The IT Skeptic - Comments for "Social ITSM - a skeptical view"

tooth fairies

skeptic — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:31:50 +0000

...or brave new hype. My BS Filter just overheated.

"What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the existence of an Incident ". What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the root cause(s) of faults? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the links between CIs and services? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the bugs in software? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the illness in a patient? What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the weather forecast?

it would indeed be a wonderful world, one we have pursued many times in many contacts. meanwhile, back in this world we need to stop believing in automated reasoning and tooth fairies.

That incessant bleeping in the background is my BS Filter going

skeptic — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 21:20:00 +0000

That incessant bleeping in the background is my BS Filter going off.

"Social Media offers significant value opportunities to those companies who deploy it effectively". Quite true, as with any technology. To deploy effectively means not rushing out and buying a cool product, but working on culture and roles and practices and procedures, and then identifying the spots where improved technology will help effectiveness and efficiency.
"Social Media is the perfect vehicle for ITSM." No it's not. Nothing is perfect. Social media has issues, risks, and faults, like anything else.
"It enables collaboration, compliance, communication, categorization and, containment." No it doesn't. It might improve them or provide options for them, but it doesn't enable them - at least not exclusively: Post-it Notes and carrier pigeons enable them too.
"Fault management technology was designed to isolate the Single Root-Cause" Wrong. Your whole argument here is based on the premise that "traditional" RCA looked for a singular root case. Any half-way-sophisticated RCA understands there are multiple causes to any fault in any environment. it was never singular and it hasn't changed. there is no "fundamental transformation" here. Vendors need to invent these to compel buyers to change.

"The ability to use Social Media to corral the appropriate stakeholders and their customers around Situations is a game changer for ITSM." No t's not. This post went to great lengths to explain why the impact is interesting but not revolutuionary. "Game changer" is hype. Nothing you go on to describe can't be effected with email, and that's how it is done today. I'm not disputing that social media could be used to do it better but that is incremental improvement, not a change of game.

"You cannot simply bolt on Social Media to legacy technologies and Singular processes and expect to add value" All vendors of new tools say that to attempt to eliminate competitors. i don't believe you and you offer no justification for the statement.

Service Desks were "put in the way" for very good reasons, of both efficiency and effectiveness, based on expereince. Revolutionary change to abandon them may be exciting but like most revolutions it is misguided and destructive. You'll need much more compelling arguments and extensive evidence to convince me and I suspect many others. i find arguments to the effect that an entire industry has been stupid for decades to be patronising and arrogant. It happens, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Finally i think your concept of "Situational Service Management" is related to Adaptive Case Management, so in the sense that we may want to get away from structured process in incident resolution, I'm inclined to agree with you, but I think the idea is unproven in IT. Equally that shift is all about changing people's mindsets, skills and ways of working. the idea that that shift can be driven by acquiring a new tool is not only laughable but dangerous, and i think vendors are irresponsible in pushing such approaches.

Everyone is connected but few know what to do

Mike Silvey — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:22:36 +0000

ITSkeptic - totally agree - and this is where the effective use of recent algorithm innovations in Natural Language Processing and Grouping analytics play their part. What if one were able to algorithmically deduce the existence of an Incident and the offer that Situationally related information to the appropriate resources. Those that know what to do, do. Those that rely on those who know what to do, view.

As the Harold Jarche points out, they're all connected anyway so remove the artificial barriers of help desk and resource silos by informationally and socially enabling the engagement proactive of those with the problems and those with the solutions.

Brave new world anyone?

A Contrarian View: The Right Social Media Offers ITSM Huge Value

Mike Silvey — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 23:14:13 +0000

ITSkeptic - this is a VERY interesting topic, and reading both the blog post itself and the wide ranging commentary shows that there is no clear quorum of opinion regarding what Social Media means, how or whether value can be returned from its use or, what threats it offers to the business of IT Service Management.

Now, I must disclose that I represent the vested interest of an ITSM software vendor view here, so turn your bs filters on or moderate this reply out if you like.

By way of introduction, myself and my business partner: Phil Tee, were the cofounders of Micromuse (IBM Tivoli Netcool) and then subsequently Riversoft. We were also instrumental in the success of Remedy and Patrol outside of the US (before BMC acquired them). Without trying to sound too arrogant, having been involved in IT Service Management since the late 1980’s, we have been through many eons of service delivery infrastructure, so believe that we have a reasonable understanding of the issues and the subject at hand.

Our view is that where ITSM is concerned, Social media should not be seen as a distraction to our day job. On the contrary, Social Media offers significant value opportunities to those companies who deploy it effectively.

