BSM Resources

Here are some useful service management resources for you to use in your organisation.

In addition to the following resources, see also these major resources on this site:
BSM Checklists
The Standard+Case model for ticket handling
The Tipu Method of service improvement
The Kamu project for uniting DevOps and ITSM
and of course our book Basic Service Management

Two kanban boards

Here is an idea that makes Kanban boards more satisfying, more flexible, and easier to assign value.

The idea is that:

1) we often need two Kanban boards per team: one for user stories and one for tasks.
2) task boards can be a generic To-Do/Doing/Done but user story boards often have a defined lifecycle.

The issue is the granularity of what we track: big stories or little tasks, or both.

Direct: a policy framework

If you set people free, empowering them to make their own decisions and define their own work as knowledge professionals, you need good policy for their sake and yours. If you set someone free in a field they need to know where the boundaries of the field are.

Direct is Teal Unicorn’s policy (“governance artefact”) framework. The name comes from the three functions of governance defined by the ISO/IEC 38500 standard , which are direct, monitor, and evaluate. It also plays on the pun of “direct” as both a verb and an adjective.

Direct: a policy framework

If you set people free, empowering them to make their own decisions and define their own work as knowledge professionals, you need good policy for their sake and yours. If you set someone free in a field they need to know where the boundaries of the field are.

Direct is Teal Unicorn’s policy (“governance artefact”) framework. The name comes from the three functions of governance defined by the ISO/IEC 38500 standard , which are direct, monitor, and evaluate. It also plays on the pun of “direct” as both a verb and an adjective.

Optimising control constraints

Here are some notes I wrote for a client on how to optimise the constraints created by controls on the Require to Deploy to Run value stream.

IT exists both to protect and to serve. Controls are essential to protect one of the organisation's greatest assets: information and the technology to manage that information. But achieving velocity through quality requires that all "necessary non-value work" get out of the way of value work.

A balanced scorecard for service desk

Here is an example balanced scorecard for a service desk

Service catalogue samples

....are over on the IT Skeptic blog

some sample ITIL service catalogue documents. They may not be flash but they are better than what you get in the ITIL V3 Service Design book. I have used these a couple of times with success but they are not extensively road tested: they are provided on an as is basis with no warranty or support.

Supplier Engagement Model

When establishing the relationship with an external service provider (outsourcer), why do we document a whole operating model spanning both organisations? The whole point of outsourcing is that the supplier should be a black box, with inputs, outputs and performance requirements. What we need to define is the interface between the two entities, to ensure the operating models of each one mesh properly together. Define the connecting cogs, or the plug-and-socket - choose your analogy.

Kamu: improvements to ITSM (and one day ITIL), Agile and DevOps

kamu
When the three meet, (ITSM, Agile, and DevOps), when we reconcile their world-views, they can all learn from each other. Here is a grab-bag of ideas to share between them. As it grows I'll structure and organise it better as required.

Cynefin and Standard+Case

here is a picture of Cynefin as I conceive it, and its relationship to S+C
[updated 8/6/2018]

Introducing Standard+Case

Here is an early discussion of S+C which eventually grew into the S+C book.