The Prague Principles p. 5

Fail fast but gracefully in IT service management

A summary of the Prague Dialogue, January 2023

part 5. Instructions for use

The Prague Principles are not intended to be comprehensive. They simply reflect the participants’ concerns and thoughts on January 27th, 2023. Nevertheless, they may resonate with others and reassured them that they are not alone. Neither are the principles intended to be followed without due consideration of the reader’s local context. As Taiichi Ohno (the father of the Toyota Product System) said, “You have to face your own difficulties and think for yourself. Do not try to borrow wisdom.” In other words, if you take improvement seriously, it is hard work. The consequences of not taking it seriously may be even harder.

From left to right: Patrik Šolc, Gabriel Lenčéš, Ladislav Tomášek, Tatiana Cervenkova, Jan Kovář, Marcel Rychly, Markéta Toufarová, Alexandr Mostýn, and facilitators Mark Smalley and Rob Akershoek.

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Fail fast but gracefully in IT service management

A summary of the Prague Dialogue, January 2023

part 4. Expert reflections

In addition to the Prague Principles as formulated the workshop attendees, Paul Wilkinson, the closing keynote speaker, contributed some observations and opinions for practitioners, managers and consultants in the ITSM domain to consider.

During the event I presented the results of a global survey based upon the five key success or fail areas identified in my ‘Shiny New Thing that Really Helps’ presentation from 2022. I have related the findings in the survey to the principles above, particularly ‘People’, ‘Value’, ‘Processes and Change’. The survey did not focus on ‘Tool’ related aspects. The figures below represent the percentage of survey respondents scoring this as ‘Poor’ or ‘Weak’.

People

Let people fail: In my experiences across the globe all transformations require ‘continual experimentation, learning and improving’ as a core organizational capability.  76.6% scored ‘Continual improvement is applied top-down and left to right through the organization and is seen as a strategic capability’ as Poor to Weak. 78.4% – ‘Time is reserved for people to continually learn and improve and improvement suggestions are prioritized and followed up on.’

Value:

Link everything to value: 69.1% scored ‘Strategic goals are always known and are cascaded top-down and left to right through the organization to drive decision-making and prioritization mechanisms’ as Poor to Weak. 79.6% – ‘Our governance mechanisms ensure that our portfolio of IT initiatives is balanced between innovation, risk, and improvement work.’

Show how we enable the business: 80.3% scored ‘We measure the outcomes achieved (in relation to strategic goals) from all IT investments and initiatives’ poor or weak.

Process and Change

Change the system and people will follow: refers to the role of managers in supporting and enabling change. Process and change also talks about learn from mistakes and failures. These areas require a shift in leadership skills and behaviors. 60.1% scored ‘We have leadership development programs in place to develop skills needed to manage culture and behavior change’ as Poor to Weak, and 66.1% – ‘Managers are committed to the behavior and culture change by creating safety, fostering feedback, and ensuring time is reserved for teams to learn and improve.’

A final word from me. In my ‘Shiny New Thing that Really Helps’ presentation I analyzed the principles from Agile, DevOps, Lean and ITIL 4, and identified three common principles they all share. These being ‘Focus on value’, ‘Collaboration and Flow’ and ‘Continual Learning and Improving’. It is these principles, when translated into sustainable, repeatable, end-to-end behaviors that will help accelerate and embed change in the organization and deliver continual value. The Prague Principles fit in and align well with these industry approaches.

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Fail fast but gracefully in IT service management

A summary of the Prague Dialogue, January 2023

part 3. Principles

The principles are listed in four groups:

3.1 People

Talk to real people

People in non-operational roles should talk with the people who actually do the work. This often referred to as Gemba, a Japanese word meaning “the actual place”. A fundamental part of Lean management philosophy is the Gemba walk – going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions to clarify their requirements, and learn.

Base decisions on the actual context

This is an extension of the principle “Talk to real people”. While decisions are partially based on imagining what could be, assessments of the present should be based on observations in the workplace. Be warned, however, that observations are always interpretations that are affected by our biases.