Social Media is the perfect vehicle for ITSM. It was made for it. It enables collaboration, compliance, communication, categorization and, containment.

Pre- Cloud services, Virtualisation, Distributed Caching, On-Demand Storage and Networking, combined with resilient compute and networking hardware (i.e. Client-Server networking), when a Fault occurred, the Fault caused Impact.

Who needed Social networking then? No one. Root-Cause was relatively easy to deduce and the impacted were similarly easy to identify. At least when people called the helpdesk, the helpdesk would know that operations are onto the Fault.

We call that “Singular Service Management processes”. Fault management technology was designed to isolate the Single Root-Cause and Incident management technology was designed to govern the process of resolution of that corresponding Single Trouble Ticket.

Today though, more often than not, a Single Fault does not lead to Business Impact. Resilient architectures and equipment mean that our infrastructures are tolerant of faults. Our problems today occur when multiple Faults, not necessarily related to each other, coincide. Then the Business is impacted but there is no Singular Root-Cause. Just like infrastructures have been through a fundamental transformation since the turn of the Century, we believe that IT Service Management technologies need a fundamental transformation too; transitioning from Singular to a “Situational” Service Management processes and technology.

Social Media offers one of the ‘Poles’ of Situational Service Management. We all know the idiom “A problem shared is a problem halved”, well Social Media enables a real-life ITSM opportunity to share problems and reduce their impact on our resources and bottom line business performance. The ability to use Social Media to corral the appropriate stakeholders and their customers around Situations is a game changer for ITSM.

The problem today for most organizations caught in the hype cycle of Social Media is two-fold.
1. They have no coherent strategy. No governance, and no alignment methods.
2. Individuals, lines of business, departments of the company and their customers are using ad hoc, disconnected, and diverse Public social media services when and how they feel like it.

Consequently person-to-person interaction offers high value but, the value retained by the business is low. Information is everywhere, scattered across the ether, available to those who search for it, but not indexable or relationally contained to make it useful to the appropriate stakeholders.

Why do we do ITSM?
To provide a consistent quality of service to our customers and reduce the cost and impact of any inevitable faults. (Remember, perfectionists are always disappointed with life!).

A little Sojourn: I used to live in Australia. Power outages were frequent in our suburb. I would call the Power Company and they would say “There is an XXX, we have resources on it and power will be restored in t Hours”. I now live in the UK. I have had frequent broadband and mobile phone issues. I call my provider[s] and hear “Really, oh, we’ll have to look into that”.

Knowing that my power was to be out for ‘t’ hours was most disappointing, but the fact that (a) they knew about it when I called and (b) they had a timescale for resolution and shared that with me gave me comfort and satisfaction. I felt they were on their game. Hearing “Oh, we don’t know about that” gives me no confidence at all and leaves me frustrated and sometimes angry.

That’s how our customers in ITSM feel. Knowing that we don’t know is not a confidence builder and does not reinforce a perception of quality of service.

It is a fact that in this most modern of worlds, Service Providers are monitoring the social networks frequented by their customers to identify the existence and location of customer impact (through the monitoring of the chatter) because their Singular Service Management tools are unable to identify service impacting Situations.

What does this really mean? It means that our helpdesk is unable to relate customer calls / tickets to events and our L0 and L1 operations staff (eyes on glass or eyes on trouble tickets) are unaware of the impact on business services and customers.

It means that continuing to manage using Singular processes (and technology) leads to at least two adverse behaviours:
1. Our customers may vent their unhappiness in Public social media forums sharing our dark dirty secrets with the world
2. Our level one staff are forced to work in an informationally impeded way, unaware that the trouble ticket they are actioning may be related to other trouble tickets being actioned by other staff, unaware of the impact upon their customers, and forced to escalate more often to Level 2 and 3 experts because they cannot resolve the issue (which is actually a caused by a set of coincident faults).

At Moogsoft, we believe that a fundamentally re-thought-out approach to Event, Incident and Problem Management is needed. An approach that is informationally inclusive of all stakeholders: IT, LoBs, end-users and suppliers.

In this Situationally enabled approach to ITSM, Social Media is key.

Is Social Media a flash in the pan?
Let’s face it, social media is here to stay and is not going to go away, it is only going to get more entrenched into our lifestyles. So we can fight it or embrace it. Fighting it means leaving our staff and customers to utilize the public services that exist and suffer the consequences. Embracing it means finding ways to integrate ‘Gated Social Media’ into our processes to increase the quality of our services.

A social media strategy should not be centered around “what is being discussed about us in the public domain”, it should be about engendering discussion about the issue, its causal elements, impact and our approach that is inclusive of all of stakeholders, but contained and quarantined within our own domain borders.

