Christmas Wishes

Hey Everybody, I'm finally getting around to making my blog post for my Christmas holiday which was so much fun. The Holiday started off with a trip to Canada where we visited a whole bunch of museums and sorry to say it but my camera was dead at the time so I was unable to get any pictures but as we made it to the states I was able to get a plethora of pictures first there was my Scavenger hunt for gabe on christmas day:

Then we later had a trip to the Sedgewick county Zoo:

And the rest of the pictures were big moments through the  Holiday for instance when the kids went to school and other such fun things:

Thank you all for the wonderful time in the states and coming up next is a surprise to me as it will be to you.

Review: Service Management in Operations by Sue Conger, MaryAnne Winiford, and Lisa Erickson-Harris

I would have to agree with Sue, Mary, and Lisa in the steps they took to "examine the state of art in managing IT operations with a service perspective." Upon doing their survey of 364 individuals they found out that:

• 45% were using IT Service Management 
• 15% were in planning Stages Only 
• 37% were Not Using IT Service Management 
•  Finally 3% Did Not Know

 Next, of the people who were using the IT Service Management; Lisa, Sue, and Mary were able to show how familiar they were with each of the Concepts and Frameworks:

• 66% were Familiar with ITIL
• 36% were Familiar with COBIT
• 77% were Familiar with IT Governance
• 78% were Familiar with ITSM
• 66% were Familiar with BSM
• Finally 87% were Familiar with SLM

Finally the people who were not using the IT Service Management:

• 34% were Familiar with ITIL
• 17% were Familiar with COBIT
• 47% were Familiar with IT Governance
• 50% were Familiar with ITSM
• 42% were Familiar with BSM
• Finally 56% were Familiar with SLM

 Like I said earlier, I agree with Sue, Mary, and Lisa; Because, I have always done survey's to answer any one of my in depth question. Plus the results were fairly reliable, personally I would have tried to review a few more people but 365 is a good round number.

Review: Mastering IT Change Management Step Two: Moving from Ignorant Anarchy to Informed Anarchy

I would have to agree with Ken Dietel, with his decision on implementing a more ITIL way of managing changes. Ken's company was constantly having to do Emergency Changes. He describes the problem as:

"The Software Engineering Institue's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) ranking for a software process exhibiting these characteristics in maturity level one (the lowest of the five levels): 'characterized as ad hoc, and occasionally even chaotic. Few processes are defined, and success depends on individual effort and heroics.'"

He then recommended that his company should move to a more informed way of managing changes in which he was able to, but he still had problems: 

 

"All this work only brought this organization to a state I call 'informed anarchy'."

He goes on to say that:

"Information about upcoming changes was beginning to be collected in a centralized location, available for anyone to go look up, but proactive communication was still occasionally lacking. Incidents still occurred with root causes which traced back to changes that affected something unanticipated, which could have been prevented if the right people knew about the change ahead of time. The process was still being significantly adjusted as it was being rolled out to more groups. Adherence to following the process was not always enforced."

 Like I said at the start I agree with Ken, He enforced his work group to absorb the ITIL practices of Change Management, however, like he said, he still has a way to go before it's fully implemented.

Review: You Want us to Support WHAT!? Negotiation, Delivery, and Cultivation: The Gateway to Excellent Service Deployment

Personally, I agree with Nathan Carpenter and Ryan Tucker in their article "You Want us to Support WHAT!? Negotiation, Delivery, and Cultivation: The Gateway to Excellent Service Deployment," They are trying to give the Help Desk more input into the services that they are providing. Carpenter and Tucker started out by writing about the "PAST" of their business, when the help desk had very little to say in the process of making the service, and, if they did, they were left to the very last.Then they wrote about the "PRESENT" in which they now have the Help Desk "at the table" and having a open say into the service. Finally they addressed, their "FUTURE" which is being updated continually. From there, they went on to describe the path that their Help Desk follows by showing a seven-step process to success:

1. "Active Listening" 
2. "Early involvement" to "help shape a project" 
3. awareness of "What is happening" and "When is it happening" 
4. "Understand the scope, consequences and problems anticipated"
5. "Establish clear escalation paths and expected turnaround times" 
6. "Preparation for support, which includes building a knowledgebase, announcing charges, receiving training, establishing communications with customers"
7. Finally, "Gather Data and share feedback."

As I said a the start of this review, I agree with Tucker and Carpentener, mainly because I like the fact that they are giving the Help Desk more input into the service right from the beginning. They also had a easy to follow process of steps to follow.

Random Question of the Week is Cancelled

Hey everyone,
as you can see by the title I am cancelling the random question of the week and instead doing random song of the week so starting this Friday I'll be adding my voice to a random song of my choosing so see you on Friday. XD

Review: Developing a Service Catalog for Higher Education Information Technology Services by Andrew H. Lyons

The IT Services web page at Hobart and William Smith Colleges needed to be updated, mainly because it was difficult to navigate; disorganized, and not customer oriented.

The website was in dire need of a major overhaul. To quote Mr. Lyons "Information was grouped according to the technology involved (e.g. networking or database reports), not the end service desired, creating a cumbersome learning curve for customers trying to parse through it. The large amount of information available was presented all together in a large mass of text … that was intimidating to those unfamiliar with the structure and content."

They did everything right. They used an ITIL approach to their development. They used customer feedback on what worked and what didn’t work, and they set some achievable goals. They chose to rebuild the website from scratch, which I think was a mistake. They could have used some of their existing code as a basis for their new site. They used a project management approach involving a “statement of work and project plan documents describing the terms, goals, processes, involved parties, project timeline and milestones, and other information” which resulted in a successful project. Finally they went back to their customers to determine their priorities for the web site. This resulted in a customer oriented development and implementation.

Random Question of the Week.

Yay, another week of fun and frivolity, Caramelldansen, Twins, and one paper. We certainly have been through alot, but were not here to listen to me wax philosphical were here for the question, so here it is: If you could be any fictional Character who would it be? (mine would most likely be Dark Link)