Best practices and guidelines are a good start, but tunnel-vision and a fixation on theory will make us lose our grasp on reality around us. Open your eyes and observe and study your environment at work.

“People often rely on guess work and ignore the context.” – Kaimar Karu

Know your stakeholders

Understand the other parties in the value network.

Communicate meaningful information

Make sure that information is relevant to the recipient. Avoid reports that are never read.

Again, this is about talking with the consumer of the information. What are their interests? Are they interested in what we’re trying to offer? Why? Why not? Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Communication, communication and even more communication.

Communicate effectively

Use techniques such as active listening, giving constructive feedback and learning from feedback.

“Without constructive feedback there is no transformation.” – Tereza Kretinska

Let people fail

Do not just fail fast but also fail safe: establish safeguards. Foster psychological safety so that people feel comfortable to exercise their professional judgment and take defensible risks in order to achieve organizational goals.

Don’t view failures as the end of an initiative. Everything is about continuous learning, not a one-time activity. This particularly applies to things like digital transformations such as ‘implementing’ ITIL, DevOps and Agile. A lot of people have a hard time grasping this and creating the environment for the people to actually fail and learn from the failures.

Dare to be vulnerable

Build relationships by showing vulnerability, for example by telling people about internal concerns. Assess how much transparency is appropriate and responsible. 

“Vulnerability is the cornerstone for courage building. Without vulnerability there is no innovation nor creativity.” – Tereza Kretinska

This is also related to the previous principle, let people fail.

Realize you are not alone

Oftentimes, other organizations suffer from the same issues that you experience. Be reassured that it is probably not your “fault”. Do not use this as an excuse, but as an invitation to explore what other organizations have done, and to use this as inspiration to discover what works for you.

Every company thinks that they are special, yet at the end of the day, the very similar problems occur. Best practices are best practices because they work for most of the companies if used correctly. It’s okay to try and experiment with what works for you, because if you don’t, you’ll never know what does and doesn’t work. You’re just paralyzed and not making progress. There is no evolution without movement. There is no growth without failure.

First seek to understand, then to be understood

This advice by Steven Covey is useful when trying to improve collaboration with other parties in the value chain. First show interest in what they do and the challenges they face. Then explain how their actions affect you.

Foster honesty

Foster an environment where people don’t fear for their position or reputation when sharing their opinions with their superiors. Admit your mistakes and show you are open to improve. Build trust.

Bossing people around, playing psychological games, and finger-pointing never got anyone anywhere.

Step out of your box

Engage with other organizational functions but speaking with them formally and informally. Visit where they work so that you gain a better understanding of who they are, what they do, and what concerns them. We often get trapped in our theories and stories about other people, which don’t reflect reality.

This is also related to some other principles, such as dare to be vulnerable. It is not only about climbing down from our ivory tower, but also about being brave and stepping out of the comfort zone. The manifests itself in different ways. For service management professionals, it might just be about talking to real people. For indecisive managers, it might just be about starting to take decisions. For the tech support worker who often works overtime due to lack of interest of their manager on how the workload is distributed in the team, it might just be to say enough is enough.

3.2 Value

Link everything to value

Understand how work contributes to the value of the IT products and services. This requires an understanding of how the work relates to products and services (lining all work items product aware), and how these are linked to business processes and business value streams that generate outcome. Measure the most important things and understand how to use the data. For example, measure the value that training provides to the organization.

Realize that value is subjective and we can only identify value in a dialogue with our potential service consumers.

The IT service should resolve a problem for the consumer and the benefits of using it should be clear to them. The delivery of the IT service should have value for the customer and it is important to understand the relationship between value and execution. If the execution of the service is great, the users will be satisfied, see the benefits and be more willing to pay.

Show how we enable the business

Articulate the contribution of the IT function to business goals, in terms that business people understand. This extends the principle “Link everything to value”.

This, again, requires a solid portfolio of IT products and services linked to the business model (of how IT and business services interact). The value of these products and services should be reviewed regularly to understand whether they are useful for the service consumers.

