I

Evaluating the Managerial Obstacles in Implementing ITIL –

Case Study of “Tamer Group” in Saudi Arabia

By

Moath A. Ibrik

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to

The University of Liverpool

In fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

II

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Evaluating the managerial obstacles in implementing ITIL – Case study of Tamer Group in Saudi

Arabia

By

Moath A. Ibrik

We hereby certify that this Dissertation submitted by Moath Ibrik conforms to acceptable

standards, and as such is fully adequate in scope and quality. It is therefore approved as the

fulfillment of the Dissertation requirements for the degree of Master of Science in International

Management.

Approved by:

Dissertation Advisor Date

Lionel De Souza

III

The University of Liverpool

2011

CERTIFICATION STATEMENT

I hereby certify that this paper constitutes my own product, that where the language of others is

set forth, quotation marks so indicate, and that appropriate credit is given where I have used the

language, ideas, expressions or writings of another.

Signed:

Moath A. Ibrik.

IV

ABSTRACT

The revolution of the information technology is no more limited to providing technical solutions; it can

also provide high quality services and a framework for implementing them. Information Technology

Infrastructure Library (ITIL) appears to bring this advantage to the companies and improve the

efficiency and effectiveness of providing IT services to their users. However, many ITIL projects in

Saudi Arabia encountered a number of obstacles that limited their ability to achieve the full potential of

ITIL while implementing them.

A study has, therefore, set up on a single case study basis to investigate what the main obstacles were

and how these obstacles were dealt with in a practical setting. These practices were compared and

contrasted with a number of previously concluded case studies in light of the ITIL principles and

management theories. The results of this study were categorized and summarized as a step-by-step

action plan that can be used in future projects which is expected to help companies achieve the

maximum potential of ITIL in similar settings.

V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Sincerely I would like to thank God for his blessing. Without it, I would never be able to complete this

work.

A special dedication goes to Dr. Lionel De Souza, my dissertation adviser, for his guidance, support and

patience throughout this research.

My parents, brothers, sisters and friends have also supported me through providing help and

encouragement all these years, and standing besides me till the end.

Also, special thanks to “Tamer Group” -MIS Department- for their support and cooperation, through

sharing the required information and supporting me while achieving this goal.

VI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. IV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ........................................................................................................................ V

TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................... VI

LIST OF APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................ IX

LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................................................. X

LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................................. XI

CHAPTER I: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Background ................................................................................................................................. 2

1.2 Rationale ..................................................................................................................................... 3

1.3 Aim and Objectives .................................................................................................................... 4

1.4 Research Questions: ................................................................................................................... 4

1.5 Research Design and Methodology........................................................................................... 5

1.6 Scope and Applications .............................................................................................................. 6

1.7 Dissertation Outline ................................................................................................................... 6

CHAPTER II: Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 8

2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 9

2.2 ITIL Overview .......................................................................................................................... 10

2.3 ITIL History and Development ............................................................................................... 13

2.3.1 ITIL Version 1: ................................................................................................................. 13

2.3.2 ITIL Version 2: ................................................................................................................. 14

2.3.3 ITIL Version 3: ................................................................................................................. 16

2.4 ITIL in Theory.......................................................................................................................... 18

2.4.1 Phase 1: Service Strategy ................................................................................................. 19

2.4.2 Phase 2: Service Design .................................................................................................... 19

2.4.3 Phase 3: Service Transition .............................................................................................. 22

2.4.4 Phase 4: Service Operation .............................................................................................. 25

2.4.5 Phase 5: Continual Service Improvement ...................................................................... 27

2.5 ITIL in practice ........................................................................................................................ 28

2.6 ITIL framework (Obstacles and Solutions) ........................................................................... 31

2.7 ITIL Software (ITIL Automation) ......................................................................................... 32

2.8 Management Theories ............................................................................................................. 33

2.8.1 Training Model: ................................................................................................................ 33

2.8.2 Change Management Model: ........................................................................................... 34

VII

2.8.3 Planning Model: ................................................................................................................ 35

2.9 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 36

CHAPTER III: Research Methodology ................................................................................................ 37

3.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 38

3.2 Research Design Overview ...................................................................................................... 38

3.3 Literature Based Research ...................................................................................................... 39

3.2.1 Literature Resources ........................................................................................................ 39

3.2.2 Studied Literature ............................................................................................................. 40

3.4 Empirical Research .................................................................................................................. 40

3.3.1 Research Strategy: ............................................................................................................ 40

3.3.2 Case-Study Details ............................................................................................................ 41

3.5 Data Collection: ........................................................................................................................ 42

3.5.1 Interview Details ............................................................................................................... 42

3.5.2 Interview Questions: ......................................................................................................... 44

3.6 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 45

3.7 Ethical Consideration .............................................................................................................. 46

3.8 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 46

CHAPTER IV: Data Collection ............................................................................................................. 47

4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 48

4.2 The Case Study ......................................................................................................................... 48

4.3 Interviews .................................................................................................................................. 48

4.3.1 Interview 1 ......................................................................................................................... 49

4.3.2 Interview 2 ......................................................................................................................... 52

4.3.3 Interview 3 ......................................................................................................................... 54

4.3.4 Interview 4 ......................................................................................................................... 57

4.3.5 Interview 5 ......................................................................................................................... 59

4.3.6 Interview 6 ......................................................................................................................... 61

4.3.7 Interview 7 ......................................................................................................................... 63

4.3.8 Interview 8 ......................................................................................................................... 64

4.3.9 Interview 9 ......................................................................................................................... 66

4.3.10 Interview 10 ....................................................................................................................... 67

4.4 Summary of the Collected Data .............................................................................................. 68

4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 70

CHAPTER V: Data Analysis and Discussion....................................................................................... 71

5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 72

5.2 Lack of Knowledge ................................................................................................................... 72

VIII

5.3 Resistance to Change ............................................................................................................... 75

5.4 Cultural Obstacles .................................................................................................................... 77

5.5 Financial Obstacles .................................................................................................................. 80

5.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 83

CHAPTER VI: Results and Conclusion ............................................................................................... 84

6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 85

6.2 Key Findings ............................................................................................................................. 85

6.3 Action Plan ................................................................................................................................ 88

6.4 Research Limitation ................................................................................................................. 88

6.5 Recommendations for Further Research ............................................................................... 89

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................ 90

APPENDICES ......................................................................................................................................... 97

IX

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix A: List of Interviewees ………………………………………………….…….............97

Appendix B: Interview Request ………………………………………………….………………98

Appendix C: Interview Questions …………………………………………………..……………99

X

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure ‎2-1: Service Levels ...................................................................................................................... 14

Figure ‎2-2: ITIL Service Lifecycle Model ............................................................................................ 16 Figure 2-3: ITIL Service Lifecycle - The Associated Processes .......................................................... 17 Figure ‎2-4: Training Model – Armstrong Model ................................................................................. 33 Figure ‎2-5: Change Management Model – Prosci Model .................................................................... 34 Figure ‎2-6: Planning Model – Richman Model .................................................................................... 35

XI

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2-1: Empirical Investigation Framework................................................................................... 10 Table ‎2-2: Service Delivery – Tactical Level ........................................................................................ 15

Table 2-3: Service Support – Operational Level .................................................................................. 15 Table ‎2-4: Service Lifecycle ................................................................................................................... 17

Table 2-5: Obstacles and Solutions ....................................................................................................... 32 Table ‎3-1: Interviewees List ................................................................................................................... 43

Table 5-1: Data Collection Summary – Lack of Knowledge............................................................... 73 Table 5-2: Data Collection Summary – Resistance to Change ........................................................... 76

Table 5-3: Data Collection Summary – Cultural Obstacles................................................................ 79 Table 5-4: Data Collection Summary – Financial Obstacles .............................................................. 81

1

CHAPTER I: Introduction

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1.1 Background

Organizations invest in Information Technology (IT) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness

of their activities and processes. This investment has grown dramatically in the past decades and

is still growing (Sottini, 2009: P.1). Most organizations today rely on IT to enable them to

achieve their company vision, business strategy and goals. For an IT investment to provide

successful results, the resulting IT service must be well planned, well designed, well managed

and well delivered. That is what the practice of Information Technology Service Management

(ITSM) is about (OGC UK, 2010: P.3).

Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides international best practice

guidance in IT Service Management, a framework for IT Practitioners to demonstrate their

knowledge and understanding of ITIL and to develop their professional expertise through

training and qualifications. ITIL, however, does not come without its barriers. Shang (2010)

noted that ITIL implementation could be affected by a number of barriers that might negatively

influence the implementation process. These barriers may be caused by a variety of reasons such

as users’ behavior, financial problems, internal processes, organizational structure and learning

and development system. These barriers have been practically noticed and observed in a number

of projects in Saudi Arabia, one of which is the subject of this dissertation’s empirical work.

To do this research, a number of successful, high profile projects from different countries were

selected and studied to determine the main barriers encountered and how they were handled,

thereby generating a series of strategies and best practices in the form of a framework for other

projects to follow. A company from Saudi Arabia –Tamer Group- was selected and studied, from

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which empirical data were collected detailing the main problems, barriers, procedure and related

strategies. These were critically analyzed in light of the theoretical framework to determine how

to best overcome these barriers. The results of this ‘benchmarking’ process were then used to

form a practical step-by-step action plan that could be adopted for future projects, in the hope

that the real objectives and benefits of ITIL can be achieved.

1.2 Rationale

A number of studies from around the world showed increasing interest by companies in the ITIL

adoption. Pollard and Steel (2009) reported a growing number of clients inquiring about ITIL

adoption in the United States. They also revealed that 87% of the organizations followed ITIL

guidelines, with one in three organizations intending to adopt ITIL within a year, and another

36% considering its adoption. On the other hand, other studies showed some negative outcomes

and confusion about ITIL implementation. Cater-Steel et al (2006) reported that only 56% of 108

Australian companies surveyed felt that ITIL implementations met or exceeded their

expectations.

In order to minimize the negative sides of ITIL implementation, and achieve its full potential,

this study was set up to investigate what exactly the obstacles were, why they took place in the

ITIL implementation process, and what could be done about them. This research, therefore,

intended to come up with a framework for handling ITIL obstacles. That was based on both

theoretical grounds as well as practical experience. It is, therefore, expected to have a large

positive impact on the increasing number of future ITIL projects in order for companies to

achieve the full potential of ITIL.

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1.3 Aim and Objectives

The main aim of this dissertation was to evaluate the ITIL implementation process in an attempt

to minimize the obstacles that could be encountered, and handle them more effectively.

Therefore, the objectives of this dissertation were:

1- To identify and assess the main obstacles encountered by ITIL practitioners in previous

projects.

2- To find out strategies adopted by practitioners to deal with these obstacles efficiently.

3- To use these obstacles and strategies as a framework for the empirical investigations at

“TAMER Group” in Saudi Arabia.

4- The results of this study were intended to be used as an improved model that minimizes

obstacles and maximizes the potential benefits of ITIL.

1.4 Research Questions:

This dissertation was mainly concerned with investigating and answering the following

questions:

1- What were the most common obstacles that ITIL practitioners encountered?

2- What strategies have they adopted to handle these obstacles?

3- How can these obstacles and strategies be used as a framework in the empirical

investigations of this research in order to improve ITIL implementation process in Saudi

Arabia?

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1.5 Research Design and Methodology

This was a literature based dissertation containing empirical work in the form of in-depth case

study of “TAMER Group” in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, in order to find an answer to the research

questions and realize its aim and objectives, the research has been designed as follows:

1- A quick introduction including ITIL definition, elements, processes, and life cycle, followed

by the main theoretical principles of the ITIL.

2- Extensive review of the available literature about selected case studies of companies used

ITIL. This would help to identify the main obstacles encountered during the course of ITIL

implementation and how these obstacles were dealt with.

3- A framework for the empirical investigation was designed using the theoretical information

provided earlier. This included an initial list of obstacles and the managerial principles used

to tackle them.

4- On a case study basis, a qualitative research was conducted on “TAMER Group” in Saudi

Arabia. Ten employees were interviewed face to face where a two-way interactive

conversation was conducted. This was aimed at identifying any specific obstacles

encountered and strategies adapted to handle them.

5- By applying the theoretical models on the practical data obtained from the interviewees, a

modified set of obstacles was produced with corrective actions to handle them more

efficiently and effectively. These were intended to be used in future projects using ITIL in an

attempt to minimize obstacles and improve ITIL performance.

