Government Technology

It’s clear that the future for IT Service Management needs to be considered in terms of the business. IT is a commodity and a business enabler; it can no longer be divorced from other areas of the organisation. The step forward has to be Business Service Management, where IT Service Managers are engaged with the business services and requirements. Other departments such as HR and Finance may also be involved with this function, providing a complete end-to-end service.
    
Changes are already taking place and the IT profile is moving up the chain; the new ‘Lifecycle’ approach of ITIL Version 3 is now closer aligned to how the business is actually run, IT departments are becoming proactive rather than reactive and businesses are getting more involved with the IT decisions. Now it’s time for businesses to change the way they work with IT and acknowledge that their business success or failure is directly linked to the IT services provided.
    
There is no right or wrong way to approach these changes; it will depend entirely on how your business works and from where you are starting. All areas will, however, change for the better, this change just needs to be embraced.
    
itSMF UK‘s 17th Annual Conference and Exhibition aims to highlight the changes that organisation’s can achieve with minor modifications. The theme ‘Driving Real Value’ is all about 'real' experiences, values and achievements. Three days packed of presentations, seminars, workshops and interactive sessions, covering people’s real experiences that they have travelled through, the pitfalls, the challenges and sometimes the failures. The event includes a large exhibition area with over 80 exhibitors showcasing software, services or products to ease you through the IT Service Management maze. The IT Service Management conference of the year is certainly not to be missed.

A look at the conference
Plenary sessions covering topical future thinking: Ian Salvage and Graham Whitney from IBM present ‘Is the future green?’ looking at how the green agenda is moving to the top of IT organisation’s priority lists. Ian and Graham will explore the challenges we face, legislation which may affect our actions, what technology has got to offer, what the social implications are and how this will affect service management. Paul Wilkinson from Gaming Works, will look at how IT organisations have struggled to adopt best practice frameworks such at ITIL, showing how Attitude, Behaviour and Culture (ABC) of ICT are what determine the success (or not) of your ITSM initiative, including tips to help ensure that you are able to make ITSM best practices work and bring IT under control.
    
Keynote speakers set to motivate: Robin Siegar, a successful businessman, best selling author and broadcaster, is a leading success strategist and motivational 'guru'. His work is the result of years of dedicated study and unquenchable thirst for understanding why some people and organisations are successful and others not. Roger Black, one of the country's most successful sportsmen having represented Great Britain for 14 years, as well as presenting for BBC Sport, he now consistently inspires, motivates and entertains audiences throughout the country by combining his close understanding of motivation and self-development with his personal experiences both on and off the track.
    
Something for everyone: over 60 presentations, seminars, workshops and innovative interactive sessions. Each day is organised within six streams: real life stories, real solutions, real challenges, real people, real partnerships plus interactive and experiential learning sessions. The programme for the three days is impressive and ensures something for everyone. To view a full programme visit www.itsmf.co.uk.
     
Gala evening announcing the itSMF Service Management Award winners: The itSMF UK Service Management Awards are the highly acclaimed, nomination driven and market recognised awards. Winners will be announced for the project of the year, innovation of the year, service champion of the year, student of the year, trainer of the year, submission of the year and the Paul Rappaport award for lifetime.
    
The conference takes place 10-12 November at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham. There are a number of packages available plus if you book as a full delegate within the first three weeks of October itSMF offers a free Regus Gold Card worth £199 (subject to availability). You can book directly at www.itsmf.co.uk or by calling 0118 918 6501.

A taster of some of the presentations taking place…
“Hop, Step, Jump” - Service Transition at the London 2012 Olympics. A ‘real life story’ by Gary Holmes, Olympic Delivery Authority and Mike Harman, Atos Origin

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) will provide an update on IT activities at the London 2012 Olympics, with particular emphasis on Service Transition at the itSMF UK Annual Conference and Exhibition. Jonathan Edwards has set the benchmark for effective transition between phases; in his own discipline (the “Hop, Step and Jump” as it used to be known) he’s done it better than anyone in history!
    
Managing the transition of services through design, development and implementation has been a key requirement for the London 2012 Olympics IT Services team. While we don’t need to emulate Jonathan’s achievement and break World Records to achieve our objectives here, we do need to ensure that our services are landed successfully through each phase and reach their destination in good shape.
    
This presentation will be beneficial to ITIL Service Managers and Practitioners who are facing the challenge of using Service Transition through the lifecycle stages, who are looking for an example of how this is being achieved and who are seeking to understand how ITIL V3 can be put into practice “in the real world”.
    
Real Communication Planning for Real People in Real World Projects. Presented by John McDermott and Trevor Pullen, HP within the ‘real people’ conference stream

Many people define communication as sending messages and information. Most communication is created on this pretext. Examples include newsletters, e-mails, briefings and presentations.
    
In reality communication is shared by the sender and receiver, and the meaning is often not the one that is understood. Messages are influenced by facts such as media, relationships, purpose, knowledge, skills, terminology, values etc. A better definition would therefore be ‘communication is what is received and understood’. This presentation will demonstrate a common sense, practical and balanced approach to communication and will include real life examples and experiences.
    
‘One best way’ - world class continuous improvement, an introduction to Lean. An ‘interactive’ session by Simon Adams, Paul Skerritt and Matt De Monte of Lloyds TSB

This ‘interactive’ sessions aim to create active and inventive brainstorming. One of the many interactive sessions will be hosted by Lloyds TSB with a fun introduction to the world of Lean and continuous improvement. A chance to experience how many of the worlds leading organisations use Lean tools and methodologies to drive continuous improvement. The workshop will give a high level overview of Lean and will get the whole audience participating in finding the 'One best way'.
    
Improving service using standard ITIL techniques - a new approach. Presented by Kevin Holland, NHS Connecting for Health within the ‘real partnership’ stream
    
A perennial challenge for service management is how to deliver services that work and to fix the incidents as quickly as possible when they don’t. In today’s complex end-to-end infrastructures, reliant on many different interconnected components, networks and applications, loss of individual transaction functionality rather than full service loss is increasingly common. ITIL assists us with the specific techniques of component failure impact and fault tree analysis, yet these focus on the technology instead of on the business functions that are affected. IT service continuity does start with the business, but concerns itself about what to do in the event of a full loss of service. None of the above tools are clearly linked into service transition or incident management.
    
This session will illustrate a novel approach to prevent incidents happening in the first place, support informed decisions to go live, and reduce incident resolution time. A new process will be described that combines the existing techniques mentioned above plus failure mode effect analysis, in a risk based approach that strongly links Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operations in delivering quality services.
    
ISO/IEC 20000 – Are we there yet? A ‘real life story’ presented by Cheryl Meek & Conor O’Brian of Eversheds LLP

Eversheds LLP will present their three-year journey to implement ITIL processes and then gain accreditation against the ISO/IEC 20000 Standard at the itSMF UK Annual Conference and Exhibition on 10th November. A ‘real life story’ covering the six months lead up to the audit and it’s outcome, whilst also meeting the challenge of continuing to deliver IT services to a large law firm. They will address the further challenges of maintaining the team focus and momentum on the efforts for the certification audit whilst simultaneously delivering several major projects.