3.3 Process and change

Stop doing stupid things

It is easier to identify stupid things and stop doing them, than to think of new things to do. Simplify ‘transformations’ by taking one small step at a time. For example, remove one small unused function from an application a month.

Engage actively with people in the various IT value streams to understand how they work and create value for and with the customer. This can be done by, for example, value stream mapping. 

There is another perspective. A lot of the times, identifying stupid things is hard. Stupid might be a very subjective word at the end of the day. We often not only struggle with this for our customers, but internally as well. Some things that might seem stupid from an internal perspective, are not stupid for the customers, and vice versa. Dialogue is needed to identify what “stupid” actually means. It is difficult are rare to admit, especially to ourself,  “You know what, you’re right; this actually is a stupid idea.” Many factors could determine why this does not happen more often. It might be someone’s ego. It might also be the inability to explain clearly why something is stupid. Let alone proposing a better solution, which is even rarer.

Learn from mistakes and failures

Make a point of reflecting on mistakes and failures and thinking about whether and how they could have been prevented.

Change the system and people will follow

Instead of trying to change people directly, change their environment so that they adapt to the new circumstances.

This needs to be supported by management and when management is unable to decide on radical decisions like changing the system, it’s pretty rough. Of course, non-managers need to be able to explain why the system needs to change in the first place, but there is a problem when the management doesn’t want to make big decisions, which is often the case.

“Forget transformations: focus on adaptability and resilience.” – Kaimar Karu

3.4 Tools

Look under corporate radar (initially “Realize Excel”)

Realize that organizations are full of permanent workarounds such as spreadsheets that were initially intended as a temporary solution to a problem. These often escape corporate radar and are poorly managed.

Use what you have

Before investing in new tools, investigate whether existing tools can be used.

Use frameworks as tools

Realize that frameworks and standards are just tools to do a business, not the main goal.

You do not need to adopt the whole framework but can adopt and adapt the parts that are valuable for your practices.

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Fail fast but gracefully in IT service management

A summary of the Prague Dialogue, January 2023

Part 2. Concerns at work

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The concerns are listed in three groups:

2.1 Products and value

Strategic alignment

This concern was that operational functions where the real work is done, are working towards operational goals that are poorly aligned with strategic goals. It is also about understanding and aligning with the purpose of the organization, and understanding how the initiatives support the strategic intent and direction.

Mission statements and strategic principles are often unclear and misunderstood (vague slogans that cannot be translated into execution or actual behaviour). Vladimir Kufner and Patrik Šolc proposed a bad practice: “Slogans instead of real transformation”.

In some cases, operational goals are sometimes not even poorly aligned but are non-existent. This has an indirect impact on people’s performance and sense of connection with the company in general. So even slogans with limited value may be better than nothing. 

This concern is related to another point, “Communication”.

Service portfolio/catalogue

There is no “single source of truth” as to which products and services are available.

The views of the services are not tailored to the various groups of stakeholders, for example making the distinction between IT services for business users and IT services for IT users.

The connection between IT services and the supported business functions. Often it is not clear how IT services and products enable the business processes to deliver value to their customer (e.g., linking customer journeys, value streams and business processes to the IT services and underlying platform services). No clear mutual understanding between the business and IT as to how IT enables the business.

This is related to communication and collaboration, and the organizational units realizing that everyone provides service to someone and that service management is all around us. At certain points (especially when major incidents occur) we come to realize very quickly that we depend on one another, but we tend to quickly forget about it once the incident has been dealt with. Lack of continuous improvement in these areas create a world where organization units are isolated in their silos, searching for the “Shiny New Thing that Really Helps.” Different organization units use different terminologies and frameworks but at the end of the day we are talking about the same things. In order for this to improve, organizational units need to spend more time talking among themselves and figuring out that they cannot function without the other. It’s not about IT, HR, Legal, Procurement, Facilities, etc. Everyone delivers services and it is only when they work together that they create value. Which is the point of co-creation after all.

This impacts both “Communication” as well as “Strategic alignment”. Also see “End-to-end value chains”.

