigate the largest threats.

We immediately have to apply a Continuous Improvement mindset. To determine the current state and follow the principal of “Start where you are”, we should really be asking the continuous improvement questions, “What is the Vision?”, “Where are we now?”, “Where do we want to be?” and then “How do we get there?”

By answering these open questions, everyone now starts to get an appreciation of what needs to be addressed and in what priority, rather than randomly throwing their opinions and biases into the ring.

With this plan in hand, we can now consider how the work effort for these improvements will be resourced, but this is where we often hit a stumbling block. Everyone is too busy for 'Problem Management' (grrrrr we've blogged about this before!). But yes, it's often difficult to find the time for this stuff without understanding the ROI (in service improvement or cost), and if there's no budget or room in the headcount for 'extra people', then all these grand aspirations fall apart.

The ITSM “as a Service” model is an ideal fit for this, from assessment through to any practice improvement. The beauty of the “as a Service” model is that, like water flowing through a pipe, resourcing can be turned on and off as demand, appetite and budgets fluctuate.

Let’s imagine that Problem Management is highlighted as being a practice that requires significant improvement. There will be multiple ways to address that improvement and it will be different for each customer, but the important point is that it doesn’t need to consume the energy of a full time resource (person).

The improvement might require some changes in behaviour and supporting processes and perhaps the introduction of a collaborative weekly review session, and this might require an initial burst of effort, followed by a regular review of a couple of hours with additional effort to report on the measurements to demonstrate improvement. In this simple illustration it can be seen that the improvement in Problem Management can be achieved without a full time resource, with appropriate KPIs and outcomes wrapped around the service to drive the required behaviours. The same can be applied to running Change Management, Vendor Management and so on. The “as a Service” model is therefore ideal for this type of scenario.

Once a practice (like Problem Management) has been improved it can then be handed over to business as usual for steady-state operation for monitoring and further continual improvement. Or of course, it can be left exactly where it is to be run as a BAU service by the (hopefully!) highly experienced vendor, so the internal team can focus on 'other stuff'.

So is ITSMaaS a thing? Well, perhaps not the acronym, but it’s a resounding YES to the actual delivery of ITSM.

If you'd like to talk to us about this, or any other ITSM related topic or our services, feel free to contact us at hello@itsmpeople.co.uk or email the boss directly at tim@itsmpeople.co.uk