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1.6 Scope and Applications

This dissertation was mainly concerned with the study of the main obstacles encountered by ITIL

implementation projects, and providing a framework of strategies for dealing with them more

effectively. The initial list of obstacles obtained from previous ITIL projects were categorized

under four main topics: lack of knowledge, resistance to change, cultural obstacles and financial

obstacles. The theoretical framework was drawn from a number of ITIL projects around the

world, while the empirical work was based on a case study from Saudi Arabia. The outcome of

this research could be applied on the increasing number of projects using ITIL around the world

considering contextual deference’s.

1.7 Dissertation Outline

In order to achieve the objectives of this dissertation, it was divided into the following main

chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter introduced the background of the topic, the aim and objectives of this research and

the research questions with a quick overview of the methods used to answer them. Also, the

scope, application, and limitations of the research were stated.

Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter presented an overview of the subject definition and components, followed by

selected literature about ITIL projects. This overview helped in producing a framework for the

7

empirical part of the research including a review of obstacles, and strategies adopted to handle

them effectively.

Chapter 3: Research methodology

This chapter presented the methods used to undertake the empirical work, case study details, and

how to collect data and analyze them.

Chapter 4: Case study data collection

This chapter presented the data collected from the case study project based on the initial

theoretical framework was generated earlier in the literature review.

Chapter 5: Data analysis and discussion

This chapter reproduced the data collected in a manageable way so as to facilitate the data

analysis and discussion in light of ITIL principles and management theories.

Chapter 6: Results and conclusion

This chapter presented the main results of the research and the conclusions. It also provided

possible recommendations and directions for future research.

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CHAPTER II: Literature Review

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2.1 Introduction

ITIL has been in use in the business world for over 20 years (Cater-Steel et al, 2006) during

which it was reviewed, refined, and optimized. A huge body of knowledge and practical

experience was developed in this field. It was, therefore, appropriate to make use of these

resources in an attempt to make ITIL implementation more efficient and rewarding experience.

The main objective of this chapter was to develop a theoretical background of the ITIL, and

positioning the subject within its context. It was, therefore, intended to take the following 3

steps:

Step 1: Defining ITIL as a management approach, including its components, stages, and

Processes.

Step 2: Briefly introducing the main managerial principles behind the ITIL, backed by relevant

management theories. These management theories and principles were the starting point for

implementing the ITIL correctly.

Step 3: Reviewing a number of previously concluded case studies identifying the main obstacles

encountered by practitioners and how they handled these problems.

The outcome of this review was a two-sided process:

1- The problem: an initial list of the main obstacles encountered in a similar context.

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2- The solution: that was based on the two main elements below:

- Management theories and principles of the ITIL as a key to the right implementation

- Strategies used by other practitioners to handle these obstacles in a practical setting.

This outcome was used as a framework for the empirical investigations in the following chapters

which was simplified in table 2-1 below:

Table 2-: Empirical Investigation Framework

2.2 ITIL Overview

ITIL was first developed as a response to the economic downturn in the late 1980s in an attempt

to reduce costs and to manage IT services more effectively (Cater-Steel et al, 2006). The Office

of Government Commerce (OGC) in the United Kingdom realized that utilizing consistent

practices for all aspects of a service lifecycle could improve organizational effectiveness and

efficiency. Therefore, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency was

commissioned by the OGC to develop a mechanism to drive consistency, efficiency and

11

excellence into the business of managing IT services. And thus the first version of ITIL was

introduced (Arraj, 2010).

On its third version now, ITIL is the most widely adopted framework for IT Service management

in the world (Arraj, 2010). It is therefore necessary to introduce IT Service Management (ITSM)

as the field in which ITIL operates, which has been defined by Addy (2007) as follows:

“IT Service Management is the planned and controlled utilization of IT assets (including systems,

infrastructure and tools), people and processes to support the operational needs of the business

as efficiently as possible whilst ensuring that the organization has the ability to quickly and

effectively react to unplanned events, changing circumstances and new business requirements as

well as continuously evaluating its processes and performance in order to identify and

implement opportunities for improvement”.

ITIL has been defined in a number of ways as it developed through different versions. It was

briefly defined as a practical approach to the identification, planning, delivery and support of IT

services to the business (Arraj, 2010). Essentially, it is meant to provide international best

practice guidance in IT Service Management (Clark, 2007). However, a more comprehensive

definition of ITIL was introduced by Worthen (2005) as follows:

“The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a customizable framework of best

practices that promote quality computing services in the IT sector. Built on a process-model view

12

of controlling and managing operations, ITIL addresses the structure and skill requirements for

an IT organization by presenting a comprehensive set of management procedures”.

This definition indicates great benefits of ITIL. It is; therefore, appropriate to discuss what can

organizations expect from implementing ITIL? The fact is that many benefits are difficult to

quantify directly in terms of financial figures. But these can be indicated through assessing the

impact on both business and IT strategies (Kashanchi, 2006). In general, the adoption of ITIL

practices ensures a number of benefits to the organizations (Kneller, 2010) including:

Better alignment with business priorities and objectives, therefore, the business can achieve

more as IT can recommend solutions proactively according to the business needs.

Provide the ability to manage IT costs and reduce redundancy work.

Enhance business efficiency and effectiveness, through improving IT service reliability, and

thus business productivity.

Provide the ability to measure the processes and services by counting repeatable process or

services so that they can be tuned more accurate and overall effectiveness.

Besides these benefits, it has been reported that ITIL improved user as well as customer

satisfaction (Kneller, 2010). Kashanchi (2006) has also added the improved moral of service

delivery team and recipient staff. And therefore, improved productivity and reduced turnover.

13

On the hand, a number of studies showed clear figures about the difference ITIL has made in

certain projects and organizations. This would help make the pictures clear about achievable

measurable objectives of ITIL. As an example, in the United States, Procter and Gamble saved

$125 million of IT cost, Shell Oil saved 6000 working days and 5 million dollars, and Caterpillar

raised their hit rate of target report to solve the web incidents to 90% instead of 30% (Kashanchi,

2006).

Before going into details about ITIL theory, it’s appropriate to briefly present the stages through

which ITIL has passed along its history and development. This will help in understanding the

flow of ITIL principles which will be the cornerstone of ITIL implementation. Integrating the

right relevant principles of ITIL would dramatically minimize the obstacles and maximize the

benefits of ITIL.

2.3 ITIL History and Development

ITIL -as a set of management principles and procedures- has passed through different versions.

Although all of these versions considered the same body of knowledge, each was presented

differently and was used on a different level. In this section, the three versions of ITIL will be

introduced briefly.

2.3.1 ITIL Version 1:

The first version of ITIL was developed in the United Kingdom in 1980s as a series of

operational practices to standardize IT data center management. These were consolidated into a

library of 31 associated books (Hockel, 2009) as principles and best practices spanning IT

14

processes that covered the life cycle of the business process (Ulichnie, 2007). It is worth

mentioning here that, this version was in use mainly by government agencies in the United

Kingdom (Clark, 2007).

2.3.2 ITIL Version 2:

From 1999 to 2001, the second version of ITIL has been developed in a more usable and

structured way. Therefore, this version was spread rapidly to become universally accepted and

used in many countries by thousands of organizations as the basis for effective IT service

management approach (Hockel, 2009). Generally, it was known as ITIL processes.

In this version, the 31 books were consolidated into eleven comprehensive processes (Hockel,

2009) which were categorized under two levels: Service delivery and service support. This was

clearly shown in figure 1 below.

Figure ‎02-: Service Levels

Source: Ulichnie (2007)

15

Figure 2-1 shows the two levels of service with their associated processes. These processes are

defined in tables 2-2 and 2-3 below (Cater-Steel et al, 2006).

Service Level

Management

(SLM)

Managing the appropriation of agreed service level with all IT service

Management processes, operational level agreements, and underpinning

contracts.

Capacity

Management

Managing the capacity of IT services and ensures that infrastructure is able

to deliver agreed service level targets in a cost effective and timely manner.

Cost Management Managing IT service provider’s budget, accounting and charging

requirements.

Continuity

Management

Managing the potential risks that could seriously impact IT services by

ensuring that IT service provider can always provide minimum agreed of

service levels, by reducing risks to an acceptable level and planning for the

recovery of IT services.

Availability

Management

Defines, measures analyses, plans and improves all aspects of the

availability of IT services. Ensuring that all IT infrastructure, processes,

tools, roles are appropriate available for the agreed service level targets.

Table ‎02-: Service Delivery – Tactical Level

Configuration

Management

Responsible for maintaining information about configuration items

required to deliver an IT service, including their relationships.

Help Desk User’s first level supports. Handling the communication with the users

and managing incidents and service requests.

Incident Management Managing incidents lifecycle. The primary objective is to return the IT

service to customers as quickly as possible.

Problem

Management

Managing problems lifecycle. The primary objectives are to prevent

incidents from happening, and to minimize the impact of incidents that

cannot be prevented.

Request Management concentrates on underpinning the required processes to ensure that the

services are maintained and provisioned to meet the current and future

needs of the business

Change Management Managing and control changes life cycle. The objective is to enable

beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services.

Software Control and

Distribution

A collection of hardware, software, documentation, processes or other

components required to implement approved changes to IT services.

Table 2-: Service Support – Operational Level

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2.3.3 ITIL Version 3:

In 2007, Version 3 was released which was based on the phases in which each process takes

place rather than the categorization of the processes themselves. This version recently became

the most widely used IT service management in the world (Hockel, 2009).

Eleven ITIL processes were, therefore, reproduced into five general phases known as the ITIL

life cycle (Arraj, 2010): Service Strategies, Service Design, Service Operation, and Service

Transition. This is clearly shown in Figure 2-2 below.

Figure ‎02-: ITIL Service Lifecycle Model

Source: Arraj (2010).

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Figure 2-2 shows the service lifecycle phases. These phases are defined in table 2-4 below

(Clark, 2007).

Service Strategy This phase is to ensure of defining, maintaining and implementing the

Service Strategy by introducing the value creation, market definition and

solution space.

Service Design This phase is to set service pragmatic blueprints that aim to convert strategy

into reality. Service warranty and utility are considered in this phase.

Service Transition This phase aims to link the projects and operations with each other. Also

concerned with the quality and control of the delivery, in addition to a

guidance of how to reduce the variation delivery.

Service Operation This phase ensure of the robust end-to-end practices which support

responsive and stable services. It influences Strategy, Design, Transition

and Continuous Service Improvement through its knowledge of actual

Service Delivery

Continual Service

Improvement

Surrounds the core processes.

Table ‎02-: Service Lifecycle

At this stage, it’s appropriate to draw the connection between the version 2 (ITIL processes) and

3 (ITIL Phases). This is indicated in figure 2-3 below.

Figure 2-: ITIL Service Lifecycle - The Associated Processes

Source: Ulichnie (2007)

18

Figure 2-3 cleared any confusion regarding the differences between version 2 and 3 in terms of

contents. It simply distributed ITIL processes of version onto the right phase. Therefore, ITIL V3

has been selected as the model on which this research is based for the reasons:

1- It is more relevant to the research because it contains all the necessary theoretical base.

2- ITIL V3 is the latest release and mostly used release among the three versions around the

world (Arraj, 2010).

3- The empirical part of this research is based on V3 as it has been in used on the selected

company.

The next section will present the main managerial theory and the principles as a theoretical

model of ITIL. These will be based on figure 2 above. This is necessary to elaborate on the

fundamentals of the latest version of ITIL to be usable while dealing with the obstacles in the

following chapters.

2.4 ITIL in Theory

ITIL processes of version 2 were reproduced in version 3 according to the phase in which each

process takes place (Arraj, 2010). Five main phases of ITIL were identified to cover all the

service management processes. These phases represent the life cycle of ITIL: Service Strategy,

Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement.

These five phases are at the heart of this research and are explained in this section.

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2.4.1 Phase 1: Service Strategy

Service Strategy Phase is considered as the first stage of the lifecycle which is about the IT

customers, their needs and the requirement to meet these needs. The main process of service

strategy is about cost management, which must always ensure that the cost of delivery is

consistent with the value delivered to the customer. In addition to the service catalog which is

contain the available service to be delivered (Arraj, 2010 and Ulichnie, 2007).

2.4.2 Phase 2: Service Design

Service Design phase includes all processes required to ensure that new services and changes are

designed efficiently and effectively to meet customer expectations (Arraj, 2010). This phase,

therefore, consists of three processes: Capacity Management, Availability Management and

Service Level Management.