2.2 Processes and change

Processes

The context for this concern was collaboration between process-oriented IT service management functions and functions that work with Agile or DevOps approaches where the ways of working seem less formal. The concern is that it is difficult to explain the value of standard processes (and practices) so these functions see the value of a standard way of working.

For example, DevOps teams don’t want to log every incident, maintain the knowledge base, register changes in the ITSM-system, etc.

End-to-end value chains

People have limited visibility of, and connection with, other parts of the value chain. Often, nobody is responsible for the end-to-end chain. This makes it difficult to prioritize, and to limit value leakage. The consequence is not only poor throughput but also poor employee engagement due to lack of feedback from the end user and other parties in the value chain.

This concern is related to the concerns about communication, processes, and strategic alignment.

Communication

It will not come as a surprise to learn that communication was a concern. This basic skill is lacking in most organizations. The participants were concerned about communication between IT and IT functions, between IT and business functions, and between IT and external IT service providers. Communication with external customers was less applicable to their context.

Communication is often vertical and hierarchical, moving across multiple management layers (both downstream and upstream) resulting in miscommunication and confusion.

Communication is not just about providing information to stakeholders – it starts with understanding what information the consumer actually needs (know your customer).

Communication is bi-directional.

“Communication is about speaking to people, not at them.” – Kaimar Karu

Dealing with change

The ability of the organization to adapt to change was a concern. For example, reorganizations never finish properly and on-time, because conditions change.

Change is a fact of life, but people struggle with the uncertainties it brings. On the other hand, people like change if it reduces friction and improves their employee experience and job safety.

Dealing with change is also hard for facilitators to manage. Management oftentimes wants changes to be implemented immediately without even thinking about the impact. On the other hand, many employees often tend to resist any sort of change. They would rather work ten times longer with their manual processes than let us help them automate routine tasks. These very human characteristics are usually a problem.

2.3 Tools

Tool selection

It is hard to establish what the various stakeholders want and need from ITSM tools It is not only about gathering requirements for selection but also includes agreeing on a way of working with the tool. The concern is not only the time it takes but also whether the tool will be accepted and used effectively.

The introduction of a new tool is more about enabling the transformation (e.g., transforming IT processes and introducing new ways of working), than just selecting and implementing a new tool.

It is often times complicated to explain the real value of a new tool to the workforce and management. Tool vendors’ marketing campaigns tend to promise big savings, yet in reality calculating the ROI is much harder. Managers therefore often overlook the bigger picture, because, naturally, their main concern is to spend as little as possible. The users, on the other hand, care more about the functionality rather than the resources. Finding the best of the both worlds is an art on its own.

Another problem with tools is that in an environment with lots of autonomy, the company might have several toolsets for the same purpose. This not only has direct financial consequences, but also indirectly for data exchange, integration, etc. Breaking down silos is hard when everyone – understandably – thinks their tool is the best one and there is no architectural function that imposes some form of standardisation.

Finally, users often do not have time to adopt new tools, as illustrated by the cartoon below.

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Technology standards

Organizations struggle with the diversity of the technologies that they have adapted over time, and their apparent inability to prevent and reduce complexity. This also results in challenges such as technology debt (and technology refresh).

Most organization still lack a standard set of reusable technology building blocks (often referred to as “platform services”) which enables teams to deliver faster and safer, while reducing risks and costs.

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Fail fast but gracefully in IT service management

A summary of the Prague Dialogue, January 2023

part 1. Introduction

The Prague Principles is a set of guidelines that can be adopted to help govern behavior in IT service management (ITSM). It started with an idea to conduct a post-conference workshop at the seventeenth itSMF Czech Republic annual conference in January 2023. The intent was that the participants would summarize what they had learnt from the conference, share their practical concerns at work, and explore how conference learnings could be applied to make improvements. The assumption was that whatever the group came up with, might also be useful for other professionals. Particularly because they represented ITSM in real life, not as projected by many so-called experts who often live in the unevenly distributed future[1].

The half-day workshop was called the Prague Dialogue. “Dialogue” was chosen to emphasize the bi-directional nature of the workshop. Although it was facilitated by two conference speakers, it was not their intent to impose their opinions on the group but rather to help discover what the participants thought, felt, and wanted.

