SESSION 201 Monday, November 2, 11:30am - 12:30pm

Track: The Beginner's View

ITIL: Is It Useful for Small Companies?

Michael Gill Manager, Application Support and Release Management, Kaiser Permanente Michael.L.Gill@KP.org

Session Description

In this session, you’ll hear from a former start-up operations manager about how ITIL can and should apply to early-stage companies, as it does for more mature organizations. Discover why size doesn’t matter and how there are more similarities between large and small companies than there are differences, especially related to customer-centric, process-based IT service support. Learn how to implement change management without spending any money, and how to anticipate growth by establishing business- and process-based support from the get-go. (Experience Level: Fundamental)

Speaker Background Michael Gill is the manager of application production support and release management at Kaiser Permanente. Prior to that, he served as associate director of operations at Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Inc., enterprise configuration manager at Autodesk, Inc., and start-up operations manager at Renovis, Inc. Michael holds ITIL certifications in continuous service improvement (v3) and release and control (v2). He received his MBA from Saint Mary’s College of California.

ITIL® – Useful for Small Companies?

Michael Gill

Kaiser Permanente

ITIL® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited.

Michael Gill • Manager, Application Production Support at Kaiser

Permanente (Benefits, Products, & EDI)

• Former Associate Director of Operations at Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

• Former Enterprise Configuration Manager at Autodesk, Inc.

• Former Operations Manager at Renovis, Inc.

• Former IT Manager at Chiron Corporation

• MBA, Saint Mary’s College of California

• BA, Humanities, UC Berkeley

• ITIL® Practitioner’s Certificates in “Release & Control” and “Continual Service Improvement”

About Kaiser Permanente

Hawaii

Northern California

Southern California

Northwest

Colorado

Georgia

Mid-Atlantic

Nation’s largest not-for-profit health plan

Scope includes ambulatory, inpatient, ACS, behavioral health, SNF, home health, hospice, pharmacy, imaging, laboratory, optical, dental, and insurance

9.3 million members

17,000+ physicians

49,000+ nurses

8 states + District of Columbia

192,000+ employees

38 hospitals

600+ medical offices

$53 billion operating revenue

integrated

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Kaiser Permanente By the Numbers

Transcept Pharmaceuticals • Founded in 2002 in the San Francisco Bay Area (Point Richmond)

• 45 employees, plus ~15 regular consultants

• Went public (Nasdaq: TSPT) February 2, 2009

• Deriving new patient benefits from proven CNS (central nervous system) drugs

• Intermezzo®: low-dose sublingual zolpidem, prn treatment of insomnia characterized by middle of the night awakening

• Standard MS Windows Client / Server Environment

• 22 servers, including virtual

Michael’s ITIL Journey • 2002 – 2005 Autodesk, Inc.

– 7,000 Employees

– 450 IT personnel

– Offices throughout the world

– 3 international call centers

• 2005 - 2011 Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

– Employee #8

– Started in one cramped office

– Became ~ 60 personnel in a 30,000 square foot, 2 building campus

• 2011 Kaiser Permanente IT – Application Support Manager

– 192,000 employees

– ~6,500 IT employees plus vendor support world-wide

So that’s why I am here….

But why are YOU here?

– Academic interest?

– Considering ITIL® for your own company?

– Considering a career move?

– Perhaps planning to start a company of your own and hoping to be apply to leverage what you already know from ITIL® in a larger enterprise?

ITIL® in a Small Company

• ITIL® – 300 / 30 / 3

–300 employees

–30 IT personnel

–3 locations

• Could ITIL® benefit a 35 person organization with two IT support employees?

Companies of All Sizes Share Problems

There is far more in common among companies varying in size than there are differences…

Business Computing in the 21st Century

Information Technology: fully integrated into the business.

Who is impacted?

Everyone who depends upon

a computer, a network, the

internet.

Problems abound in companies of all sizes….

Inconsistent

Lacking standards

Unreliable

Confusing

Frustrating

Expensive to support

Technical environments:

Best Practices of ITIL® can be useful in companies of all sizes

What I learned in Autodesk’s initial implementation of ITIL® has applied to each subsequent position I held……

– Incident vs. Problem Management

– Service Catalog

– Change Management

– Configuration Management

– Release Management

– Knowledge Management

– Establishing a culture of Continuous Improvement

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This talk will cover how these lessons learned have applied to subsequent professional challenges.

ITIL® in a Small Company

One key benefit: anticipate growth

– Mergers and acquisitions are frequently difficult because standard processes and practices have not been defined.

– The earlier a company sees IT support as an end-to-end process rather than as a quick fix, the easier it will be to adjust these processes to dynamic business requirements.

– It’s all about Service Lifecycle Management

ITIL® in a Small Company Another key benefit: Business Continuity Planning

– Thinking about IT support in “process” terms, even at an early stage, creates the appropriate mindset for BCP

– Knowledge Management and an appropriate data backup process will facilitate faster time to recovery in the event of a disaster “event”

ITIL® in a Small Company

–No precedent –Overly bureaucratic –Not enough IT people –Technical tools expensive –Metrics and measurements superfluous

But ITIL® was not designed for a small company……

No precedent…..