ITSM strategies must encompass the effective exploitation of Social Media.
- You cannot simply bolt on Social Media to legacy technologies and Singular processes and expect to add value.
- Social Media should not be seen as a public tool or voyeuristic tool. Rather, Social Media should be utilized as a service enabling us to work together and to corral our customers into discussion within our domain. We should be opening our kimono to our customers, not firewalling them from the people who can resolve their problems by placing the helpdesk in between them and us.

ITSM is a perfect place for a gated social domain. ITSM is:
1. Bounded by IT and anything that touches IT
2. Involves interaction and collaboration
3. Intrinsically about Content Sharing

In the past we have put up artificial barriers between technology topics (silos), the Help Desk and our customers. In turn, our Suppliers have done the same to us. Social Media driven ITSM enabled through a Situational Event, Incident and Problem Management service should offer interaction and collaboration across:
- IT Resource to Machine
- IT Resource to IT Resource
- IT Resource to IT Supplier
- IT Resource to IT Customer
- IT Customer to IT Customer

Social Media, built on a Situational foundation offers IT Service Management practitioners the opportunity to reduce the impact of incidents by isolating and resolving them more quickly but more importantly, offering informationally inclusive communication to our customers which empirical evidence shows increases the perception of the quality of service delivered.

Practically though, the application of a domain bordered Social Media strategy enables the capture of knowledge as an asset to the business regardless of whether our service is in-sourced, out-sourced or a hybrid of both. Having that Knowledge Asset within our business means we can recycle that asset.

I will not attempt to use this reply and the ITSkeptic’s blog to tell you about our proposition. Find our blog for that if you are interested.

Using duct tape and bubblegum to affix social media to traditional processes is inefficient and fundamentally flawed, whether anarchy reigns or a strategic plan is being followed.

Social media technologies and services must be tightly coupled with to Situation Service Management processes to release their potential energy.

I just passionately believe that “we” have been looking at Social Media from the wrong perspective when it comes to ITSM. With Situational foundations, we can reduce our operational costs and increase the perceived quality of our services while, capturing and recycling all stakeholder knowledge.

Thanks for reading this tome!

Social change isn't about social technologies

skeptic — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:33:56 +0000

Here is a fine article on Getting to Social by Harold Jarche: "everyone is connected but few know what to do".

It reminded me that social change isn't about social technologies, even if the technologies themselves trigger the changes, as the internet did. We have had the internet for more than a decade and we are only now beginning to evolve social norms, laws, critical faculties etc to deal with it.

I commented on Harold's article

A fine model and a fine aspiration. How long will such behavioural change take? How long will it take the community to assimilate this new model of interaction? years? Decades? Generations?

I think you are right and as a result i think you prove that social technologies will change nothing in any useful timeframe.

hype around social media

skeptic — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:24:16 +0000

If there isn't "hype around social media", how come this post has had three or four times the traffic that a post on "the future of IT management" got? (hard to be more exact because this one has been up longer)

[ITSMWPROW guys note: i talked about "hype around social media" not "hype around social ITSM"]

A good summary of discussion

Visitor — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:06:00 +0000

Something pertinent to this discussion http://xkcd.com/386/

my understanding of good

ivormacfarlane — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:25:23 +0000

my understanding of good broad debate - à la real politics - is that it is an amalgam of every available means. Picking one and then facing off sounds more like duelling than debate to me. Meanwhile the roles of social media in service management and the need for better service management in social media (see facebook and unexpected changes) seems eminently worth discussion/debate/opinion and even prejudice in all the media we use in our business. Can we get on with that topic?

Oh no

aroos — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:26:29 +0000

Change does not happen so suddenly. You cannot take away old models when you add a new one. Big story today on a local newspaper about a successful bank (Nordea) which has cut its traditional service to a minimum with the result that people who want to visit the branch office have to queue for hours. The correct way to do business with them is either via internet and/or by appointment. It works fine for me. If they were still relying to the old model, I would have changed bank.

Here is a comment from a Service Desk that has also changed the way how they work: " Previously the entire service desk manned the phones, but now the majority are dedicated to resolution and increasingly they are getting time to become involved in projects that add more value to the business. Again, XXX got an unexpected benefit here and said that their staff are far more effective and multi-faceted, because they now have time to work with other IT groups and share knowledge."

And also Lexus had to be taken for a service every once in a while. They did reserve a parking place for me with my name on it. But all that delightful service did not make a loyal Lexus customer. Rear wheel drive was not a good idea in Southern Finland which has suddenly become snow country (43 cm and snowing) and their 4WD options were too expensive and big.

