Challenges Faced in Implementing ITIL Framework for IT Service Management

Discuss about the Management Framework eLearning Information Systems.

The first challenge was the failure of the two attempts for the implementation of a successful management strategy. Another challenge was that despite of having a positive attitude of the HQ senior management, the process staffs were not assigned the proper roles within the project. The expertise and resource issues were not considered seriously within the project that was based on the “business as usual approach.” Moving forward, it was fund that the decisions taken for the integration of the Quality Management System and ITSM processes were not very clear at the initial stage of the project that was in later abandoned y the project seniors . Lately, it was also identified that issues have been arising in the crucial change management during the process of the IT function’s reorganization had not been granted subsequently and priority led to “pockets of resistance and an atmosphere of negativity and scepticism (Bailey, 2015).” These were the challenges that the QHID project was facing during the execution of the project. The breakthrough was addressing the issues identified in the first two falls that has result in the enhancement in the quality of the project just after the issue addressing. Another challenge faced by the authors was convincing the process owners to drop their “business as usual” approach get themselves staffed at the right level. The deemed approach lead to rescheduling, resource and expertise issues and other change management issues (Muhammad,2015 failed attempt by the subject QHID in introducing ITIL project as part of the organisational was the reason for the deemed approach of the project heads

Reattempting the same procedure will always affect the budget of the project, as the same investment will be made repeatedly on the same processes and activities to accomplish the single objectives. It was mentioned in the case study “similar occurrence that was not promptly corrected thus leading to a significant increase in the cost of the ERP project they investigated.” The framework is a cost-effective process for the accomplishment of the objectives however; the challenges faced in the QHID project make it difficult to manage the project cost-effective (Galup, dattero & Quan, 2016). The objectives of the QHID project was not accomplished while attempting the implementation of existing quality management system and ITSM processes and so, the budget was enhanced more than the expectation.

Addressing Challenges and Achieving Breakthroughs

Customer relationship management, vendor Management, IT service continuity Management, and availability management will be ensuring the optimal return on investment within the target of three years are the appropriate strategy fundamentals. These management fundamentals will be ensuring that within the three years, estimated financial investment will be returned with marginal profits. This transformation will be helpful in managing the sectors stated in the above report considering the investments and budget estimated for the establishment of the services (Krishna & Ravindran 2017). These strategies fundamental will be boosting the base of the QHID project and empowering the financial sector through limiting the investment and gaining actual profit. The first target has been set as the margin of the investment that will be helpful in limiting the margin for the safety, as this will be alternatively affecting the output of the project. Asset location is another concerning objective for the calculation of return on investment made for this transformation (Asgari et al., 2017). Long-term investment always ensures profit if proper and effective management strategy has been chosen for the execution of the project. Short-term might result in the collapsing of the project.

Target has been expressed in the figure and so for the ‘target 1’, it can be recommended change management value could be slightly increased that will be enhancing the application management in higher value. IT service management could be at no cost as it will be new implementation so; the service provider will be taking care of the IT management. Modifications can be done in ‘target 2’, as after one year within the industry QHID can invest less on the incident management and service desk that will be helpful in getting better return on less investment without affecting the quality of the project (taghva, Hongqi & Fasihi, 2016). The first step would be to devise a strategy for the investment and be aware of the valuation limit while keeping a margin of safety as part of a contingency plan for dire situations. Followed by allocating the organisational assets in accordance to the organisational return investment. It is also advisable to keep the investment distributed in sub-sections and the implementation planning should be long-termed and not for instant benefits. The reviewed article has even suggested that the expenses should be kept to a minimal range that would assess in the exponential growth of the organisation (becker, 2017). It can be recommended to manage the expenses at the minimum level without affecting the quality of the project.