Capacity Management:

This process mainly aims to ensure that the capacity of all areas of IT is justifiable cost wise for

current and future needs of the business. That is to provide a point of focus and management for

all capacity and performance related issues, relating to both service and resources. Here are the

main guidelines of the capacity management process (OGC, 2007):

- Produce and maintain an appropriate and up-to-date capacity plan, which reflects the current

and future needs of the business

- Provide advice and guidance to all other areas of the business and IT on all capacity and

performance related issues.

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- Ensure that service performance achievement meet or exceed all of their agreed performance

targets, by managing the performance and capacity of both service and resources.

- Assist with the diagnosis and resolution of performance and capacity related incidents and

problems.

- Assess the impact of all changes on the capacity plan, and the performance and capacity of all

service and resources.

- Ensure that proactive measures to improve the performance of services are implemented

wherever it is cost-justifiable to do so.

Availability Management:

This process mainly aims to ensure that the level of service availability delivered in all service is

matched to or exceeds the current and future agreed needs of the business, in a cost-effective

manner. That is to provide a point of focus and management for all availability-related issues,

relating to both service and resources, ensuring that availability targets in all areas are measured

and achieved (OGC, 2007).

Here are the main guidelines of the availability management process (OGC, 2007):

- Produce and maintain an appropriate and up-to-date availability plan that reflects the current

and future needs of the business

- Ensure that service availability achievements meet or exceed all their agreed targets, by

managing services and resources-related Availability performance

- Assist with the diagnosis and resolution of availability-related incidents and problems

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- Assess the impact of all changes on the availability plan and performance and capacity of all

services and resources.

- Ensure that proactive measures to improve the availability of services are implemented

wherever it is cost-justifiable.

- Ensure that agreed level of availability is provided. The measurement and monitoring is a key

activity to ensure availability levels are being met consistently.

- Continually optimize and proactively improve the availability of the IT infrastructure the

services and the supporting organization, in order to provide cost-effective availability

improvements that can deliver business and customer benefits.

In general, there are two key aspects of availability management (Rudd, 2004):

- Reactive activities: monitoring, measuring, analysis and management of events, incidents and

problems involving service unavailability

- Proactive activities: proactive planning, design, recommendation and improvement of

availability.

Service Level Management (SLM):

This process mainly aims to ensure that an agreed level of IT service is provided for all services.

Proactive measures are also taken to seek and implement improvement to the level of service

delivered. That is to ensure that all operational service and their performance are measured in a

consistent, professional manner throughout the IT organization, and that the service and the

reports produced meet of the business and customers (OGC, 2007).

22

Here are the main guidelines of the service level management process (OGC, 2007):

- Define, document, agree, monitor, measure, report and review the level of IT service provided.

- Provide and improve the relationship and communication with the business and customers.

- Ensure that specific and measurable targets are developed for all IT services.

- Monitor and improve customer satisfaction with the quality of service delivered.

- Ensure that IT and the customers have a clear and unambiguous expectation of the level of

service to be delivered.

- Ensure that proactive measures to improve the levels of service deliver are implemented

wherever it is cost-justifiable to do so.

- Ensure that the organizational hierarchy is considered of the service to be delivered.

- Ensure of delivering the services in a timely manner.

2.4.3 Phase 3: Service Transition

This phase includes all processes required to govern the method of communicating with the

customer, by dealing with customer’s day-to-day issues through applying three different

processes: Service request management, incident management, and problem management. These

three processes are managed and controlled through helpdesk function (Ulichnie, 2007).

Service Request Management:

23

The term ‘Service Request’ is used as a generic description for many varying types of demands

that are placed upon the IT Department by the users. Service request management process

mainly aims to deal with service requests from the users (OGC, 2007).

Here are the main guidelines of this process (OGC, 2007):

- Provide a channel for users to request and receive standard services for which a pre-defined

approval and qualification process exists

- Provide information to users and customers about the availability of services and the procedure

for obtaining them

- Source and deliver the components of requested standard services (e.g. licenses and software

media)

Incident Management:

This process mainly aims to restore normal service operation as quickly as possible and

minimize the adverse impact on business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible levels of

service quality and availability are maintained (OGC, 2007).

Here are the main guidelines of this process (OGC, 2007):

- Drive the efficiency and effectiveness of the Incident Management process

- Manage the work of incident support staff

- Monitor the effectiveness of Incident Management and making recommendations for

improvement

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- Develop and maintain the Incident Management systems and procedures

- Manage Major Incidents

- Produce management information

Problem Management:

This process mainly aims to prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening, eliminate

recurring incidents, minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented, and to maintain

information about problems and the appropriate workarounds and resolutions. It is also includes

diagnosing causes of incidents, determining the resolution, and ensuring that the resolution is

implemented (Rudd, 2004).

Here are the main guidelines of this process (OGC, 2007):

- Depending on the size of the organization/project, there should be a designated person or a

team responsible for Problem Management.

- Liaison with all parties to ensure swift resolution of problems within SLA targets

- Formal closure of all Problem Records

- Ensure that third parties fulfill their contractual obligations

- Arranging, running, documenting and all follow-up activities relating to Major Problem

Reviews.

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Service Desk (Helpdesk):

This is the process through which service transition processes are managed and controlled

(Ulichnie, 2007). It aims to restore the normal service to the users as quickly as possible. This

could include anything that is needed to allow the users to return to working satisfactorily, such

as fixing a technical fault, fulfilling a service request or answering a query, etc. (OGC, 2007).

Here are the main guidelines for this process (OGC, 2007):

- Logging all relevant incident/service request details, allocating categorization and prioritization

codes

- Providing first-line investigation and diagnosis

- Resolving those incidents/service requests they are able

- Escalating incidents/service requests that they cannot resolve within agreed timescales

- Keeping users informed of progress

- Closing all resolved incidents, requests and other calls

- Ensuring customer/user satisfaction

2.4.4 Phase 4: Service Operation

This phase includes all the processes needed to oversee the daily overall health of the service.

This includes managing disruptions to service through rapid restoration of incidents, determining

the root cause of problems and detecting trends associated with recurring issues, handling daily

routine end user requests and managing service access (Arraj, 2010). It, therefore, includes 3

processes: configuration management, change management, and release management.

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Change Management

Despite the fact that many changes have been dealt with during the service transition period,

especially the ones of a smaller scale and casual nature, change management in this phase mainly

deals with raising, submitting, and handling requests for change. It also includes implementing

these changes and maintaining change models (OGC, 2007).

Release Management

This process aims to build, test and deliver the capability to provide the services specified by

service design and that will accomplish the stakeholders' requirements and deliver the intended

objectives (OGC, 2007). Release management considers both technical and non-technical aspects

of a release and establishes secure environments for both hardware and software (Rudd, 2004).

Release management guidelines include:

- Define and agree release and deployment plans with customers and stakeholders.

- Ensure that each release package consists of a set of related assets and service components that

are compatible with each other

- Ensure that all release and deployment packages can be tracked, installed, tested, verified,

and/or uninstalled or backed out if appropriate.

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- Ensure that skills and knowledge are transferred to operations and support staff to enable them

to effectively and efficiently deliver, support and maintain the service according to required

warranties and service levels.

Configuration Management

This process manages the service assets in order to support the other service management

processes. General guidelines are (OGC, 2007):

- Identify control, record, report, audit and verify service assets and configuration items,

including versions baselines, constituents components, their attributes, and relationships.

- Account for, manage and protect the integrity of service assets and configuration items through

the service lifecycle by ensuring that only authorized components are used and only authorized

changes are made.

- Support the business and customer's control objectives and requirements

- Optimize the service assets, IT configurations, Capabilities and resources.

2.4.5 Phase 5: Continual Service Improvement

Despite being the last in order, it is an integral part of every other process and phase of ITIL. It

provides the IT with the required mechanism to measure and improve the level of service. This

includes the technology and the overall management processes of the service that were used and

their efficiency and effectiveness (Arraj, 2010). To be successful, it must have all necessary

28

elements of planning, training, scheduling, roles created, and activities identified (OGC, 2007).

The following guidance is helpful:

- Identify and implement individual activities to improve IT service quality and improve the

efficiency and effectiveness of enabling ITSM processes.

- Improve cost effectiveness of delivering IT services without sacrificing customer satisfaction.

- Ensure applicable quality management methods are used to support continual improvement

activities.

2.5 ITIL in practice

Having presented the theory and principles of ITIL, this section was mainly concerned with the

practical side of it. What sorts of obstacles have been encountered by ITIL practitioners? And,

what strategies have been employed to counteract them? These data were provided through the

study of others’ experience -case studies- who have already implemented ITIL, passed through

all its phases, and seen its different views.

Shang and Lin (2010) studied three service-based companies in order to highlight the difficulties

that the customer service centers of these companies had in their attempt to implement IT

infrastructure library to improve organizational efficiency. Evidence from this study suggests

that implementing ITIL is by no means an easy task, which is heavily burdened by some

obstacles such as those found in the three case study companies including:

- Inability to satisfy customers’ specific needs in time and to allocate customer needs to specific

IT services.

- Extra costs occurred in education and management

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- Time lag between investment in ITIL project and performance outcome

- Difficulties in implementation

- Employee resistance to change which affects employee skills

- Unclear relationship between ITIL project and return on investment

- Time consuming in predefining various working procedures, roles and job descriptions

- Conflicts between departments

It has been concluded that Successful implementation of ITIL requires top management

commitment to information technology, a greater sense of co-operation and involvement of both

call center staff and IT support staff, and an attitude change of everybody from ‘that is not my

job’ to ‘what can I do to help’. The somewhat immeasurable nature of the effect of investment in

ITIL on firm’s performance has led to the reluctance to support long-term IT process changes

and continuous IT improvement (Price and Chen, 1993; Weill and Broadbent, 1998;

Ravichandran, 1999).

Pollard and Cater-Steel undertook and exploratory research on four case studies of successful

implementations of IT service management using the process-based ITIL V2 framework. In this

study, a number of problems and obstacles in implementing ITIL were reported. In one of the

companies, resistance was experienced from technical IT staff that was reluctant to log incidents

and document corrective actions. These staff felt logging the calls in the system wasted time and

hindered them from providing efficient service. In dealing with this problem, this company

benefited most from a heavy investment in ITIL awareness and foundation training, as well as

promoting ITIL to other IT staff, managers, and users who were included in the awareness

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sessions. These training and staff awareness sessions across various departments helped solve

other problems in the companies such as interdepartmental communication and collaboration.

The communication and collaboration issues were found evident in one of the companies

involved in the study. Moreover, other case studies also reported this problem. As an example

the study undertook by Cater-Steel et al (2006) who undertook a study on five Australian

organizations that implemented the ITIL.

Fry (2009) studied several European enterprises in order to come up with solutions to the barriers

that they encountered. The study concluded that implementing ITIL dose not come without

obstacles. The major obstacle found in these studies was the low level of awareness and

understanding of ITIL outside the IT department. This obstacle was mainly handled through

training staff to improve their knowledge about ITIL best practice which -of course- required

additional fund. On the other hand many respondents showed inability to justify return on

investment, which caused a problem with top management commitment. The study clearly

indicated that increasing awareness of ITIL benefits, rather than securing budget, would have

greater impact on securing commitment to implement ITIL.

Another case study showed similar results in North America where ‘TechRepublic

incorporation’ (2005) conducted a survey of organizations that have more than 1000 employees

to study the obstacles encountered through implementing ITIL. It was found that most of the

organizations have encountered several obstacles including:

- Lack of awareness of ITIL.

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- Lack of owners commitment.

- Resource constraints

The organizations in question tackled these obstacles through adopting new approach in

implementing ITIL which include full management and staff commitment and involvement

through training programs.

2.6 ITIL framework (Obstacles and Solutions)

Throughout this chapter, ITIL have been defined and the main principles introduced. This was

followed by a number of selected case studies for organizations used ITIL to present the main

obstacles encountered and solutions employed. This section provides a summary of these

obstacles and strategies to handle them which have already worked well in practice.

The main obstacles encountered during the implementation of ITIL were:

1. Financial Obstacles

2. Cultural Obstacles

3. Lack Of Knowledge

4. Resistance To Change

The following strategies were used to deal with the above-mentioned obstacles:

1. Management Commitment.

2. Training and Development

3. Financial Planning and Management

4. Clear Task Distribution and Job Descriptions.

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These results are summarized in the table 2-5 below.