The workshop was conducted with eight participants from six organizations in four sectors: IT, Finance, Logistics, and Engineering. They contributed as individuals, not on behalf of their employers. The Prague Principles document was drafted by the facilitators and improved by the participants. Closing keynote speaker Paul Wilkinson added his expert commentary as additional considerations.

After the conference, conference attendee Michaela Ošmerová posted her thoughts on the conference on LinkedIn[2]. She kindly agreed to us using her comments as additional input. We incorporated the following principles:

[1] “The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed”. William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003.

[2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7024770570474946561-m3Lq

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Dear itSMF members, we would like to invite you to an open discussion on an interesting IT topic.

TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 1 – CLICK HERE

TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 2 – CLICK HERE

You will receive your Event link when you register for this event.

Sales of AXELOS – unexpected message

Yesterday – June 23, 2021 – there was a clear message in my mailbox that our partner in the field of IT service management (ITSM), AXELOS, is being sold to a new owner, PeopleCert! The report was officially published on June 21, 2021.

It did not take long for us to receive confirmation of this message from Kaimar Karu, who told us the following:

“This Monday, it was announced that AXELOS – a manager of frameworks and best practices and methods such as ITIL and PRINCE2 – will be sold to PeopleCert.”

The original notice is available here:  https://kaimarkaru.medium.com/a-new-era-for-itil-prince2-d7d01915ae76

Author of the notice

Kaimar Karu was to be one of the speakers at our 14th Annual itSMF Czech Republic 2020 Conference. This eventually came to an end, thanks to the fact that Kaimar was appointed Minister of Foreign Trade and IT of Estonia. However, good relations with him were maintained.

Who are the sellers and buyers? 

AXELOS

AXELOS is a joint venture between Capita (51%) and Cabinet Office (49%), responsible for developing, enhancing and promoting a number of best practice methodologies used by professionals working primarily in project, programme and portfolio management, and IT and digitally enabled services. The methodologies, including ITIL, PRINCE2 and MSP are adopted by private, public and voluntary sectors in more than 180 countries to improve employees’ skills, knowledge and competence in order to make both individuals and organisations work more effectively. Professionals at 90% of the world’s leading organisations use AXELOS’s best practice methodologies, under which 5 million people worldwide are certified today. The business has c.100 employees and in 2020 generated revenue of £42.9m and profit before tax of £24.3m. Further information can be found at: https://www.axelos.com/ 

About Capita

Capita is a consulting, transformation and digital services business. Every day our 55,000 colleagues help millions of people, by delivering innovative solutions to transform and simplify the connections between businesses and customers, governments and citizens. We partner with clients and provide the insight and cutting-edge technologies that give time back, allowing them to focus on what they do best and making people’s lives easier and simpler. We operate in the UK, Europe, India and South Africa – and currently across six divisions: Customer Management; Government Services; People Solutions; Software; Specialist Services; and Technology Solutions, shortly to be simplified into three divisions. Capita is quoted on the London Stock Exchange (CPI.L). Further information can be found at: http://www.capita.com 

PeopleCert

PeopleCert is a global leader in the assessment and certification of professional skills, partnering with multi-national organisations and government bodies. PeopleCert develops and deliver market leading exams across 200 countries every year in 25 languages, through a network of 2,500 centres and 30,000 venues worldwide. Since 2018, PeopleCert has been the exclusive Examination Institute for the delivery of AXELOS’ programmes worldwide. Further information can be found at: https://www.peoplecert.org/

What does this mean for us?

Thanks to long-term good and fair relations, both with the buyer and with the author of the notice, we are again one step ahead and the whole transaction will not have any adverse consequences for individual itSMF branches around the world.

On May 20, 2021, a special itSMF award was presented to the winner of the IT project of the year 2020 competition. This is a significant award for his contribution to the management of information and communication technology services – the itSMF award. 