Fundamental Strategies for Effective IT Service Management

Figure 1: Service model

(Source: Created by Author)

Figure 2: Information system in Supplier Relationship Management

(Source: Created by Author)

ITIL service life cycle revolves around the five major components of the proposed strategy that includes the ITIL Service strategy that will be including the financial management strategies, demand management of the Healthcare, service portfolio management, and strategy options considering the successful execution of these phases. Thereafter it comes to the service design phase that will be responsible for the proper and effective management of the service level, availability, capacity, continuity, information security, supplier, and service catalogue (lema et al., 2015). These phases are followed by the service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement. Service transition will be taking care of the management of the configuration and asset, change, deployment and release, transition planning and support, service testing and validation, evaluation and knowledge management. This phase will be ensuring the successful execution of the project. Service desk is the next phase of this framework that will be emphasizing on the identification and execution of the management of the incident, problem, access, event, technical, and application management. The last phase can be considered as the most concerning and crucial phase for the successful execution of the ITIL framework within the QHID project (Bucher & Li, 2017). Thus, phase includes the seven steps involved for the process improvement that will be ensuring that the executed activities have been of the high quality with proper revenue and return on investment. Following are the vital five stages of this framework that could be accomplished for getting benefits from the ITIL framework:

Service Strategy: it will be helpful in providing the guidance over the designing, developing and implementing IT service management within the QHID. This will be determining and understanding the risks and budget associated with the project delivery.

Service Design: This phase will be emphasizing on the designing and developing the processes and services related to the IT service management that will be helpful in supporting the strategies those have been already developed while define the service strategies.

Service Transition: This phase will be considering business associates and IT professionals in managing the manipulations towards productivity enhancement. It will be helpful in determining methods and processes those could be practiced efficiently, effectively transition changed, and new services within the operational activities without interrupting or disrupting other processes or services.

Service Operation: It is important to consider the practical aspects of the everyday business operations and this phase will be focusing on the same facts (Mukwaski & Seymour, 2016). The main focus of this phase will be to run all the objectives or constraints of the project smoothly, cost-effectively, efficiently, and reliably. This will helpful in agreeing the customers over the project aspects without any disruptions or interruptions.

The Five Major Components of ITIL Service Life Cycle

Continual Service Improvement: It will be providing the rooms for the improvement and development within the ongoing project growth and development. Training on the application of ITIL can be helpful in identifying possibilities for the progress those could be implemented within the project.

The project was about to establish a centralised model of the IT service management based on the ITIL framework. The report presents all the aspects related to the execution of this transformation of the existing system of the Queensland health care. It was a big project consisting of many factors related to the successful execution of the IT service management within the QH through the implementation of ITIL framework (Alimam, Bertin & Crespi, 2017). Thus, there were certain challenges and breakthrough for the implementation of the ITIL framework and introducing the transformed IT service management. This research help in identifying many learning opportunities for the execution of the project and it can be taken as an opportunity to learn various aspects of this implementation. It was find by the Author that commitment of the senior management is one of the crucial factor for the implementation of the ITIL framework within the Queensland healthcare. The author stated that “Maintaining close and forthright relationships with multiple vendors facilitates technology transfer to in-house staff while a benefits realization plan is a valuable tool for tracking and communicating tangible and intangible project benefits to the project stakeholders (Tan, Cater-Steel and Toleman 2009).” According to the extensive literature, reporting studies, which are associated with the investigation, states that there in success when IT is implemented in the ERP area whereas there is a little amount of success when the ITSM is considered.

Analysis of the ITIL implementation on six German firms by Hochstein et al. states that there are several benefits of the ITIL alignment. This research was replicated by Cater-Steel ate al. with 12 organizations from Australia, UK, and New Zealand and was able to found out that the focus on IT service management is improved along with other benefits as well. For successful adaptation of the ITIL Cater and McBride made use of the actor network. Cater-steel et al also reported that there are several organizations who are adopting the ITIL concurrently are making use of other frameworks as well. Lastly, according to the observations made by the authors there are several observations which can be drawn. The older findings does not reflect the current trends in IT (Sun & Hogqi, 2015). Some researchers have addressed tactical factors responsible for success in relation to the various phases involved in the lifecycle of a project. Whereas, other researchers have put their focus on the strategic factors that requires the attention of the corporate management before implementation. Another observation is the extensive length of the CSF lists provided by some researchers runs counter to the concept of CSF, as it is responsible for distraction rather than focusing on important aspects.