The Problem

Managerial Obstacles in Implementing ITIL

Financial

Obstacle

Cultural

Obstacle

Lack of

knowledge

Resistance to

Change

Th

e S

olu

tio

ns Management Commitment X X X X

Training and Development X X X

Financial Planning and

Management X

Clear Task Distribution and

Job Descriptions X X

Table 2-: Obstacles and Solutions

2.7 ITIL Software (ITIL Automation)

Recently, large companies such as IBM, Microsoft and others have shown interest in automating

these practices in order to help with improving the level of provided service by IT departments.

The organizations that attempted to implement ITIL find some difficulties in applying these

practices without using software that can facilitate the measurement of the quality of service in

addition to improving and controlling its process (Internet Information and Technologies

Company, 2011a). SMART Suite is one of the leading software in this field which is based on

ITIL V3 to automate the ITSM in organizations. As an example, The IT management of Civil

Service Employees Pension Fund (CSEPF) has implemented ITIL using SMART Suite to

maximize the benefits of ITIL and to build the ITIL knowledge base (Internet Information and

Technologies Company, 2011b).

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2.8 Management Theories

Based on the data collected from case studies undertaken by other researchers as well as the

empirical investigations of this research, numbers of management theories have been selected to

help overcoming. These were training management model, change management model and

planning model. These models helped the research identifying some gaps in the management

side of the business and provide the basis for professional management practices:

2.8.1 Training Model:

Armstrong (2006) summarized the main steps that were necessary to provide a high quality,

efficient and effective training programs for employees. These were shown in figure 2-4 below:

Figure ‎02-: Training Model – Armstrong Model

Source: Armstrong (2006)

Therefore, and in order to maximize the outcome of the training process, the following steps

must be considered:

1. Identify training needs.

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2. Decide what sort of training was required to satisfy these needs.

3. Use experienced and trained trainers to implement training.

4. Follow up and evaluate training to ensure that it was as effective as possible (Armstrong,

2006).

2.8.2 Change Management Model:

In order to apply change in a company smoothly, Prosci (2010) has introduced change

management model as a basis for managing the change. This model is shown in figure 2-5

below:

Figure ‎02-: Change Management Model – Prosci Model

Source: Passenheim (2010)

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Therefore, to manage change, the following steps must be considered in order to effectively

apply the change as proposed by Prosci (2004).

- Phase 1: Preparing for change (preparation, assessment and strategy development).

- Phase 2: Managing change (detailed planning and change management implementation).

- Phase 3: Reinforcing change (data gathering, corrective action and recognition).

2.8.3 Planning Model:

Planning could be one of the important tools in managing projects. To make best use of this

management tool, Richman (2005) introduced planning model which is shown in figure 2-6

below:

Figure ‎02-: Planning Model – Richman Model

Source: Richman (2002)

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Therefore, to manage the planning professionally, the major steps must take place in order to

apply the budget planning effectively:

- Identify the problem of the project.

- Defining the project objectives.

- Develop the plan to meet these objectives.

- Monitoring the plan status.

- Control system to take action if necessary.

2.9 Conclusion

In this chapter, the ITIL principles were identified and summarized to show the benefits and best

practice of ITIL including its main processes and phases. This was followed by a review of a

number of previously concluded case studies from which a list of obstacles was extracted

together with methods to handle them based on these obstacles and strategies, a number of

reverent management theories were presented on which the analysis of empirical data will be

based. The next step, therefore, was to present the methodology that was used to evaluate these

obstacles in light of the ITIL principles and the management theories.

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CHAPTER III: Research Methodology

38

3.1 Introduction

Having presented the research outline which was followed by the literature review, the next

logical step was to show how the research was conducted. Despite having the research design

briefly introduced in the first chapter, the main objective of this chapter was to present different

aspects of the methodology used and the techniques adopted in order to provide a scientific

answer for the research questions. The detailed strategy of the research and the techniques used

to collect and analyze data were then presented. This was helpful in discussing the results and

extracting the final outcome out of the collected data.

3.2 Research Design Overview

Basically, this dissertation was based on reviewing the relevant literature in order to extract the

empirical data form previous works and solutions to certain practical obstacle that were

encountered by the ITIL practitioners. It also included some empirical investigations in order to

come up with solutions to practical problems, this dissertation, therefore, falls within the applied

research type (Kothari, 2004).

It is important to mention that the researcher is involved directly in the practical side of this

research through the efforts to identify, promote and evaluate the reasons and the potential

solutions to ITIL obstacles in the implementation process. Therefore, the style of this dissertation

can be categorized as an action research (Kothari, 2004).

In this dissertation, qualitative techniques were used for deep understanding of views, opinions,

and strategies that were objectively investigated and analyzed, and supported by the available

39

theoretical literature. To do this, an inclusive review of the relevant available literature was

conducted in the first place, by reviewing several case studies which have been concluded

previously, in order to extract the obstacles encountered and best practice to tackle them. Next,

the empirical data were collected based on the case-study of a Saudi Company. In this case

study, the procedures and strategies that were used in ITIL implementation were investigated and

presented. The data collected were classified to easily compare with what has resulted from the

theoretical part, to help with coming up with practical strategies to the ITIL obstacles.

3.3 Literature Based Research

There was an inclusive review to a number of literature resources that were theoretically relevant

to ITIL implementation and discussing and explaining the implementation processes. This

review helped to identify a set of obstacles that the organizations encountered and theoretically

how they were dealt with. These information provided guidelines and a framework for the

following empirical part of the research, besides helping to discover and expand the

knowledgebase in the areas (Marczyk et al, 2010).

3.2.1 Literature Resources

The literature reviewed in this dissertation was taken from the following sources:

- E-journals and articles collected from the University of Liverpool Library.

- Google Scholar was used to obtain relevant online published literatures in the form of e-

journals and e-books.

- Local libraries in Saudi Arabia to get relevant books and journals.

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3.2.2 Studied Literature

Two types of literature were reviewed in this part of the research:

- A set of textbooks and articles discussing the theory of ITIL and its implementation

process which were reviewed in order to understand the ITIL components and best

implementation practice.

- A number of case studies were then reviewed to extract the ITIL implementation

obstacles and strategies from different environments.

The outcome of this part is a framework for the empirical part of the research in the form of a set

of obstacles and strategies and a series of questions for data collection.

3.4 Empirical Research

This is the second part of the research which involves data collection, analysis and results. As the

research aims to study the ITIL implementation process, evaluate and minimize its obstacles that

could be encountered, quantitative research methods would not be enough to provide the

necessary depth of information. Such type of research requires qualitative methods to facilitate

the acquisition and analysis of data at the level and depth necessary to extract the solutions.

Further, qualitative methods provide room for the participants to share their ideas and experience

from on a two-way with the researcher. For these reasons, qualitative research methods have

been selected in favor of qualitative ones (Kothari, 2004 and While, 2002).

3.3.1 Research Strategy:

Due to qualitative nature of the methods needed for this research as discussed earlier and the fact

that the main source of empirical data is the company in which the researcher is involved, it is

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easy to conclude that case-study is the best strategy of this research (Robson, 1993). It has been

particularly selected in favor of other strategies because of its capability to provide better vision

about relations, events and roles (Kothari, 2004). Moreover, this strategy gives the participant the

chance to add their own experience away from the rigid provided by the researcher for some

relevant aspects which had not been considered (While, 2002). Other empirical methods such as

surveys/questionnaire have weakness in discovering new areas and generating solutions. It would

better fit researches that require sorting facts and figures which is not the case in this dissertation

(Marczyk et al, 2010).

3.3.2 Case-Study Details

In selecting the case studies of this research, the following criteria have been considered:

1- The consistency of the used version of ITIL and its components. This includes the ITIL phases

and processes from the ITIL V3.

2- The researcher’s ability to secure full access to the data as necessary. A strong relationship

between the researcher and the key data providers is deemed necessary for getting the best

quality of information and supporting the research with additional information which might net

have been on the list.

3- The researcher observation and better yet the full involvement of the researcher in the system

that has been running ITIL. This would enable the researcher pick and choose only the best data

providers at the right level and position.

4- Due to some cultural issues involved in the research, it would be preferable for the selected

project to be located in a geographical region which is familiar to the researcher

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Based on the above-mentioned criteria, “TAMER GROUP” in ‘Saudi Arabia’ has been selected

as a single case study for this research. It is the only project that satisfied the above-mentioned

selection criteria. “TAMER GROUP” is considered as one of the main healthcare distributors in

the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. More than 2000 employees are working on 9 different branches

according to Tamer Group (2010). Therefore, it provides a breadth of expertise, backgrounds,

and cultures. Details of data collection and analysis will be presented in the following sections.

3.5 Data Collection:

As discussed in the previous section, the empirical part of the research will be biased on single

case study. To satisfy the depth of the information and analysis required for this type of research,

qualitative data collection must be employed. Using questionnaires would not provide the

necessary details and depth of information, let alone the two way communication that is

considered as important for providing extra information by the participants. It, therefore, has

been decided to use interviews as a method of collecting data due to the flexibility and breadth of

information it can provide. In this field, semi-structure interview would be the ideal form of

interviews to suite this kind of research (Wengraf, 2001). This approach helps the qualitative

research by focusing on the interaction and expansion of the interview as necessary (Kothari,

2004).

3.5.1 Interview Details

Selecting the best interviewees is the most important point for data collection to be successful.

Therefore, strict criteria for interviewee selection have been designed as follows:

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1- Interviewee must be in a position to have the required information and the right to

provide this information.

2- The group of interviewees must be able to provide complimentary information about the

subject. It must, therefore, cover full range of positions and functions involved in the process.

3- Were necessary and possible more than one source of information would provide variety

of data about the same subject.

Based on the above mentioned criteria, thirteen interviewees have been selected for the purpose

of providing data for this research as follows:

- Chief Information Office and three sales Departments Directors have been selected from

the top management level. These can provide the required information management aspects such

as (top management commitment, organizational policy and some cultural issues).

- IT Operations Managers and two Helpdesks Supervisors have been selected to provide

the required information related to the level of knowledge and maturity, some cultural issues and

day to day operation.

- Six end users from three different divisions have been selected to provide finance,

training, resources, and customer satisfaction. A summary of the list of interviewees is provided

in the table below:

Sequence Interviewees Positions Number of Interviews

1 CIO 1

2 Divisions Sales Director 3

3 IT Operational Manager 1

4 Help Desks 2

5 End Users 3

Table ‎03-: Interviewees List

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Each interview designed to take between 40 minutes and an hour depending on the interviewee’s

situation.

3.5.2 Interview Questions:

The interview questions were designed so as to collect a wide range of data and opinions that

cover most areas of ITIL implementation obstacles and strategies to deal with them. A space has

been given for each interviewee to provide extra relevant information which are not on the initial

list of questions. The initial interviews questions were passed to each interviewee at least one

week before conducting the interview. This can give the interviewee plenty of time to prepare for

the interview.

Below is the initial list of interview questions:

For each of the following obstacles answers the following questions:

1. Has this obstacle been encountered? (Yes, No)

2. In which phase/process of the implementation did this obstacle occur? (Strategic, Design,

Operation, Transition, Continual Improvement).

3. What are the reasons behind this obstacle? (Management (Lack of planning, Lack of

Capabilities), Financial (Lack of Training, Lack of Resources), Cultural (Mentality, Job

Security))

4. What effects this obstacle had on the organization?

45

5. What was the strategy to overcome this obstacle? (allocate more resources (outsourcing,

restructuring), increase knowledge (training, awareness session)

The considered obstacles which have been discussed earlier are:

- Lack of Knowledge: lack of capabilities and low maturity level.

- Financial Obstacles: exceed project time due to lack of resources, lack of management

implementation plan.

- Cultural Obstacles: organizational resistance, users’ resistance and lack of cooperation.

- Resistance to change: mentality, job security and lack of training.

-Any other obstacle you have encountered.

3.6 Data Analysis

The data collected in this research are qualitative, and therefore, require qualitative approach to

analyze them objectively. The analysis of this type of data is mainly concerned with conveying

the meaning of data using interpretive techniques. The raw data will be filtered in search for

categorize or patterns in order to classify them accordingly this will facilitate finding

relationships between different levels of data and making them easier to understand and interpret.

The analysis will start during the interview selecting the useful information and putting them in

the right order with the exception of the unnecessary data.

The re-arranged and classified data will be processed according to three different levels of

analysis:

- The type of obstacle

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- The reason for the obstacle

- The strategy used to handle the obstacle

These obstacles and strategies will be benchmarked with the principles of ITIL as well as

strategies generated form the case studies. The outcome will be an improved model

implementing ITIL that is expected to overcome these obstacles and deal with their effects.

