Certifications Archives - Service Management Consulting and Training: Tedder Consulting

I recently polled my Twitter community on whether or not they are interested in receiving their ITIL4 Foundation certification. I was surprised to learn that the majority either did not have immediate plans or did not plan on ITIL4 Foundation certification at all.

I can understand the hesitancy of rushing into getting a certification. Some IT pros believe that certifications do not bring any benefits to an organization or to an individual and that they simply are a waste of resources. And since ITIL 4 is relatively untested, who can say whether or not it will have an impact on the way we work?

So, I wanted to address what one can immediately do after earning their ITIL 4 Foundation certification. I also wanted to discuss what CIOs and IT leaders can do to maximize the return on their investment on certification and guarantee that they’ll see results from their team after ITIL 4 certification.

For Practitioners

If you are one of the excited early adopters of ITIL 4, congratulations! Passing your foundation certification is a huge accomplishment! But before you shove your ITIL4 Foundation book into a drawer, let’s discuss what you can do once you return to your organization newly certified.

The first action you will want to take is having a de-brief with key stakeholders on what you’ve learned in your certification and how it applies to your business. ITIL4 provides a holistic approach to applying practices and processes across the business. In order to properly do that, you must achieve buy-in from every stakeholder.

Luckily, ITIL 4 will offer you insights on how you can speak the “business language” and obtain buy-in from everyone else in the organization. Applying the ITIL 4 Service Value System concept will help align the organization’s capabilities with business needs is one of your first steps for successfully utilizing your new-found knowledge.

After you’ve communicated how ITIL 4 can work to strengthen the business and the bottom line, it’s time to start applying ITIL 4’s practices to elevate the delivery of products and services. One of the biggest benefits of ITIL 4 is that it emphasizes value co-creation by leveraging systems thinking. How can systems thinking be applied within your organization? How can you drive value co-creation by leveraging systems thinking? You don’t have to wait to start leveraging this kind of thinking.

ITIL 4 also emphasizes what is known as “guiding principles”, a collection of overarching guidance that can apply to any situation within any organization. One of the guiding principles of ITIL 4 is to start where you are. Use this opportunity to evaluate where you can deliver value in current products and services and how you can streamline existing processes for speedier delivery.

You will be able to adjust as you go, continually improving as you experiment, and optimize what works within your organization. But in order to make the most of your certification, it’s best to start adopting these guiding principles immediately.

For CIOs and IT Leaders

Many of you reading this may not pursue your certification but you want to learn how to protect your investment and ensure your team is elevated by their ITIL 4 Foundation certifications.

One of the first steps you should take as an IT leader is to consider your long-term goals because ITIL 4 is the perfect way to future proof your ITSM practices. I know that many CIOs don’t have the luxury of being able to look too far into the future as they would like. But imagine where you’d like the IT organization to be in 6 months, 1 year or 3 years.

Where do you want your IT organization to be in these timeframes? What capabilities do you need to develop in order to reach those goals? The application of ITIL 4 guiding principles, the Service Value System, and practices can reduce development times, ensure higher-quality products, streamline processes, increase collaboration and improve value co-creation.

Present these long-term goals with your team now while ITIL 4 learnings are still fresh in their minds. Ask them how their learnings can be implemented so that you can achieve these goals. Remember that ITIL 4 is a holistic approach that can be used to break down silo mentality. Engaging your team at this level will empower them to practice that holistic approach to solving problems and delivering solutions. If they see an open playing field where everyone is encouraged to apply their knowledge and skills, they will be encouraged to do the same inside and outside of IT.

The second action you can take to ensure a return on your training investment is to engage your peers in the C-Suite and across the business in your team’s new learnings and practices.

ITIL 4 prepares your team to understand how IT can contribute to business value co-creation. As the IT leader, you must be the champion of this within other areas of the organization. You can work with other departments to break down silos and incorporate ITIL 4 learnings across the organization. This will demonstrate to the C-suite and other leaders what your team has learned and the value of the training investment. It will also show how ITIL 4 can benefit them and the role you need them to play in the process. Remember, you want to include them in this work, not direct them in this work. Make it an inclusive, holistic approach in which everyone can be involved.

As an added benefit, you will be giving your team an opportunity to take on leadership roles within the company. Since they are the ITIL 4 “experts” in your organization, they’ll be well positioned to champion these changes with you. This will not only benefit the entire organization, but it is an excellent way to help grow your team members as leaders and practitioners.

In another blog, I’ve touched on how ITIL 4 can open the door for Enterprise Service Management. Since your team has the proper training, you will be able to effectively expand service management concepts beyond IT and into the rest of the organization in a way that works for you.

How can Tedder Consulting Help?