– Nothing in this collection of best practices to prohibit its application on a smaller scale

– More similarities than differences between large and small companies

• All need efficient, reliable operations

• Support personnel: customer focus

• Support should be process-oriented

• Incident vs. Problem Management

• Standardization

• Documentation

– Common complaint

– “The paperwork takes longer than the fix.”

– However, documentation is critical to success

• Of processes

• Of problems

• Of service requests

• Of “requests for change”

• Of knowledge management entries

Overly bureaucratic…

Setting up these systems, habits, processes at the outset is

MUCH easier than introducing them when the company is larger.

Not enough IT personnel to serve all ITIL® roles…

– Change Manager – Configuration Manager – Release Manager – Problem Manager – Service Manager – Service Desk Technician – Field Technician – Others

However, ITIL® does not mandate that each of these roles

be an individual’s full time responsibility. In fact, even in

a large company, it’s common to have one individual

assume several roles.

Technical tools are too expensive… – $25,000 - $200,000 – Investment far too steep for a small company

• However, expensive tools are not needed in a small company – Spreadsheets – Standard, common office software – Off-the-shelf database products – Inexpensive ITSM tools

Bonus: By defining support processes early with any

tool, the process of migrating at a later date to a more

extensive system becomes very straightforward.

Metrics and measurements unnecessary…. – Everyone knows each other – Everyone always knows what’s going on – Informal business culture

• Measuring delivery of service is important, no matter how small a company.

• Establishing benchmarks, seeing progress over time, and defining quantifiable success factors all provide important visibility into IT support trends.

Metrics, a critical success factor

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.- Peter Drucker

Benefits of ITIL® to a Small Company

• Anticipate growth

• Efficient operations with lean staff through

– Defining repeatable processes

– Viewing IT support as a series of processes • Incident management

• Event management

• Problem management

• Change management

– Business Continuity Planning / Disaster Recovery

• Documentation for measuring success

Some Suggestions

• Leverage MS Office “Outlook” or other calendar program for Change Management

– We used calendar appointments to schedule maintenance windows

• Check first with key stakeholders

• Send appointment to all personnel

– This became an established component of our company culture

Some Further Suggestions • Practice Knowledge Management

– Record summaries of work performed, applicable workarounds, anything related to an incident, problem or change

• MS Access Database

• Excel spreadsheet

• Word processed lists

– If this information can be made searchable or indexed, it will provide significant benefit downstream

– Big success for Transcept’s IT team when we went through our first SOX audit, December 2008

Some More Further Suggestions

• Create and Maintain a Service Catalog

–Does not have to be confined to IT • Facilities

• Security

• Conference Logistics

• Human Resources / Benefits

• General Administration

Still Some More Further Suggestions

• Develop separate Incident Management and Problem Management processes – Even if same people handle both processes,

take the time to look at them separately. – Schedule a regular, periodic meeting to

review open and completed tasks from a Problem Management perspective • Incidents • Service requests • Problems • Changes

Still Some More Additional Further Suggestions

• Perform Root Cause Analyses

• Publish to key executives

• Communicate throughout your organization

– Acknowledge problems

– Celebrate (market) successes

“Through our careful root cause analysis, we were able to identify and correct the problem in just two days….”

– Be deliberate about the number of communications you issue

ITIL® – Useful for Small Companies?

• ITIL® will indeed benefit small companies by increasing operational efficiency.

• Looking at IT service delivery as a process, rather than as a collection of individual incidents, allows small companies:

– to determine root cause of technical problems

– to deploy scarce support resources in an appropriately prioritized fashion

– to measure success on an ongoing basis

Recommendations • Learn more about the benefits of ITIL®.

– Books & periodicals – Conferences like this one!

• Look at your workload from a standpoint of PROCESS, rather than isolated events

• Take the journey in small steps and focus on

CONTINUOUS SERVICE IMPROVEMENT.

Additional Resources “ITIL® Lite” by Malcolm Fry

“ITIL® V3 Small-scale Implementation” by Sharon Taylor & Ivor Macfarlane

ITIL® has a lot to offer -- dig deep! SERVICE STRATEGY • Service Strategy • Service Portfolio

Management • Financial Management • Demand Management

SERVICE OPERATION • Event Management • Incident Management • Request Fulfillment • Problem Management • Access Management

SERVICE DESIGN • Service Catalog Management • Service Level Management • Supplier Management • Capacity Management • Availability Management • IT Service Continuity

Management • Information Security

Management

SERVICE TRANSITION • Transition Planning and Support • Change Management • Service Asset & Configuration

Management • Release & Deployment

Management • Service Validation • Evaluation • Knowledge Management

CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT

• 7 Step Improvement Process

Slide courtesy of Brenda Iniguez

Questions?

Thank you for attending this session.

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