3.7 Ethical Consideration

A number of employees from the selected organization are required to interact with the

researcher during the interviews. Therefore, ethical consideration will be applied in respect with

this type of data collection (White, 2002). Here are the main ethical points which have

considered for this research:

- The interviewees have been informed about this research, its cause, and objective.

- The selected interviewees are Tamer employees who are eligible to answer the viewed

questions and their answers are going to enrich the research output.

- The confidentiality was considered in the collected information, in addition to securing the

interviewees personal information.

3.8 Conclusion

In this chapter, the main aspects of the methodology and techniques that were used to conduct

the research were presented. This included the methods used to collect and analyze data. The

next step was therefore, to conduct the interviews and to present the data collected from the

interviewees based on the list of obstacles and solutions provided earlier.

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CHAPTER IV: Data Collection

48

4.1 Introduction

As the previous chapter provided a detailed methodology for the research, this main objective of

this chapter was to present the empirical data of the case study project that were collected

through an interactive discussion in semi-structured interviews with the selected employees of

“TAMER Group” in Saudi Arabia. It started with introductory information about the selected

organization and its studied project. It then presented each obstacle detailing how it was

identified, assessed, and managed, the stage at which the obstacle took place, how it affected the

running of the project, and what measures have been taken to deal with them. This information

was provided repeatedly by each interviewee. The data collected was then summarized at the end

of the chapter in order to facilitate the process of data analysis in the next chapter.

4.2 The Case Study

“TAMER Group” has implemented ITIL since the beginning of 2011. For this purpose, they

used software package called ‘SMART Suite’. In fact, 4 out of 9 branches of the Company have

implemented ITIL. The IT Department is managing the tickets which were coming from these

branches on 5 different divisions: Medical, Pharma, Consumer, Operations and Finance.

4.3 Interviews

Ten employees were selected to be interviewed in this research, and they are as below:

Interview 1: Chief information Officer (CIO)

Interview 2: Technical Helpdesk Supervisor

Interview 3: Application Helpdesk Supervisor

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Interview 4: IT Operational Manager

Interview 5: Pharma Sales Director

Interview 6: Medical Sales Director

Interview 7: Consumer Sales Director

Interview 8: Pharma End User

Interview 9: Medical End User

Interview 10: Consumer End User

4.3.1 Interview 1

Chief Information Officer (CIO) was the first interviewee. He is the highest authority in IT

Management for over 14 years in the Company.

- Lack of Knowledge:

The main obstacle they encountered at “TAMER GROUP” was the lack of technical knowledge.

The support team was facing difficulties to solve the incidents assigned to them. Their response

was taking too long and exceeded the Service Level Agreement (SLA) to find the required

solution. Therefore, the stored solutions into the database required a lot of effort to be revised

and to make sure they selected only the best solution in order to avoid the confusion.

The management decided to provide the support team with a heavy technical training and

development courses to increase their knowledge, so that they gain the ability to solve the

incidents efficiently, effectively and quickly.

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The processes affected by this obstacle were incident management and problem management in

addition to the Service Level Management (SLM). This obstacle caused a delay in the IT support

team response time and therefore huge amount of incidents have been accumulated.

- Resistance to Change:

The software that is used to implement ITIL in “TAMER GROUP” is called ‘SMART Suite’

which is used to apply ITIL concepts and automate them to make the implementation easier,

quicker, and more efficient. But some users as well as IT technical support team continued to

work on the old email system instead of opening tickets on ‘SMART Suite’. Furthermore, the IT

technical support team in many cases neglected the incidents they received through ‘SMART

Suite’ which caused an extra level of complexity to the problem. A number of complaints were,

therefore, received about non-cooperative behavior of the IT team. This obstacle made it difficult

for the IT department to trace and record the incidents and service requests into the system and to

extract the solved solutions or the change requests due to lack of information in the database. It,

therefore, affected problem management and change management. The cause of this obstacle

was the lack of knowledge and job security issues. Top management, however, followed a

procedure to reduce the effect of this obstacle through introducing a system of monitoring and

control and thus tracing and evaluating the employee’s work. The dashboard was used to review

and measure employees’ cooperation on a weekly basis. This simply showed the number of

resolved tickets on the dashboard. The other strategy to handle this issue was to provide the IT

team and the users with awareness sessions and educate them about ITIL benefits and best

practice. To minimize the resistance even more, a clearer job description was provided for each

position in the IT technical support department.

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- Cultural Obstacles:

The Organization contains employees of different nationalities, backgrounds and beliefs. The IT

technical team faced a problem with the users as they were entering the tickets in different

languages such as Arabic and English which made it hard to understand. The other issue is

unnecessarily copying many people in the organization when sending an email or an incident.

There were many reasons for these practices according to them, all of which were based on old

traditions and certain cultures. As an example, they believe that their manager must know what is

going on; also, they think they protect themselves by letting everyone knows what they were

doing. This practice is against ‘SMART Suite’ rules in which communication channel is limited

to the issuer and the concern department. However, ‘SMART Suite’ also provides functionality

for checking and tracing incidents by authorized people based on their position on the hierarchy.

The strategy used to overcome these obstacles is the management commitment to making the

technical support team to ignore incidents received by email and encouraging the users to use

‘SMART Suite’ instead.

- Financial Obstacles:

At the beginning of the project, there was no issue with the funds as the planned budget was

enough to begin the implementation. As time went by, the agreed deal of demand on the support

team affected indirectly the financial standing. New requirements appeared, many changes added

and too many of requests accumulated. These unplanned changes caused a lot of problems to the

system as these were not accounted for at the beginning of the project in terms of both fund and

time. At this stage, finance was the main obstacle to complete the work on time due to the added

52

pressure on extra resources to handle the new situation. A number of processes were affected by

these obstacles including SLM, Incident Management and Problem Management. Due to the

accumulation of requests and unresolved incidents, the IT team was unable to deliver the service

within the agreed SLA. A number of incidents and problems could not be handled as required

due to the shortage in both technical and human resources. These obstacles affected the

reputation of the IT department as they were unable to deliver the service in an efficient and

timely manner. The strategies that have been adopted to tackle this obstacle were through

promoting the management commitment to keep the implementation on track and by increasing

the budget in the next year to hire more resources in order to cover the shortage.

4.3.2 Interview 2

The technical helpdesk supervisor was the second interviewee. He is responsible for managing

and controlling the transition phase of ITIL and its related processes. He has been working for

“TAMER GROUP” in this position for over 2 years.

- Lack of Knowledge:

Lack of knowledge was the biggest problem to the users who were facing difficulty to

understand the difference between the incidents and the service requests. The problem was due

to the lack of knowledge as the users were entering the service requests in the place of incidents

to avoid the SLM process. This problem affected the accuracy of the incident management and

the problem management as well. The IT Management decided to provide the users with

incentive training to overcome this obstacle. The training aim to make the users distinguish

between the incidents and the service request through explaining the nature of each process from

53

the SLM management point of view. Unlike service requests, incidents were not supposed to

pass through the lengthy procedure of formal workflow and obtain approval. Incidents only

require a quick solution and simple process.

- Resistance to Change

Users were thinking that the new approach of dealing with their incidents and service requests

are totally wasting their time. They believed that their requests could be handled quicker through

emails to the IT technical support team rather than through ITIL tool. Therefore, they continued

to use emails instead of ‘SMART Suite’ neglecting all the possible consequences of using emails

which are difficult to control and against the rules of the company. This obstacle affected mainly

the incidents management. The helpdesk was unable to organize their work, as the users were

sending their requests through the email. Therefore, managing their requests was absolutely not

possible. Moreover, SLM was affected partially due to the lack of organization that caused

disruption to the service delivery process and, therefore, reduced the users’ satisfaction. The IT

Management has been involved in solving this issue by restricting the emails going to the IT

technical support team directly and therefore reducing the disorganization. The other strategy

was to conduct an intensive training sessions to the users on ‘SMART Suite’ software in order to

reduce their resistance and improve their understanding and awareness of ITIL lifecycle benefits.

- Cultural Obstacle

Many users’ did not realize the application and benefits of ITIL in the organization. Some of

them believed that it is a burden on the company that adds extra of complexity to the system.

Other thought of ITIL as a counting machine that record and trace processes rather than

54

providing efficient and effective solutions. Many other users’ believed that the conventional

email system is quicker and more efficient in dealing with requests and incidents. For these and

other similar believes, many users could not fully put up with the new system. The language

barrier was one of the main obstacles in dealing with ITIL software. Most of the users did not

have a good level at English language that enables them to be with the system closely. The

variation of the languages has also negatively affected the problem management especially when

the helpdesks were looking to extract the stored solutions to the problems. There was a need to

improve the ITIL process maturity for the users; the IT management conducted an awareness

session to spread the knowledge across the organization. Further, they prepared a booklet in both

Arabic and English to identify a common terminology to be used so the helpdesk can search the

database easily for the stored solutions of similar problems once they encountered them.

- Financial Obstacle

On the technical helpdesk side, no financial problems were noticed as the issues that related to

the technical department were not that much. One helpdesk was able to cover all users’ issues

and manage their requirements. Therefore, the management was not thinking of increasing the

number of technical helpdesks operator.

4.3.3 Interview 3

Application helpdesk supervisor was the third interviewee. He is responsible of managing and

controlling the transition phase of ITIL which is dedicated to the applications issues, and related

processes. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in this position for over 1 year.

55

- Lack of Knowledge:

This position, by its nature, requires a highly qualified person who has the ability to deal with a

number of software packages simultaneously. The problem here was the limited abilities of the

position holder to handle all these application on his own, and therefore, the inability to

understand the user’s requests. A high level of business knowledge is also essential for a

successful management at this position which adds an extra level of difficulty to this person.

The absence of common terminology between the users and IT department made it difficult to

extract the right solution at the right time from the knowledge base. This was exacerbated by the

number of users who were not following the right procedure for submitting their tickets and

requests which made it hard to follow and trace. The IT management decided to provide training

to the users and the helpdesk and unify the terms used in order to reduce the effect of this

problem on the quality of service. Also the IT management placed a dedicated user to check and

monitor the entered requests to ensure that all requests are entered through their proper channel.

- Resistance to Change

Application helpdesk was monitoring the main incidents that were coming from the users in

order to manage the knowledgebase. But some of the users considered this practice as

bureaucratic and therefore unnecessary which is consuming time without a direct benefit.

Therefore, they resisted changing the old practice that they felt that appropriate for solves their

incidents quickly and more efficiently. The IT management solved this obstacle through

conducting a scheduled training to share the correct information about the ITIL approach and

show its benefits, in addition to encourage the users to use ‘SMART Suite’ by making the

technical support team more capable of solve the incidents faster.

56

- Cultural Obstacles

The users, in many cases, used to request verbally by phone once they had a critical issue which

needs to be solved immediately. They believed that verbal communication is more appropriate

for a quick response. Moreover, the language was considered as a problem as the users were

recording their issues and requests in several languages which make it hard to search the optimal

solution as soon as possible. This affected and delayed solving other critical issues which were

still pending with the technical support team especially with the use of many other applications.

IT management used a new approach to deal with this obstacles through encourage the users to

use ‘SMART Suite’, in addition to improving the technical support team performance to let the

users trust that this channel can help with solving their incidents as fast as they needed. The IT

management achieved this through applying a campaign to increase the awareness of the benefit

of ‘SMART Suite’ and ITIL processes which would be affected if the practices remained as they

were.

- Financial Obstacles

This position was overloaded due to the large number of requests coming on a daily basis and

required a swift solutions and response. One helpdesk was not enough to cover all of these

requests on his own. A lot of overdue requests have been occurred due to this overload. Thus the

shortage in finance occurred. The organization solved this issue through planning a new budget

next year to hire a new employee that can help to cover the overdue issues. In addition to an

intensive training to ensure that the incidents are solved immediately and efficiently.

57

4.3.4 Interview 4

IT Operational Manager was the fourth interviewee. He is responsible for implementing ITIL at

all phases across the organization. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in this position

for over 9 years.

- Lack of Knowledge

ITIL as a practice is not well known. Most of the users consider that ITIL is founded to record

and count upcoming incidents and requests from the users to the IT department only. Users are

dealing with ITIL as a new approach to communicate their issues to the IT through a new tool or

channel regardless of the processes that should take place to improve the quality of IT service. In

general, there was a need to increase the users’ maturity and awareness of ITIL processes and

their benefits in order to gain their cooperation to implement ITIL smoothly. The management

carried on its shoulder this responsibility to get the users to know more about the importance of

incidents management as a complementary process to the problem management. In fact, one part

of problem management is to collect, record, analyze incidents data for quicker and easier future

access. The statistical nature of this process helps the organization solve similar problems more

quickly. The same applies to the service management process as well. In order to stabilize these

principles, IT management made awareness sessions to increase the users’ knowledge and

awareness of each process of ITIL and its effect on the organization.

