The Secret about Developing ITIL Processes

I have been in the ITIL field for over twelve years, and most of my service management life, I have been involved in either improvement or development of processes. I developed my first process eight years back, and my maturity in developing processes back when I started to now has improved leaps and bounces. I am certain it will be better two years from now.

Other consultants, customers and my readers often ask me what is needed to develop a process.

Should you be aware of all the individual activities in a process?

Should you tailor processes developed in ITIL publications?

Should it be based on organization behavior?

Should it be agile, in the sense that it becomes flexible to fit the bill?

These are just a sample, and the questions are all valid. But, none of them are at the core of developing processes.

So, what is at the core of developing a process?

Every process has a specific objective that it tries to achieve.

Incident management process – restoration of service at the earliest

Change management process – enable beneficial changes with minimum disruption

Problem management process – minimize incidents

What ever the process we develop, we need to understand the objective, and move towards achieving it, by sequencing process activities.

As long as the goal is on the objective, and not on other menial things and distractions, the process steps that ensue will fall in line with what you want, will fit the bill that you want, will influence the behaviors towards reaping successful results.

If you are already working on a process, examine it wearing the lens of process objectives. Observe every single action, every report you publish and every call you make. Justify the activity whether it meets the objectives, or is just fat around the meat. Then decide whether to skip it or improvize it.

Developing a process is simple, but people tend to bet on the wrong priorities and get unwanted results. I hope to hear your thoughts on the process optimizations and developments that you have undertaken, and the experiences behind it.