Aale

sorry

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:57:28 +0000

Yeah it was cheap shot, sorry. But I don't think I'm misunderstanding, I'm disagreeing. Debate is better conducted in writing because we can usually stick to the actual issues. We have a written record to go back to to show for example that i dont flipflop on IP protection. I have changed my mind on issues, and telegraphed it when I do, but not that one as far as I recall. Let me go back and see.

Twitter is unsuitable for debate - it is too cramped.
Blogs are unsuitable for debate apparently.
Yes that does only leave us with recorded speech I guess. Social media is pretty limited huh?
I stand by the integrity and semi-permanence of written debate, and with the exception of one cheap shot written late at night in fatigue and haste for which I apologise, I've stuck to the issues. I fail to see why you can't address them here too as James and Aale and others have.

I don't think spoken debate is better. Politicians prove daily that one can say very little and sound convincing. Tempers flare and topics wander. Important points get forgotten. Transcripts are often unreadable and useless. Nobody gets the time to ponder new ideas and decided what they really think. It's jousting: all very entertaining but less constructive . I'm sorry you disagree, but we're not going to engage in verbal debate until I feel I've stopped learning and evolving my ideas thanks to the excellent contributions of others here.

There are a lot of figures

Mauricio Corona — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:53:09 +0000

There are a lot of figures that can help us to understand this subject (just in a general way); In fact you already mentioned most of them. The main problem arrives when we try to generalize the findings when we only have few data.

Every person on this blog has his/her own point of view, so the 'sit around a table with the same figures' it’s really important as well as been objective and concluding that 'Under this figures..... considering this view.... the conclusion is......'

So this will be a personal appreciation or a particular point of view, but not a fact.

About reliability - these findings will be not reliable until we conduct a formal and extensive study about this subject using scientific methods. This is sad because 99% of the papers I have read about this are NOT RELIABLE, and even less reliable the papers from ITSM companies, APMG, ITSMf but this is the best we have and we have to learn to be more CAUTIOUS IN MAKING OUR CONCLUSSIONS WE MUST HAVE TO BE A MORE RESPONSIBLE PERSONS and do not let the passion or a company that is paying us cloud our minds.

The abhorrent nature of blog comments

ServiceSphere — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:21:46 +0000

"Chris says I'm a capitalistic flip-flopper in the pay of APMG (which is pretty rich from someone suddenly in the pay of an ITSM mega-vendor). I like to think there are less personal reasons."

and several other gems are the reasons I don't do blog comments. They can be read to many ways by folks and not all as academic as you give them credit for.

FlipFlopper, some days you are for IP protect, others you are not. Some days you are for gadgets, other days you hate them.
APMG, didn't want anything to do with you, and now see the error of their ways.
Capitalist, you need to make a living for your family.

How you can take my comments and twist them into such an ugly sentence about someone who genuinely cares and is your biggest advocate, is my friend abhorrent.

Which is why I asked for the discuss on camera in the first place. Blog comments are not the place to do this, you just proved that with your misunderstanding of ARoos, myself, James finister and countless others.

Camera's allow people to hear tone, and see facial gestures. So swallow your ego and talk to the only person on the planet who can explain all that you seek to debate with enough love to make sure you and the viewers come away with something that was a labor of love.

What figures?

JamesFinister — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:18:51 +0000

But Mauricio, what figures would help in a case like this? Number of help desks already using social media? Number of vendors planning to add SocMed functionality? Number of incidents currently reported using social media? Amount of user time wasted trying to find an answer from Google before ringing the desk? How many of those figures would be reliable or help us decide where we will be in a year's time? I suspect we could all sit around a table with the same figures today and see them in the light of own views. And there is a potential problem for people deciding whether or not they should react to the possible hype. If we can't decide what the objective warning signs are how can we react until it is too late?

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

What I can see until now is

Mauricio Corona — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:28:36 +0000

What I can see until now is that the arguments that each part is saying does not show numbers, statistics or measurable real facts to confirm that Social Media is a distraction to our day job.

Over an empirical view around the world it is not true but.... this does not mean that we can confirm so.

What I can do tell you is that I'm seeing two of the best industry guys sharing your ideas but not your knowledge; I miss that specially from you two you now?? I hope that objectivity remains part of yourself and you do not overcome by natural temptations of the Industry.

I think I'll have to send you an invitation and bring you both to Mexico, we'll drink a couple of shots of Tequilas and then we are going to write a paper the 3 of us ;)

Cheers!!!!

i'm all for social media

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:23:00 +0000

Well said Ivor.
I'm all for adopting social media. Everyone is citing the same use cases. We all agree on what is going to happen. The only disagreement is around how important that is. As usual it is the IT skeptic's role to prick the hype bubble.

