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Joined: Mar 31, 2008 Posts: 109 Location: North West England
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:07 pm Post subject:
Neil
First of all welcome to the forum.
One of the main factors in ensuring you ITIL "implementation" is a success is training. However, I suspect that you have so far received very little training as you are looking for some basic guidance. This is very worrying considering you are attempting to develop a change management process.
Therefore my only suggestion is to get your company to fund your attendance on an ITIL foundation course as a minimum, as this is the best place to get some pointers.
Hope that helps
Mick _________________ Mick Smith
Change, Configuration and Release Manager
Joined: Mar 04, 2008 Posts: 1894 Location: Helensburgh
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:20 pm Post subject:
Neilyc,
welcome to the forum.
Mick is, of course, correct. I would offer the following which may illustrate your situation.
Do you mean a document that:
- refers to the policy and procedure documents
or
- abstracts from them
or
- summarizes them?
In every case the blank page goes away if you cut and paste something from one of them.
If you do not already have a documented change policy related to your service management policies/objectives etc. and you do not already have documented change procedure(s), then you cannot provide a useful change handbook.
If, on the other hand, you really mean that you are to develop the policy and procedures, (and probably also the objectives I would guess), then you need to build on the overall service policies and objectives and get senior management to spell out the policy and objectives for change. Here you may have to spoon-feed them. The best way to do this is to use your grasp of how change management will fit in and derive the generics from the ITIL books and the ISO20000 standard to get them started.
If senior management believe that this can be done without their input, then you can pay me to write a really super system for you, you can implement and when it is no good you can say told you so to senior management and get them to do it properly.
There is nothing out there that won't be bad for you if you haven't reached the starting line and already know what you are doing. And if you do know what you are doing then the stuff out there will mostly not be as good as just documenting what you are doing in a way that your organization will be comfortable with. _________________ "Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718
Joined: Feb 23, 2010 Posts: 5 Location: Sheffield, UK
Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:04 am Post subject:
Thanks for the welcome
Forgive the orginal ambigious question, I will attempt to ellaborate.
I have successfully completed the foundation course.
Senior management are not really giving me a steer in how they want ITIL implemented. All I seem to get from them is "whatever you think best" and "Do what will work for us". All a bit vague I know. They are now pressing for some action (after all I have been on a course). So they have asked me to produce a document (handbook) that we can circulate to all IT staff describing the processes, policies etc. Basically a 'here is how change management/control will be' document.
We have no formal change processes in place or documented and I am meeting quite a bit of resistance when ever I mention change control.
I guess what I am after is an outline of what this document should contain, I feel confident enough to fill in the blanks, just not sure what the scope of it should be.
Joined: Mar 04, 2008 Posts: 1894 Location: Helensburgh
Posted: Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:47 am Post subject:
Neilyc wrote:
I guess what I am after is an outline of what this document should contain, I feel confident enough to fill in the blanks, just not sure what the scope of it should be.
It really really really has to contain whatever your management and staff need to understand. It really really really sounds like it has to be your quality manual.
Is change management the only bit of the jigsaw being targeted just now?
Alternatively
You could do an abstract.
Either way, ITIL foundation training does not equip you for the task. 95% of what you need will have to be drawn from your own experience in service management. I had probably had ten years as a Tech. Supp. mgr. plus the full Service Management course and exam before I could have tackled that, and it still would not have been very good even then. (Although it would have looked good where I worked at the time )
The less relevant experience you have the more you need the rest of the courses and the more you need outside help.
If there are other staff charged with other bits (awful as that sounds) then the only way forward is to work together as a team.
One approach you could try would be to draw up a project plan for achieving what they appear to want and offering it for approval. There's nothing like real (made up - well, projected) numbers to focus the attention of senior managers.
Take what I said in my first post and start to estimate the time to do that work (design develop and get approval for objectives policies and procedures); but have a first step of determining what can be achieved by change management at this time (i.e. fitting in with your current processes) and what will additionally need to be done to gain benefits.
Management have to understand that ITIL is not something you plug in; it needs to be moulded and integrated into how you work. The benefits do not come from the form but from the fusion, the rightness for you in how you do it. _________________ "Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718
From my experience of implementing change management processes, the most signficant cultural changes will be:-
1. There will be a single change process, which someone else will own.
2. Changes will be documented.
3. Changes will be risk assessed.
4. Someone else may decide whether your change will go ahead.
5. You will follow the process.
Its tough love basically.
I would focus though initially on talking to your sponsors to identify what they want from CM. Its great saying "do what you want", but this will only work up to the point where you do something they don't like, and at that point they withdraw their support and everything collapses.
Make sure their committment is absolute, unambiguous, aligned to their objectives and documented in a business case. This if nothing else will give you a baseline for all subsequent activities.
Part time change manager,now there's a first,what happens when your not the part time change manager.
Bit like an airline pilot,getting up from his seat half way through the flight saying "That's it,I'm off"
For best results,the role is required to be performed in full time mode.
Joined: Feb 23, 2010 Posts: 5 Location: Sheffield, UK
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:23 pm Post subject:
Quote:
Part time change manager,now there's a first,what happens when your not the part time change manager.
Bit like an airline pilot,getting up from his seat half way through the flight saying "That's it,I'm off"
For best results,the role is required to be performed in full time mode.
LOL!, but when you have limited resources, what are you supposed to do?
Did I also mention that I am release manager and soon to be configuration manager also? 3 ITIL roles as well as project manager for 2 projects as well as doing my full-time day job.
Seriously, thinking about writing a business case to try to get the ITIL roles full-time as IMO you can't do them justice without dedicating real time to them.
Now, where's that "pass me the bottle" emoticon when you need it?[/quote]
Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 3590 Location: London, UK
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:15 pm Post subject:
Neil
Hire Diarmid
I dont know the distance from under lyme to sheffield but on a google map it is merely ... this much.... _________________ John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)
Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter
I would recommend Diarmid as well. _________________ Ali Makahleh
Configuration Management(Blue Badge),
ITILV2 Service Manager(Red Badge),
ITILV3 Expert(Lilac Badge) Certified.
“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." W. Edwards Deming.
Joined: Mar 04, 2008 Posts: 1894 Location: Helensburgh
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:16 pm Post subject:
... so would I.
Sheffield is just round the corner, in a manner of speaking. Besides, I like Yorkshire and I once played chess in Sheffield. _________________ "Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718
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