The winner of the special itSMF award for 2020 was the project of W.A.G. Payment Solutions a.s. – “Implementation of Digital Integration HUB and digitization of business processes“. This very innovative and flexible architectural solution based on Gartner Digitial Integration HUB “blueprint” is the first application in the Czech Republic and its exclusivity is a replicable approach to digitize the company without substituting “legacy” systems.

Prize in the form of diploma  and annual membership in ITSMF  Czech Republic for five participants (Corporate  5) Corporate members – Corporate members – itSMF Czech Republic | The IT Service Management Forum was handed over by Mrs. Ivette Korandová, who was a member of the jury of the prestigious  Cacio  IT project of the year 2020 competition. The  award  ceremony took place at the premises of Eurowag, Na Vítězné pláni 1719/4 in Prague.

Representatives of the winning team, Mr. Radek Moc – CTO (Chief Technical Officer) and at the same time product owner of the submitted project, applicant, and project presenter, Jiří Račman – IT Executive Director, further Jiří Vondrus – Enterprise architect and Slaviboj Michelfeit – for the solution supplier, GSW development company, Solution architect, were invited and participated in the award ceremony.

“Eurowag wants to become a business platform provider, that is, it wants to connect customers with providers, and Digital Integration Hub will become a key component of the very future business platform, as this will allow to integrate all services with each other and third-party services. An important moment of successful implementation of the project was the introduction of Release management, which became a key control mechanism for monitoring the quality of testing and deployment”, concluded Mr. Moc at the end of the discussion.

The winning project will be presented at the itSMF annual conference on January 21-22, 2022.

Congratulations to the whole team on a successful project and we wish a lot of strength for the next job.

Presidency of itSMF Czech Republic

About the conference

The 15th annual conference of ITSMF CZ took place online in the form of two parallel streams on Thursday, January 21, 2021 and Friday, January 22, 2021, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

As usual, the programme was prepared in cooperation with CACIO, itSMF International and itSMF Slovakia.

The event was opened with an opening statement by ITSMF Chairman Patrik Šolc and Vladimír Dzurilla, the Government Plenipotentiary for IT and Digitization, who spoke briefly on DigitalCzechia – Current State and Plans for the Future.

Conference theme:  DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

In this spirit, the theme and programme blocks of the conference were focused. Let’s ask the following questions:

Program and presenter

  1. Digital Transformation (e.g.: How can IT help in the digital age of business? The main barriers to digital transformation? Enterprise Service Management … etc.
  2. ITSM trends 2021 (e.g.: Knowledge frameworks – news: DevOps, ITIL, Cobit… cybersecurity and service management, Solution selling… etc.)

A great success was once again the acquisition of very renowned and respected speakers, who have been involved in the development of ITSM for many years. In addition to the traditional ones – Paul Wilkinson (director and owner of GamingWorks.nl) and Roman Zhuravlev (ITSM Portfolio Development Manager, responsible for the continuous development of ITIL), these were:

Conference patronage for 2020

Patronage also provided Prof. Ing. Jiří Voříšek, Csc., educator and consultant in the field of SSME (Service Science Management and Engineering), strategic management of information systems, system integration, methodology of development and operation of IS/ICT and outsourcing of IS/ICT. Adviser to the Deputy Minister of the Interior.

Vladimír Dzurilla, Dip Mgmt., Director General of the Treasury of the Centre for Shared Services, p. p., Adviser to the Prime Minister for ICT and Digitization, Government Plenipotentiary for IT and Digitization

The main areas of interest are transformation projects in the telecommunications, finance, and government sectors.

More information will be provided after the final evaluation of all aspects of the conference in a more comprehensive article.

itSMF Czech Republic

itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) is an internationally active independent and non-profit organization dedicated to all aspects of ICT service management. ITIL and its emerging ISO/IEC 20000 standard are the global standard for this area, so itsmf is also perceived as a forum for users of this standard, but at the same time it significantly affects the development of the entire ICT management sector. itSMF was founded in the UK in 1991.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BUSINESS SUPPORT

Quality bar moved significantly higher

The 14th year of the itSMF CZ conference has barely passed and the preparation of the 15th year has already started.