Most evolution does NOT involve mass extinctions. The internet didn't cause mass extinctions of businesses. The bursting of the internet hype bubble did.

Social media will change things. I don't like talk of "survive or perish", a "coming tidal wave" etc. and I certainly don't appreciate being treated as stupid because I choose not to panic my clients into precipitate actions (such as buying stuff they don't need or cant use yet)

It's not the technologies I don't believe in, it is the irrational exuberance surrounding them. You'd think we'd learn.

PS I have nothing against working for vendors. Did it myself for way too long. I just resent being castigated for taking a few scheckels from APMG for what I thought was a useful exercise.

thick skin

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:09:31 +0000

Well there's a backhanded apology :) Its alright mate I have a thick skin. Recall I spent 16 years in Australia.

Maybe there is room for a

ivormacfarlane — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:08:13 +0000

Maybe there is room for a contribution from someone else shamelessly in the pay of a mega-vendor? I hope that I know the protagonists too well to see this as anything other than a minor playground spat. And like most playground spats it seems to me that we are all on the same side where it really matters.

Most every strenuous debate thrives because there is copious truth on both sides. My background usually drives me to take a big view of service management (I started working in service management long before i got at all involved with IT). Social media will make a big change - of course it will change the way people do things and it creates possibilities, both for good and less good. most of those have been touched on - like fast access to information and reporting of solutions through to massive time wasting with peer to peer playing and reinvention of a known solution.

But this is all changes in 'how' not really so much in 'what'. IT changed service management. Social media is changing IT service management. If we build on the evolutionary concepts discussed above it seems to me there is something different about the last 20-50 years. We now live our everyday lives in worlds that our parents didn't build - that is new in evolutionary terms, it is changing so fast that the kids coming up have a really different perspective. And social media is a key part of that and so we have to accept it will be a key part of the working world. It is an exciting challenge to help us carry on with new ideas. I don't see it as changing our goals - just our means.

How we use the mechanics of social media - taking advantage of the extra speed, accuracy and more esoteric new opportunities it offers - is exciting and our job. "If it's better, do it" - surely a good mantra for successful service management?

In a bigger sense we have done that with IT over the last 50 years - it is very hard to remember or imagine (depending on your age) what life was actually like without social media in its broadest sense. talk to some kids - it is hard for them to realise we weren't walking round in the 70s grumbling about 'why haven't they invented the cell phone yet'. The key aspect of evolution is that it doesn't know where it is going - if it did it would be design. We have had years of service evolution, and we are now preaching service design (and about time too). Much of the social media debate will hinge on how much more effective making use of what happens to have been invented is done by design - or whether we let it evolve. And as James points out, most of evolution is actually about the non-survival of the non-fittest - we tend to focus on the success stories but -honestly - they are in the minority. So my vote is for design and let's encourage people to see how social media - and anything else - can help and plan for it.

meanwhile on my planet...

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:06:06 +0000

If I went in to any one of my clients and said relax you wont have incidents any more so web can cdisband the service desk and incident management I know what would happen to me.
My wife is dropping her car down to the local mechanic tomorrow for a service. Honda don't make house calls.

Sorry, trying to joke

aroos — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:43:02 +0000

Rob

Nothing personal meant. I'm sure I have been more marinated and blinkered with ITIL than you (V2 service manager, V3 expert, ashamed to admit). But it is refreshing to lose the blinkers and see things differently.

Aale

Forget those too

aroos — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:38:07 +0000

I don't us the word "incident" as it has lost its meaning between versions and editions. Majority of people do not know which version they are using.

More than half of all IT problems in most companies never come to their Service Desk and there is no process for asking you neighbor or friend.

This is how I see it. Customers contact service to buy things, sometimes they give feedback. They should not have problems but of course it happens sometimes. Problems should be rare. The Service Desk is there to help people to get best value out of the tools available.

Here are some examples where we are heading:
James and I used the vanishing garages as an analogy for vanishing old style service desks in our SD2 presentation. I used to drive a Lexus. They gave me a number if anything happened to the car while I was driving. This included not just car breaking down but puncture, locking myself out i.e. really anything and their promise was to fix the situation, including hotel/car etc. I had the car for three years and never called. It was nice to have the number though.

There are no garages on the roads, today's service station sells food, gas is sold on cold stations. Cars used to have bad quality and be easy to fix, not any more.

So that does not have anything to do with IT? My wife used to have a laptop pc. She had about two incidents per month for me to fix. Then I bought an iPad 18 months ago. Still waiting for that 1st incident.

Lately my best source for support in IT problems is the social media.

Aale