At Tedder Consulting, our ITIL 4 Foundation class provides our students with an additional day of training on the practical applications of ITIL 4, providing a stronger foundation for them to take their learnings and apply it to your organization. We offer private classes where your entire team can receive their ITIL 4 Foundation certificate and we can begin to identify how these practices will improve your organization.

There are two camps of people in the IT world: those that will explain the benefits of ITIL all day long and those that find ITIL doesn’t work and think it’s a bureaucratic waste of time.

But upon further investigation, we’ve realized something. It’s possible so many people dislike ITIL because organizations aren’t really implementing ITIL.

Or excuse me, they’re not implementing “IT Service Management based on ITIL.” Whatever you want to call it, people approach the use of this framework wrong and it costs them a lot.

Let’s talk about why ITIL won’t work for your business.

When ITIL Doesn’t Work

1. You treat ITIL as gospel.

ITIL isn’t a cookbook. It’s not the gospel. It’s guidance and a framework of best practices. But what happens in certain organizations is that some manager on some level gets really excited about the idea of ITIL and then tries to implement every guideline in the book. This approach will never work!

ITIL was originally created by the British government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications agency in the 1980s. It was never meant to become a proprietary product that would be commercialized and sold. The original project was supposed to gather best practices to assist with what the government saw as increasing dependence on IT combined with a lack of standard practices that resulted in increased costs and errors.

ITIL spread to private corporations because it works. But not in the way many organizations think it does.

ITIL works because it includes best practices but it’s just a framework. It doesn’t have to be followed step by step.

The best way to get ITIL to work in your business is to adopt the guidelines and practices that make sense for your business and forget the rest.

2. You ignore the business case or business inclusion.

ITIL and ITSM have “IT” in their titles but that does not mean they are purely “IT initiatives.”

IT can’t work in a silo anymore and implementing ITSM based on ITIL without getting buy-in from anyone in executive management or anyone outside of the IT is a recipe for disaster. You have to understand how IT interacts with the rest of the business. Consider what the business needs from IT to be successful and IT’s capability for delivering on those needs, and how ITSM can help

If you want to utilize ITIL successfully, learn how to explain it in a way that senior leaders understand. They won’t speak in ITIL jargon, so you have to recognize how it can benefit the business and be able to articulate that – in business terms. If you are able to do so successfully, you will get support and investment from senior leaders.

Including business objectives and understanding the business value of IT will help your team and your organization to adopt ITIL so that it helps to facilitate business outcomes, which is the goal!

3. You don’t create a roadmap for adopting and adapting ITIL.

ITSM and ITIL are not about implementing processes for process sake. Too many organizations get so focused on implementing processes that they ignore the overall goal for why they needed those processes.

The goal is to deliver services that provide value for the business.

Creating a roadmap and connecting it to business value will help you adopt the right ITIL practices so that it supports the services and doesn’t just implement processes for the sake of implementing processes.

If you’re too rigid and you try to implement everything all at once for no real reason other than you think you should, your team will resist. That’s why so many IT professionals think ITIL is too bureaucratic.

But if you haphazardly throw certain approaches into certain projects, then no one will be able to recognize how ITIL is improving your workflow.

A step by step roadmap gives you something to measure against as you move forward with adapting ITIL.

4. You don’t invest in training or consulting

There are many ITIL Foundation training classes and many IT professionals receive their ITIL certification. But those classes often fail their students – many students become ITIL certified professionals but have absolutely no idea how to apply any ITIL concepts.

The truth is, anyone can read a student guide and learn ITIL concepts but that isn’t going to get them or their organization very far. Like we’ve said, ITIL is guidance not gospel. You need to understand how it can impact and fit into your organization. The only way to do that is to invest in ITIL foundation class with an experienced instructor who can show students how to apply ITIL to their organization.

Similarly, many organizations make the mistake of adapting ITIL without any qualified, expert guidance. This can work for a little while but undoubtedly, whoever is leading the charge is going to become distracted with day-to-day operations. A qualified consultant acts a guide to plot a course to ITIL adoption. They can help avoid common mistakes and increase adoption speed.

5. Trying to find a short cut with a tool

If there are many training classes, there are even more tools designed to help adopt ITIL and ITSM into organizations.

But a tool isn’t going to understand the value of IT or how IT contributes to business outcomes. A tool is not going to be able to understand the needs of the business.

A tool is just what it’s described as, a device used to carry out a particular function. Tools can help you adopt ITIL but it certainly is not going to do all the work for you.

When Will ITIL Work For A Business?

There’s no really no such thing as ITIL implementation. You can only adopt and adapt ITIL to your organization. You can do this with a clear implementation roadmap, a well-formed business case for ITSM , and getting training from a good instructor.

If you want to adopt ITIL the right way and avoid wasting time, money and energy, then learn more about ITIL at our upcoming ITIL Foundation Class this October. Or contact us to learn about ITSM adoption and roadmap planning services.

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