WIREDGOV

Blog posted by: Julia Harrison – Senior Product Manager, 27 November 2017.

How can DevOps bring service improvements to IT service management (ITSM) in organizations and avoid throwing operations the “hot potato” of badly planned change projects?

And what is the role for ITIL® Practitioner’s 9 Guiding Principles – in particular start where you are, collaborate and keep it simple – in bridging the divide with software development?

The AXELOS white paper – Service Acceptance Criteria: sometimes you got to be cruel to be kind –  recognizes that the service lifecycle nirvana remains a pipe dream for many in ITSM; rather than change projects coming with all the supporting documentation, tools and training, the typical experience of changed services is a “cascade of stuff” – hot stuff!

Achieving the service acceptance criteria (SAC) for an IT service – i.e. that it is functional, of quality and ready for the IT service provider to operate – means software needs to meet business requirements, has been tested for quality and performance and is accompanied by support materials.

The white paper outlines some approaches to help to create the conditions for SAC by making sure they’re part of the service design package.

These approaches include:

• Improved and early communication and collaboration on both “throw” and “catch” sides of the change “hot potato”
• Building trackable deliverables into the project plan
• Regular contact between teams
• Having a template for SAC to set expectations and help handover
• Getting senior management support to instil SAC as company policy, based on evidence of why having it is essential
• Learning to be pragmatic and making exceptions
• Encouraging development, engineers, etc, to involve operations from the outset to make handovers better than just “muddling through”.

To read this latest advice and guidance on combining DevOps practices with ITIL Practitioner to improve the introduction and adoption of new IT services, download the white paper.