The central theme of the last conference was the new version of ITIL4. The lectures, workshops and panel discussions have raised many other questions about the direction in which IT services will develop in the near future and what will be driven by this development. This clearly identified the focus of the upcoming conference.

About the conference

Until the last moment, we optimistically hoped for a standard conference in the pleasant environment of a Prague center. However, corona virus decided for us that the 15th annual conference of itSMF CZ will take place online in the form of two parallel streams on Thursday, January 21, 2021 and Friday, January 22, 2021, always from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m..

The programme was prepared in cooperation with CACIO, itSMF International and itSMF Slovakia.

The focus of the conference stemmed, as already mentioned, from the findings of the last conference. And under the motto DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BUSINESS SUPPORT, our goal was to bring answers to the following questions:

What will the future of corporate IT look like?

During the first half of 2020, most organisations deployed more ICT innovations than in the previous few years combined. How has it changed, and will it still change IT Service Management (ITSM) and IT Operations?

How to get the right people, put them in the right places and how to keep them?

It is good to constantly remind yourself that behind the success in every business is the great work of great people that you have gained and invested in their professional development. Success in ITSM is closely aligned with the four “people, processes, partners, technology” (in this order).

What changes can be expected in ITSM and IT operations?

Now, more than ever, the opportunity and need (today even the need) to make effective and cost-effective changes through products, services and completely new approaches never ends! This also gives the future of ITSM and IT operations, which can be characterized as fit-for-purpose.

What changes do we expect in the provision and support of services?

There are a huge number of changes in the provision and support of IT services right now. The technologies used, business models, user habits, customer priorities are changing. What could never be done all at once must be what was unimaginable is now self-evident.

How are the demands on IT organizations changing?

IT organisations and service providers need to understand, consider and anticipate business and IT trends in order to stay relevant to their customers.

Conference patronage for 2021

Prof. Ing. Jiří Voříšek, CSc., educator and scientist in the field of SSME (Service Science Management and Engineering), strategic management of information systems, system integration, methodology of is/ICT development and operation and IS/ICT outsourcing.

Vladimír Dzurilla, Dip Mgmt, Director General of the Treasury of the Centre for Shared Services, p.p., Adviser to the Prime Minister for ICT and Digitization, Government Plenipotentiary for IT and Digitization

The main areas of interest are transformation projects in the telecommunications, finance and government sectors.

Conference topic

In this spirit, the theme and programme blocks of the conference are focused. Let’s ask the following questions:

Program and speakers

Two main program blocks

  1. (e.g.: How can IT help in the digital age of entrepreneurship? The main barriers to digital transformation? Enterprise Service Management … etc.)

2. ITSM trends 2021 (e.g.: Knowledge frameworks – news: DevOps, ITIL, Cobit… cybersecurity and service management, Tailor-made IT sales… etc.)

A great success was once again the acquisition of very renowned and respected speakers, who have been involved in the development of ITSM for many years. In addition to the traditional ones – Paul Wilkinson (director and owner of GamingWorks.nl) and Roman Zhuravlev (ITSM Portfolio Development Manager, responsible for the continuous development of ITIL), these were:

General evaluation of the conference

Participants

256 people registered for the conference and an average of 170 participants from different private and public sector entities were continuously connected on both days. A record is available to registered participants.

At the conference, 24 speakers gave 23 expert lectures, and 1 panel discussion took place.

Evaluation

The online way of holding the conference was also signed on the evaluation method, where brief comments prevailed in the MS Teams chat. The completed questionnaires were a smaller number, which cannot be considered as a representative sample of participants, however, here we also gained valuable knowledge.

The chat and questionnaires show the following:

Best rated speakers

According to the participants, these were the following speakers:

In the first group it was: George Westerman, Jan Zadák and Aleš Špidla, in the second it was Lucie Nová, Branislav Jarábek, Luis Ribero, Lukáš Varaja, Miroslav Müller and Rob Akershoek.

Despite the fact that without any experience with the organization or with technical security we had to organize the conference online, we and the participants evaluate the conference as very successful and will use the lessons learned in the preparation of the 16th conference in January 2022.

Presidency of itSMF Czech Republic