- Resistance to Change

In order to adopt ITIL, many changes to the IT practices and procedures were necessary. The

users also need to be aware of a new and more efficient way of communication through the

58

application use. In reality, there was some resistance to this change from both users and IT

technical team. As an example, for job security reasons, the IT technical support did not always

present the right picture about their workload. The users, on the other side saw the new

communication tool of “SMART Suite’ a waste of time and effort which caused their resistance

to the whole system. IT management tackled this obstacle through promoting ITIL within the IT

technical team. Awareness sessions also have been conducted in order to increase technical

maturity of the ITIL and its processes. In addition to reinforcing the effort of IT technical support

team to use ‘SMART Suite’ through their availability and to encourage the users to use ‘SMART

Suite’.

- Cultural Obstacles

The IT technical support team thoughts that the urgent issues should be solved by phone, or

email and no need to force the users to enter their tickets into ‘SMART Suite’ till it is solved.

This practice made the users forget some major issues that should have been recorded due to

overload in the urgent tickets. In addition, Technical support team was neglecting adopting ITIL

and using ‘SMART Suite’ to record their tickets, as they were thinking that the ITIL would

threaten their job. IT management solved this issue by conducting an awareness session to show

that the ITIL aims to improve the IT delivery and support. In addition, IT management attempted

to encourage IT technical support team to record their tickets through ‘SMART Suite’ or to

encourage the users to do so. In order for IT management to measure their progress and reward

them for their performance accordingly.

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- Financial Obstacles

There was a shortage in the number of application helpdesk. The budget which was reserved for

the purpose of ITIL implementation at the beginning of the year was not enough and did not

consider the expansion of the users. In fact, there were approximately 10 new hired users per

month which increased the number of the opened tickets that has gone to the application

helpdesk. Therefore, helpdesk was unable to meet all these requests on his own which caused a

pressure on the financial side.

The management solved this by increasing the budget of the next year and includes a new

application helpdesk.

4.3.5 Interview 5

Pharma Sales Director was the fifth interviewee. He is responsible for more than 500 employees

across the organization. He is considered as a key user of the ITIL implementation in his

department. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in this position for over 22 years.

- Lack of Knowledge:

The Pharma as a department was causing a huge pressure on IT technical team as they used to

delay the reporting of incidents and requests to the IT team. They used to wait until problems

accumulate before they raised their concerns which could cause a real trouble for the IT team to

handle them. This problem is due to lack of knowledge, as they did not know that they should

communicate their requirements as soon as they arise so the IT technical support team can be

able to schedule them. The problem has been solved by conducting a meeting session to discuss

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and agree that they can accept the requirements earlier and schedule them within an agreed time

frame. The processes that have been affected were change management and SLM.

- Resistance to Change

The Pharma team used to accumulate their requirements and send them all in one go to the IT

technical team to work on it. This process was done on a weekly basis and mainly through the

email system. But the IT technical team tried continually to force them to use ‘SMART Suite’

for submitting their tickets. Pharma sales team used to argue that they are using too many

systems such as Email, ERP and SMART Suite, etc. The IT management dealt with this issue by

providing intensive training and awareness sessions about ‘SMART Suite’ in order to make them

aware of the benefit of ITIL and encourage them to help with the implementation. This obstacle

affected the incident management and service request management accuracy in addition to SLM

due to the delay in response.

- Cultural Obstacle

Different mentalities, languages and backgrounds of the users were considered as a major

problem due to the way they understand, interpret and deal with change. As the example the

terminology used by pharma sales team were difficult to be understood by the IT department, let

alone the delay in sending requests, they use of email instead of the ‘SMART Suite’ and the IT

response accordingly. These and other similar things cause a huge gap between the IT team and

pharma team. The IT and Pharma management tackled this issue by attempting to unify and

agreed on common terminology in the so called booklet. Awareness sessions were also necessary

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to inform both teams on the agreed terminology. The processes that have been affected by this

obstacle were incident management, service request management and change management.

- Financial Obstacle

Financially, there was no issue.

4.3.6 Interview 6

Medical Sales Director was the sixth interviewee. He is responsible for more than 750 employees

across the organization. He is considered as a key user of the ITIL implementation on his

department. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in this position for over 16 year.

- Lack of Knowledge

The nature of the medical business is very complex in terms of size and terminology. The IT

technical support team was in need to understand their requirements and requests in order to

come up with customized solutions as necessary. Also the medical team was in need to

understand the nature of the ITIL and its processes. They were in need to understand the

importance of the proper communication channel though ‘SMART Suite’ to make the IT

technical support team able to trace and record the solutions and any associated correspondence

to the knowledgebase. These obstacles have been tackled by combined efforts from both IT and

medical management. Periodic awareness sessions were conducted to spread the required

knowledge across all members.

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- Resistance to Changes

Users were resisting the new changes with regard to the communication with IT technical

support team. They used to highlight their requirements by escalating their issues to a key user

responsible for the entire division. The key user in turn communicated their requirements to the

IT technical support team and managed to follow the status of these issues. This method led to a

lot of shortfalls and delay in responding. The IT management committed to solving these

problems by providing a tool that can help with implementing ITIL and train the users to use it to

in order to reduce the shortfall and increase the efficiency of the IT services.

- Cultural Obstacles

The users’ culture and background caused inability to accept the new communication system

with the IT technical support team due to shortsightedness in understanding the objectives of the

ITIL. Most of the users thought that their requirement would be solved if they contacted the

helpdesk frequently. Helpdesk was receiving too many casual calls and was unable to manage

the criticality of the requests which led to disruption SLM process. The IT management dealt

with this issue by encouraging the users to rely on ‘SMART Suite’ dashboard to manage and

follow their requests. This required a number of training sessions to ensure that they were able to

use this tool efficiently and effectively.

- Financial Obstacle

Financially, there was no issue.

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4.3.7 Interview 7

Consumer Sales Director was the seventh interviewee. He was responsible for more than 200

employees across the organization. He was considered as a key user of the ITIL implementation

in his department. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in this position for over 11

years.

- Lack of Knowledge

The IT technical support team was technically qualified and able to understand the requirements

of consumer division which was cooperative and coordinating with them. However, they needed

continues training sessions on how to use ITIL tool ‘SMART Suite’ in order to avoid any

possible mistake that could happen due to lack of knowledge. In fact, many mistakes happened

due to confusion between incidents and service requests processes. The problem has been solved

by providing the users with continues training sessions so they can use ‘SMART Suite’

professionally.

- Resistance to Change

Many users considered ‘SMART Suite’ as not friendly system and found it difficult to use. They

were satisfied with their old communication method by using the email. They resisted at the

beginning to support ITIL processes through helping the IT technical support team with

recording their issues and request through the system. Therefore, service request management

and incident management were affected. This issue has been solved through encouraging them to

use ‘SMART Suite’ to register all their requirements. Also, end users were provided with

inclusive awareness and training sessions on the system to help them with getting used to it.

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- Cultural Obstacles

The mentality of some users caused a problem in accepting the change to the new system. Some

of the users considered the ‘SMART Suite’ as a waste of time, and thought it would delayed their

work. The IT management solved this obstacle by provide the users with awareness sessions to

increase their ITIL maturity and to help them with understand the ITIL processes and objectives.

- Financial Obstacles

Consumer division was satisfied with the level of service that was provided form the IT

department. No new requirements were needed, and therefore, no financial obstacles were found.

4.3.8 Interview 8

Medical end user was the eighth interviewee. He was the medical supply chain coordinator with

a direct contact with IT technical support team. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in

this position for over 2 year.

- Lack of Knowledge

The IT technical support team was facing difficulties understanding and supporting the medical

division. They always needed to understand the special requirements of the medical division and

encountered issues with understanding the medical business flow due to its complexity. It was,

therefore, difficult for the IT team to design the suitable services for medical division. The IT

and medical division tackled this issue by conducting a regular meetings between both division

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to share the knowledge. And understand each other’s requirements. The ITIL phase that has been

affected by this obstacle was the service strategy.

- Resistance to Change

Some of the users found difficulties in dealing with the ITIL tool “SMART Suite’. At the first

time, the tool did not look friendly to them. They actually continued to forward their requirement

and issues to the key user in order to make him contact the IT technical team with all of their

requirements. This led to a shortfall on the IT side which was overload with their accumulated

requests. The management dealt with this issue by training the users on how to work on

‘SMART Suite’ and explaining to them the importance and the value of the ITIL tool.

- Cultural Obstacles

The IT technical support team did not refer back to the medical division where necessary.

Alternatively, they use to judge others people businesses on their own. This was against the

business rules and caused by the mentality of the IT team. The management committed to bridge

the gap between the IT and medical division in the services phases by conducting regular

meetings that could help with share the knowledge and increase the maturity level of the ITIL

team.

- Financial Obstacles

No financial obstacles were encountered.

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4.3.9 Interview 9

Pharma end user was the ninth interviewee. He was the pharma supply chain coordinator with a

direct contact with IT technical support team. He has been working for “TAMER GROUP” in

this position for over 2 year.

- Lack of Knowledge

There was no issue with knowledge of the IT technical support team. They were able to solve the

assigned issues to them in a professional way. In addition, they were able to provide a good

feedback of the cause of the solved issues.

- Resistance to Change

The users refused to use ‘SMART Suite’ at the beginning as they used to share their requests

which have been sent to IT with all of their division employees. Therefore, due to this behavior,

incident management and service request management were affected which are integral part of

ITIL. The management tackled this issue through conducting awareness sessions to let the users

know the importance of ITIL approach and how to achieve its benefits which would be gained by

using ‘SMART Suite’.

- Cultural Obstacles

There was a prevailing culture in Pharma division that every user must know everything about

what was going on in their division. This was against the ITIL rules which specified certain

channels and procedures for issuing and dealing with tickets. This caused problems with the IT

67

department regarding the use of ‘SMART Suite’. The IT managed solved this issue gradually by

conducting awareness sessions and convening the division members to use the ITIL tool.

- Financial Obstacles

No financial obstacles have been encountered.

4.3.10 Interview 10

Consumer end user was the ninth interviewee. He was the consumer supply chain coordinator

with a direct contact with IT technical support team. He has been working for “TAMER

GROUP” in this position for over 3 year.

- Lack of Knowledge

The technical background of this interviewee was not enough to judge the performance of the IT

team. However, they were generally able to solve most of the technical issues that have been

requested from them except some miner’s delays in some cases. A number of training courses

were provided to the technical team in order to improve their performance, efficiency and speed.

- Resistance to Change

Once the ITIL system has been implemented, many of the users refused to use it since most of

them were satisfied with the traditional requesting method through the normal email. They

considered this new system as an additional work. While actually after they used it, they realized

that the request became easier and more controllable. User resistance has been solved by IT

management through gradually rejecting requests that were not registered in the ITIL tool. This

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forced the users to use the ITIL tool; they have also provided the users with an inclusive training

program to the system so they get used to it and understand its functionalities.

- Cultural Obstacles

This huge organization contained employees from different cultures and backgrounds which

affected the level of acceptance for the change. Some of the users thought it was not necessary to

register every issue sent to the IT department. Also they thought that the new method of

communication would delay their requirements. The management tackled this issue by forcing

them to use the system through rejecting any request that was not registered, in addition to

agreeing with the other management divisions to provide them with the awareness sessions

necessary to increase their maturity level about ITIL processes and encourage them to cooperate

with the new system.

- Financial Obstacles

The interviewee had no idea about the financial issues. However, the IT team was overloaded

therefore; they increased the number of support team.

4.4 Summary of the Collected Data

The data collected in the previously presented interviews must be reproduced according to the

category of obstacles. This helped accessing the data and facilitated analyzing and discussing the

results in the next chapter. Therefore, these data were summarized in this section:

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Lack of knowledge:

According to the CIO, IT team encountered technical difficulties to solve some incidents which

were assigned to them which affected the service level agreement by delaying the solution as the

team was taking too long this also affected incident management. While the application helpdesk

mentioned that IT team was in need to understand the business process to be able to provide the

necessary solution when needed. On the other hand, technical helpdesk reported that the users

were unable to distinguish between the incidents and service requests which were reported by

most users too. IT operational manager and the sales directors reported that the users were unable

to understand the nature and the objective of ITIL; therefore, they were not aware of what ITIL

can provide and how it can help.