Importance of Senior Management Commitment

It is all about “managing the service transition projects” that is not capable of explaining all the aspects related to the project management however, it highlights on the considerable assistance and activities for the identification of the interfaces related to the service management processes. Reviewing the figure ‘2’ it can be said that following are the list of planning processes of the ITIL services management that could be utilized through the implementation of the ITIL framework:

Project Initiation: it will be considering the definition of the stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities and the resources those have been available for the successful delivery of the project through utilizing the ITIL framework (Gallagher & Sixsmith, 2016). This will be helpful in laying the path of the activities involved for the project execution.

Project coordination and planning: This process will be helpful in ensuring the projects transition and other planning incorporated within the project in manner to enhance and apply the appropriate project management guidelines.  

Project Control: this process will be monitoring the progress of the project, consumption of the resources in manner to expedite the progress and development of the project. it does not take the responsibility of planning the phases related to the project in detailed manner however, it is capable of triggering the planning activities executed by the different processes.

Project communication and reporting: In manner to provide, the documentation related to the objectives and learnings accomplished in the project, proper communication plan could be implemented. The main objective of this phase can be explained as “To provide an overall summary of all planned or ongoing Service Transition projects as information for customers and other Service Management processes (El, Mansouri & Qbadou, 2016).”

References

Alimam, M., Bertin, E., & Crespi, N. (2017). ITIL perspective on enterprise social media. International Journal of Information Management, 37(4), 317-326.

Asgari, F. H. A., Tabatabaeian, S. H., Taghva, M. R., & Abolhassani, F. (2017). Affecting Factors on ITIL-Based Health IT Service Management (Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran). INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND NETWORK SECURITY, 17(5), 312-319.

Bailey, S. M. (2015). Information technology service management frameworks: A study of it processes and their relationship to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) (Doctoral dissertation, Capella University).

Becker, J. (2017). Application of IT Service Management Principles.

Büchner, L., & Li, M. M. (2017). Solving of issues with an ITIL framework, which occur during the shakedown phase in a software implementation.

El Yamami, A., Mansouri, K., & Qbadou, M. (2016, October). Toward a new multi-agents architecture for the adoption of ITIL framework by small and medium-sized enterprises. In Information Science and Technology (CiSt), 2016 4th IEEE International Colloquium on (pp. 40-45). IEEE.

Gallagher, S., & Sixsmith, A. (2016). A Management Framework for eLearning Information Systems Implementation. In International Business Information Management Association Conference (IBIMA). International Business Information Management Association (IBIMA).

Galup, S. D., Dattero, R., & Quan, J. (2016). The Compensation Benefit of ITIL® Skills and Certifications. International Journal of Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Technology (IJSSMET), 7(2), 1-15.

Krishnan, G., & Ravindran, V. (2017, June). IT service management automation and its impact to IT industry. In Computational Intelligence in Data Science (ICCIDS), 2017 International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.

Lema, L., Calvo?Manzano, J. A., Colomo?Palacios, R., & Arcilla, M. (2015). ITIL in small to medium?sized enterprises software companies: towards an implementation sequence. Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, 27(8), 528-538.

Muhammed, M. (2015). The Impact of Adopting IT Service Management Processes.

Mukwasi, C. M., & Seymour, L. F. (2016, September). Customer Relationship Management in IT Service Delivery: A Practitioner-based Inquiry in a Higher Education Institution. In Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists(p. 27). ACM.

Sun, G., & Hongqi, L. I. (2015). Intelligent Operation and Maintenance Monitoring System Based on ITIL Framework. Metallurgical & Mining Industry, (8).

Taghva, M. R., Taghavifard, M. T., & Fasihi, F. (2016). Evaluation of IT Service Management Based on ITIL Framework in Banks of Industry and Mine (Service Operation Processes). Asian Journal of Information Technology, 15(2), 169-177.

Tan, W. G., Cater-Steel, A., & Toleman, M. (2009). Implementing IT service management: a case study focussing on critical success factors. Journal of Computer Information Systems, 50(2), 1-12.