Verso ITSM Blog

This is something I have been thinking about for a while - having a husband working in Fleet maintenance and struggling with being able to provide an appropriate service to the end users has made me wonder why we keep the ITIL lifecycle tucked up in our little IT world. 

I guess we could argue that fleet maintenance is today really an IT function as most modern fleets use computer diagnosis - my formerly computer illiterate-husband now happily plugs a laptop into massive pieces of machinery to pinpoint errors and when my car goes in for a service it is connected to the diagnostic computer before any work is done.  IT is everywhere now, in all apects of “Service” so has the IT in ITSM become redundant? I think it has.

We limit the involvement of other parts of the business world by using the “IT” part of the title - “IT” conjures up visions of the stereotypical glasses-wearing “geek” inhabiting the basements of corporations around the world (check out “The IT Crowd” to see the vision the rest of the world has of “IT"). Therefore when someone sees “IT” as part of the title of an organisation or framework, they are likely to think - “That doesn’t interest me - I’m not one of those IT people.”

Going back to the discussion I was having with my husband on Fleet maintenance, it was clear that they have problems - at the grass-roots level - in deciding what to do first.  There are the simple service requests for machinery which has done a certain number of hours and needs its regular maintenance; then there are minor faults such as blown bulbs, seats that won’t adjust, airconditioning that is not working properly (although in an underground mine that is a bit more than a minor inconvenience); and then there are the show-stoppers - major pieces of equipment which break down and stop production - often at a cost of 100s of 1000s of dollars each hour.  Prioritisation of these seems to be a bit haphazard, the fitters involved don’t have any SLA targets to work towards, the most important jobs are easy to work out, but beneath that there is little guidance.  This doesn’t apply just to the company he currently works for, he has had 30+ years in the industry and the situation has been the same pretty well everywhere he has worked.  If there is any priorisation applied it does not feed down to the people actually doing the work.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the current relevence of “IT” in ITSM, is it a redundant acronym in today’s technology driven world, is there any part of the business where Service is not driven or at least enabled by IT?

On another note - I have had an interesting few days attending the IPESC (International Publications Executive Sub-Committee) meeting in Paris. As a journalist in a previous life (pre-IT) publications is an area that is high on my list of priorities, we achieved some good work over the two day meeting, and Paris in summer is not a bad place to be. I even managed to spend a day at EuroDisney, an interesting experience with no children in tow.