Resistance to change:

Most of the interviewees reported that there were two major problems encountered by “TAMER

GROUP”. The IT team was not always inclined to use the ITIL tool as they were neglecting its

importance and what benefits it can provide. On the other hand the users’ resistance to the

change in the communication method and refused to use the ITIL tool. Alternatively, they

continued to use email which was the old communication system and insisted that it was the

ideal communication method to solve their issues faster.

Cultural Obstacles:

According to the CIO, the users were recording their tickets in the ITIL tool by using different

languages and terminology which made it difficult for the IT team to understand their exact

request. Different terminology also reported by most of the end users. IT operational manager

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and technical manager reported that users believed that there was no need to use IT tool and

record the urgent issues as they can be solved immediately by phone. This made the IT team

unable to update the knowledgebase with their problems and possible solutions.

Financial Obstacles:

Application helpdesk, IT operational manager and CIO reported that the budget was the main

problem that caused the financial obstacles. They mentioned that the budget at the beginning of

the project did not consider the users’ expansion and the added pressure on the IT team that

would be overload the IT team. This has also been reported by medical sales directors’. The IT

operational manager considered the lack of funds as the main reason for this shortage.

4.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, the empirical data that was collected from the interviewees were presented and

then summarized. The next step was therefore, to analysis these data in the next chapter. This

would facilitate extracting the results out of the data and providing the final outcome of the

research.

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CHAPTER V: Data Analysis and Discussion

72

5.1 Introduction

Having presented the data collected from the interviewees’ in the previous chapter, it was

appropriate to start analysis the data. The interviewees’ answers must be compared and

contrasted with each other in order to come up with common themes and trends that would

facilitate the analysis and discussion. Re-arranging the data based on the obstacles encountered

and the solutions adopted was also necessary to extract the results. Several management theories

were then selected to help identify problems of the practice and propose scientific method of

dealing with them. The main tools used in this regard were as follows:

- Theoretical principles of ITIL.

- The results of the case studies presented in table 5 of chapter 2.

- Systematic training model of Armstrong (2006) shown in figure 4 in chapter 2.

- Change management model of Prosci (2004) shown in figure 5 in chapter 2.

- Planning model of Richman (2002) shown in figure 6 in chapter 2.

5.2 Lack of Knowledge

This obstacle was encountered by both the IT technical team as well as the users. According to

the CIO, the IT team encountered difficulties in solving some tickets represented by frequent

delays in solving these tickets. From the IT team point of view, this was due to other problems

on the user’s side. The application helpdesk also reported some difficulties in understanding the

business process. On the other hand, most of the users were unable to distinguish between

incidents and service requests processes while submitting their tickets, in addition to inability to

understand the nature and objectives of ITIL. These problems were mainly encountered in the

73

design and transition phases, in particular the service level management, service request

management and incident management processes.

To handle these problems and minimize their effect, a number of training sessions on ‘SMART

Suite’ and ITIL principles were provided for both the users and IT team according to most

interviewees. Regular meetings were held between the IT management, IT technical team and

key users in order to spread the knowledge and awareness about ITIL.

To handle these information more effectively, these points were summarized in table 7 below:

Lack of Knowledge

Points

Str

ate

gy

Des

ign

Tra

nsi

tio

n

Op

era

tio

n

Co

nti

nu

al

Ser

vic

e Im

pro

vem

ent

Interviewees

Co

st

Ca

pa

city

Av

ail

ab

ilit

y

Ser

vic

e L

evel

Ser

vic

e R

equ

est

Inci

den

t

Pro

ble

m

Ch

an

ge

Rel

ea

se

Co

nfi

gu

rati

on

CIO

IT O

per

ati

on

al

Ma

na

ger

Tec

hn

ica

l H

elp

des

k

Ap

pli

cati

on

Hel

pd

esk

Ph

arm

a S

ale

s D

irect

or

Med

ica

l S

ale

s D

irec

tor

Co

nsu

mer

Sa

les

Dir

ect

or

Ph

arm

a S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Med

ica

l S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Co

nsu

mer

Su

pp

ly C

ha

in

Pro

ble

ms

IT encountered technical difficulties to

solve some tickets X

X

X

IT team was in need to understand

business process X X X

X

Users were unable to distinguish between

incidents and service requests X

X

X X X X

Users were unable to understand the

nature of ITIL and its objectives X

X

X X X

So

luti

on

s Conduct meetings to spread the required

awareness X X

X X X X X X

Provide training sessions on ‘SMART

Suite’ and ITIL principles for both users

and IT team

X

X X

X X X X

Table 5-: Data Collection Summary – Lack of Knowledge

74

The results of the case studies presented and summarized in table 2-5 of chapter 2 pointed to

management commitment and training programs as solutions to the lack of knowledge obstacle.

The interviewees in this study did not report issues about management commitment to ITIL

which was a great achievement on its own, because normally, top management commitment

could be one of the main obstacles which requires great work on it. Therefore, besides the

regular meetings, training and development programs would be the ideal solution to these

problems. The question now is about the way training took place, the quality of training

provided, and the qualifications and abilities of the training providers. The interviewees showed

clearly that training was considered as a response to the shortage in productivity and knowledge.

It was not planned for at an early stage of the project and randomly provided to certain

employee. In order for a company to get the best results out of training programs, a professional

training system must be put in place at the right time to the right employees by the right

providers. In this regard, Armstrong (2006) – figure 2-4 presented a systematic training model

which is expected to improve the training process as a whole by following the below steps:

1. Identify training needs.

2. Decide what sort of training was required to satisfy these needs.

3. Use experienced and trained trainers to implement training.

4. Follow up and evaluate training to ensure that it was as effective as possible.

It was therefore, recommended to have a comprehensive training program planned for since the

beginning of the project. It was supposed to be addressed to the right recipient before they got

involved in any part of the new system. It is important at this stage to point out to the effect of

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not having professional training program on the performance of the company. This might

negatively influence the preparedness of employees and their motivation to accept and digest the

new system. It might also affect the financial standing and increase the chances of making errors.

5.3 Resistance to Change

This obstacle was encountered by most of the interviewees from both, users and the IT team in

the same time. As they all reported that the IT team was neglecting the importance of the ITIL

tool, as they were not convinced or inclined to use it. On the other hand, most of the interviewees

agreed that there was a resistance to accept and use the new ITIL tool in registering the tickets

and communicating with the IT team. These problems were encountered in the design, transition

and operation phases as the processes affected were service level management, service request

management, incident management, problem management and change management.

The company has tackled these problems by conducting awareness sessions for IT team and

users to spread the knowledge of the importance of ITIL and the benefits of implementing these

practices according to most of the interviewees. Also, all users agreed that the IT provided the

users with training sessions on how to use the ITIL tool ‘SMART Suite’ in order to increase their

work efficiency. Finally, all interviewees reported that the IT management imposed the use of

‘SMART Suite’ gradually by refusing the traditional email system.

76

To handle these information more effectively, these points were summarized in table 8 below:

Resistance to Change

Points

Str

ate

gy

Des

ign

Tra

nsi

tio

n

Op

era

tio

n

Co

nti

nu

al

Ser

vic

e Im

pro

vem

ent

Interviewees

Co

st

Ca

pa

city

Av

ail

ab

ilit

y

Ser

vic

e L

evel

Ser

vic

e R

equ

est

Inci

den

t

Pro

ble

m

Ch

an

ge

Rel

ea

se

Co

nfi

gu

rati

on

CIO

IT O

per

ati

on

al

Ma

na

ger

Tec

hn

ica

l H

elp

des

k

Ap

pli

cati

on

Hel

pd

esk

Ph

arm

a S

ale

s D

irect

or

Med

ica

l S

ale

s D

irec

tor

Co

nsu

mer

Sa

les

Dir

ect

or

Ph

arm

a S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Med

ica

l S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Co

nsu

mer

Su

pp

ly C

ha

in

Pro

ble

ms IT Team were not always inclined to use

the ITIL tool ‘SMART Suite' X X X X X

X

X X X X X X X X X X

Users resisted to use the ITIL tool

‘SMART Suite’ X X X

X X X X X X X X X X

So

luti

on

s

Awareness sessions of the importance of

ITIL, its tool, and benefits X X X X X X X X X X

Provide training sessions on ‘SMART

Suite’ and ITIL principles for users X X X X X X

Gradually forcing all parties to use

‘SMART Suite’ X X X X X X X X X X

Table 5-: Data Collection Summary – Resistance to Change

From the case studies presented in chapter 2 and summarized in table 2-5, the solutions adopted

to overcome these problems were summarized by the management commitment to implement the

ITIL which was obvious in imposing the use of ITIL tool, and the training and development

solution to increase the user’s knowledge and awareness, in addition to distributing a clear task

and job description to the IT team in order to eliminate some causes of their resistance. It seems

obvious that the IT Management was in need to tackle these problems through applying the

correct approach of dealing with the resistance. First of all, the IT management should have

conducted a professional training to ensure that all weak areas have been covered in both the IT

77

team and the users. Therefore, the ideal training approach which has been presented by

Armstrong (2006) would be the best solution to improve the training process through applying a

systematic training model as shown in figure 4. On the other hand, the transition from the old

system to the new ITIL system was not handled professionally. In this regard, Prosci (1994) –

figure 2-5 introduced a change management model which could be a great help in dealing with

resistance and managing it most efficiently. The steps of Prosci model were presented as below:

- Phase 1: Preparing for change (preparation, assessment and strategy development).

- Phase 2: Managing change (detailed planning and change management implementation).

- Phase 3: Reinforcing change (data gathering, corrective action and recognition).

Using this model could help the company achieve greater results in minimizing the problems

associated with change. In fact it might take some time to see the results of this technique but the

end result is expected to be better. Besides professional training program, the company will be

able to implement ITIL smoothly.

5.4 Cultural Obstacles

These obstacles were encountered due to several cultural problems and by both IT team and

users in the same time. According to the IT team, the users were recording their issues and

requests into the ITIL tool using different languages. Also, they were phoning the IT Team

directly once there was an urgent issue. They thought that the urgent issues could be solved

faster by phone and no need to record them officially. Some managers also were thinking that the

entire division should be aware of all open tickets that went to the IT Team. This mentality,

therefore, led to breaking the basic ITIL communication rule. From the IT team point of view,

78

there was a major problem with recording the tickets by the users as they were not using the

standard terms which made it hard for the IT team to understand. These problems affected the

design, transition and operation phases in particular service level agreement, service request

management, incident management, problem management and change management processes.

The IT management tackled these problems through conducting a number of training and

awareness sessions on the tool of the ITIL and its principles to the users. These sessions were

held to spread the knowledge and to increase the user’s maturity of the ITIL principles. In

addition to unifying the used terms between the IT team and the users in order to reduce the

discrepancy and to be able to extract the stored solution much faster.

79

To handle these information more effectively, these points were summarized in table 9 below:

Cultural Obstacles

Points

Str

ate

gy

Des

ign

Tra

nsi

tio

n

Op

era

tio

n

Co

nti

nu

al

Ser

vic

e Im

pro

vem

ent

Interviewees

Co

st

Ca

pa

city

Av

ail

ab

ilit

y

Ser

vic

e L

evel

Ser

vic

e R

equ

est

Inci

den

t

Pro

ble

m

Ch

an

ge

Rel

ea

se

Co

nfi

gu

rati

on

CIO

IT O

per

ati

on

al

Ma

na

ger

Tec

hn

ica

l H

elp

des

k

Ap

pli

cati

on

Hel

pd

esk

Ph

arm

a S

ale

s D

irect

or

Med

ica

l S

ale

s D

irec

tor

Co

nsu

mer

Sa

les

Dir

ect

or

Ph

arm

a S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Med

ica

l S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Co

nsu

mer

Su

pp

ly C

ha

in

Pro

ble

ms

Users were recording the tickets into the

ITIL tool by using different languages X X X X

X

Users believed that there was no need to

record the urgent issues as it should have

been solved by phone

X X X X X

X X

Strange mentality of the managers who

imposed their thoughts of breaking the

ITIL rules and sharing all requests with

their colleagues

X X X

X X X X X X

The use of different terminology between

the IT team and users X X X

X

X X X

So

luti

on

s

Awareness sessions of the importance of

ITIL, its tool ,and benefits X X X X X X

Provide training sessions on ‘SMART

Suite’ and ITIL principles for users X X X X X X

Unifying the used terms between the IT

team and the users X X X X X X X X X X

Table 5-: Data Collection Summary – Cultural Obstacles

From the case studies presented in chapter 2 and summarized in table 2-5, the solutions adopted

to deal with these obstacles were management commitment, training and development and clear

job description to the IT team. The interviewees in this case study did not encounter issues with

management commitment. Therefore, the training and development would be the ideal solution

to these cultural issues, which were provided in a casual and unprofessional way to the users. A

80

systematic training should have been considered and scheduled to the right employees at the

right time and by the right providers. Therefore, considering Armstrong training model figure

would improve the training results and achieve the required objective.

