Process Corner
Remtulla Presents at 2011 Share IT Conference
Farah Remtulla speaks at the Share IT conference.
Farah Remtulla (PMO) was recently in the news again regarding her presentation at the 2011 "Share IT" conference in Calgary, Canada. The following are excerpts from an article describing the various speakers. You can read the article in its entirety at http://www.gamingworks.nl/events/detail.php?ID=1354.
Service Management Art, working together with the itSMF, organized the Share IT conference and assembled an impressive line-up of speakers who had some valuable insights, tips and practices to share.
Farah Remtulla of Emory University presented the learning points from their project which was awarded the itSMF Fusion11 "Project of the Year." The successful deployment of ServiceNow and a set of ITIL support processes across 19 "unique" support organizations, aimed at "improving the quality of service, working across organizational boundaries to ensure IT could restore service as quickly as possible - to support the business!"
Farah began by quoting from a book "Maestro" - "A strong vision can lead people away from focusing on their part alone towards being aware of the whole." She explained how this vision of engagement and inclusion underpinned their approach. When asked what the main critical success factor was for winning the project of the year, she explained it was embracing an organizational change management strategy using approaches like the ABC of ICT to identify "resistance" and gaps that needed addressing in the ways people behaved.
Setting up a service management competence center, focus groups and using on-line functionality to create a community to share and to develop the new ways of working underpinned the success of the program. Another success factor was that Farah and her team were busy with CSI throughout the project, using the community for iterative checks and fine tuning throughout the design, deployment and early execution phase to ensure maximum buy-in and a "fit-for-purpose" and "fit-for-use" service management solution.
This inclusive approach supported the finding presented at the opening keynote. The number-one, critical success factor, according to more than 35 industry experts in the book The ABC of ICT – An Introduction, is "involve all functions," using workshops, face-to-face meetings and simulations to create buy-in, address resistance and design and deploy the new ways of working. Unfortunately, Farah also experienced the number one ABC of ICT worst practice from the North America resistance exercises "A fool with a TOOL is still a FOOL," as people demanded the tool very early in the engagement. They were only given the tool after the processes and the ABC gaps had been designed and agreed.