By using Armstrong model, the company could reduce the cultural differences and achieve better

results in minimizing the terminology and language issues. A special attention should have been

paid to English language. Users must be a provided with sufficient linguistic training sessions as

a main topic of the training programs. Strategic planning could have anticipated such problems

and planned for them before they were encountered. Concerning the problem of mentality and

attitude toward the ITIL which were reported by most of the users, change management model of

Prosci (2004) could be of a great help to the training and development program mentioned

earlier. The users should have been prepared in advance to accept the change, as they must have

been put in the picture at earlier stage.

5.5 Financial Obstacles

Financial obstacles were encountered and reported by most of the IT team. The CIO, IT

operational manager and application helpdesk reported that the budget at the initial stage of the

project did not consider the expected expansion and the added pressure at different stages of the

project. They also reported with the medical sales director that there was lack of IT technical

resources which caused additional pressure. IT operational manager reported that these problems

were exacerbated by the lack of fund. These problems affected the design phase in addition to

the transition phase of ITIL through influencing the capacity management, availability

management, service level agreement, service requests and incident management processes.

81

The IT Management solved these problems by restructuring and increasing the IT budget to

solve the issue that is associated with the lack of fund. In addition to increasing the number of

the IT technical team in order to cover the growth in the demand of the IT services.

To handle these information more effectively, these points were summarized in table 10 below:

Financial Obstacles

Points S

tra

teg

y

Des

ign

Tra

nsi

tio

n

Op

era

tio

n

Co

nti

nu

al

Ser

vic

e Im

pro

vem

ent

Interviewees

Co

st

Ca

pa

city

Av

ail

ab

ilit

y

Ser

vic

e L

evel

Ser

vic

e R

equ

est

Inci

den

t

Pro

ble

m

Ch

an

ge

Rel

ea

se

Co

nfi

gu

rati

on

CIO

IT O

per

ati

on

al

Ma

na

ger

Tec

hn

ica

l H

elp

des

k

Ap

pli

cati

on

Hel

pd

esk

Ph

arm

a S

ale

s D

irect

or

Med

ica

l S

ale

s D

irec

tor

Co

nsu

mer

Sa

les

Dir

ect

or

Ph

arm

a S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Med

ica

l S

up

ply

Ch

ain

Co

nsu

mer

Su

pp

ly C

ha

in

Pro

ble

ms

The budget at the beginning of the project

did not consider the expansion and the

added pressure

X X X X X

X X

X

Lack of technical resources

X X X X X

X X

X

X

Lack of fund

X X X

X

So

luti

on

s

Increase the number of the technical IT

team X X

X

X

Restructure and increase the budget

X X

X

Table 5-: Data Collection Summary – Financial Obstacles

From the case studies presented in chapter 2 and summarized in table 2-5, the solutions adopted

to deal with the financial issues were planning, financial management and top management

commitment to do what it takes to find the best solution. In this case study, there was a big

expansion on the side of users with no extra IT technical resources to cover this expansion. And

that was the main reason for the additional pressure on the IT team. It was therefore, very clear

that the problem was initially caused by lack of planning at an early stage of the project. The

82

budget was based on the poor planning because they failed to anticipate any possible expansions

in the future.

In order to handle this problem more effectively, the reasons of the problem must be eliminated

first. The first solution should have been in a proper planning system on which reasonable

budgeting system must be based. Poor planning caused most of the problems reported by the

interviewees such as the lack of technical resources and the lack of fund. Restructuring and

increasing the budget were in fact unplanned solutions to these problems. Professional planning

has always been one of the main factors for the successful implementation of the project. In this

regard, Richman (2002) – figure 2-6 presented the planning model which could be helpful in

overcoming the problems associated with this obstacle and managing the budget effectively.

Richman model steps were presented as below:

- Identify the problem of the project.

- Defining the project objectives.

- Develop the plan to meet these objectives.

- Monitoring the plan status.

- Control system to take action if necessary.

By applying Richman’s model, the company would be able to plan their budget effectively and

cater for any possible future of expansions. The company should also pay attention to regular

review of the project plan in order to ensure the compliance with the planned budget.

83

5.6 Conclusion

From the above discussion, the data collected form the interviewees were summarized under the

following four categories based on their nature: Lack of knowledge, resistance to change,

cultural obstacles and financial obstacles. To handle the gathered information more effectively,

the data collected were summarized in tables to facilitate the analysis. The data was analyzed and

discussed in light of ITIL best practice and management theories, in particular, Armstrong

(2006) training model, Prosci (2004) change management model and Richman (2002) planning

model. The main findings and results of the discussion were presented in the next chapter.

84

CHAPTER VI: Results and Conclusion

85

6.1 Introduction

After analyzed the empirical data and discussed them in light of management theories and ITIL

principles in the previous chapter, it was appropriate to extract and present the key findings of

the research. These were expected to answer the research questions presented in the first chapter

of this dissertation and realize its aim and objectives. This was followed by an action plan that

can be implemented in other companies with similar settings in order to minimize the likelihood

of these obstacles. Moreover, the researcher mentioned a number of limitations on the use of the

action plan followed by recommendations for some relevant points to be investigated in future

research.

6.2 Key Findings

By reviewing what have been previously published about the obstacles and barriers of

implementing ITIL and comparing them with the practices of the company under investigation,

four main obstacles were found: lack of knowledge, resistance to change, cultural obstacles and

financial obstacles. From the analysis of the data collected from the interviewees, the main

reasons behind these obstacles were discussed. And corrective action was suggested to deal with

each set of obstacles.

Inadequate training was responsible for a number of problems in implementing ITIL such as

insufficient knowledge by IT team to solve the tickets assigned to them; they also found

difficulties to understand the business process. On other hand the users were unable to

distinguish between some ITIL processes such as incident management and service request

management. Despite the fact the management provided consult of training to the users and IT

86

team, it was done as a response to contain problems and was not enough to raise the awareness

of the users and IT team to the required level. Therefore, the management was in need at the

beginning of the project to provide the users and IT team with a professional training and

awareness sessions considering the below factors:

- Improve the IT team and user’s awareness and knowledge of the ITIL objectives and tool in

terms of quality and content in such a way that can add value to their performance and ITIL

knowledge.

- Ensure of providing the right information by the right trainers and to the right recipients at

the right time.

The resistance to change was considered as one of the obstacles that were encountered frequently

in this project. The IT team was not always inclined to use the ITIL tool while the users resisted

the change into the new way of communicating their issue with the IT team, as they were

reluctant to the old communication system of email and telephone. To handle this problem, the

management provided the users with awareness and training sessions in addition to enforcing the

use of ITIL tool gradually. The research suggested a two way process to handle this problem

more efficiently: systematic training model and change management model. The use of change

management model including preparing for the change, managing change and reinforcing the

change, besides getting the users involved at an early stage of the project. Professional training

model was also recommended to be part of the project plan since the beginning of the project, it

must be provided by the right trainer to the right recipients with the right information at the right

time.

87

In regard to the cultural obstacles, the users were recording their tickets in the ITIL tool using

different languages and terminology which made it difficult for the IT team to understand their

exact request. Also the users believed that there was no need to use ITIL tool for urgent issues

and using the phone instead. To handle these obstacles, the management provided the users with

training and awareness sessions to improve their use of ITIL tool. In addition to unifying the

language and the terminology between the users and IT team to ensure of delivering the correct

information. To provide better results, the research suggested a two way process to handle this

problems more efficiently. Change management model and systematic training model should be

both considered at the beginning of the project in order to implement the change carefully and

ensure of providing high quality training in the English language as well as in the terminology

used in the new system.

The financial obstacles mainly happened due to unexpected expansion at the users’ side which

was not balance by an extra support team at the IT side, all of which were not considered in the

budget. The management tackled these issues by restructuring and increasing the budget as

necessary in order to cover the shortage in the IT technical team. The research found that the

problem was not financial; it was purely caused by poor planning at the beginning of the project

which failed to anticipate any possible expansion in the future. It was therefore suggested that

careful planning for the budget which is based on accurate forecasting should be considered at

the beginning of the project. Planning model should include proper definition of the objectives

and developing the plan accordingly, followed by regular reviewing, monitor and control.

88

6.3 Action Plan

For a smooth implementation which is expected by minimizes the obstacles and maximize the

benefits of the ITIL, the following points should be considered carefully:

- Providing professional training programs and awareness sessions which must be integrated in

the project plan at an early stage of the product. They must cover technical knowledge,

language and terminology topics for both the IT technical team and the users.

- Clear job description, roles, responsibilities and procedures must be provided for each

member of the IT team.

- Developing a well-planned budget which is based on thorough, anticipation and carful

forecasting of the project objectives and needs.

- Professional change management program during the move into the new ITIL system for

both IT team and the users.

6.4 Research Limitation

This study was considered mainly a company in Saudi Arabia in which the eastern cultural

attitudes and behaviors were overriding. Carful adjustment must be considered before

implementing the output of this research in other settings or in different geographical location.

The time limitation restricted the number of case studies to one. There could be more or other

obstacles in different organizations. The comparison between two or more case studies may lead

to more accurate results. The research conducted on certain type of business and medium side

organization. These factors must be considered when applying the results on organizations with

89

different sizes and nature. And finally, the case study organization is male dominated. The

research might produce different set of results if considered companies with mixed gender.

6.5 Recommendations for Further Research

The empirical part of this research was based on a single case study. Therefore, considering other

case studies in future research might support or otherwise the results of this research. Also, it is

recommended to consider a survey based on the outcome of this research to cover a wide range

of companies. This might also confirm or otherwise the results of this research. Considering this

type of research in different geographical and cultural settings might produce different results. It

is, therefore, remaindered to consider how these factors affect the implementation of ITIL. And

finally, it is also recommended to do similar research on companies that are using more friendly

ITIL tools which might positively influence the cultural obstacles and resistance to change.

90

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APPENDICES

Appendix A: List of Interviewees:

In the Table below, the interviewed employees in the selected organization are listed by their

positions. The name of the interviewees is not stated due to ethical and confidentiality purposes.

Interviewee Interviewees Positions

1 CIO

2 Technical Help Desk Supervisor

3 Application Help Desk Supervisor

4 IT Operational Manager

5 Pharma Sales Director

6 Medical Sales Director

7 Consumer Sales Director

8 End User (Medical)

9 End User (Pharma)

10 End User (Consumer)

98

Appendix B: Interview Request:

Dear Sir/Madam;

Subject: Request for interview

As a part of the requirements to complete my MSc in international management, you

organization has been selected as a case study for this research. The subject of the research is

“evaluating the managerial obstacles of implementing ITIL”.

Therefore, you are kindly requested to give me the chance to interview the below-mentioned list

of your staff for around one hour each at the time and location that suits you.

The University of Liverpool and I (the researcher) guarantee that the information obtained from

the interviewees will be used solely for the purpose of this research. All personal information and

identities will remain confidential at all times.

If you have any further inquiry or need any clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me on

my email address: Moath.ibrik@my.ohecampus.com

Looking forward to hearing from you. Your cooperation is much appreciated.

Moath Ibrik.

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Appendix C: Interview Questions:

A discussion is included in each interview; the following is the initial list of interview questions:

For each of the following obstacles, please answer the following questions:

Has this obstacle been encountered?

In which phase/process of the implementation did this obstacle occur? (Strategic, Design,

Operation, Transition or Continual Service Improvement).

What are the reasons behind this obstacle?

What effects this obstacle had on the organization?

What was the strategy to overcome this obstacle?

The considered obstacles which have been discussed earlier are:

- Lack of Knowledge: lack of technical capabilities and low maturity level.

- Resistance to change: mentality, job security.

- Cultural Obstacles: organizational resistance, lack of cooperation.

- Financial Obstacles: lack of resources, lack of financial plan.

- Any other obstacle you have encountered.