Where do you start with ITIL? A case for continual improvement

Adopting continual improvement as an essential element in providing relevant, high-quality products and services is a generally accepted concept.

However, continual improvement remains an unlikely starting point for most organizations embarking on their ITIL journey. The focus is often on practices that solve an immediate challenge, while tool implementation projects tend to launch into automating practices like incident, problem, or service request management

While continual improvement may not be the first thing they think about, maybe it should be. According to Jean-Claude Beaudry, senior associate at Qualiti7 training and consultancy, continual improvement is “the hidden gem of ITIL”; something that provides management with a “simple structure to articulate the intention to get better”.

Jason Beasley, a Chief Transformation Architect in Health Solutions and ITIL Master, added: “The ITIL continual improvement model can be used to improve anything, not just a process. That is the real power of the improvement model. It’s even more than a gem; it is a full-on superhero.”

Traditionally, most organizations tend to start with ITIL in one of two places:

1. The capabilities covered by a new or replacement service management tool implementation

2. Solving a specific pain point

After 30 years of monitoring such projects, David Cannon - Senior Director, ITIL at PeopleCert - has observed challenges with both approaches:

A. Tool implementation:

Switching tools often introduces new functionality and better ability to integrate new technologies (e.g., AI-based troubleshooting, self-help features, APIs to system management tools), but they do not solve issues related to poor service design or siloed organizations.

In fact, ITSM tool innovation has historically focused on the same five core management capabilities of Incident, Problem, Service Request, Service Catalog, and Change Enablement.

Service Configuration Management continues to present significant challenges, with organizations reporting that configuration management databases (CMDBs) are generally incomplete, out of date, and contain significant amounts of irrelevant data.

Service Level Management is an ongoing issue with organizations looking for better metrics and methods to represent the appropriate balance between cost, performance, features and customer satisfaction.

B. Pain points:

When an organization uses ITIL to solve a pain point, Cannon said, one of two things happens:

1. The project is successful, and the organization celebrates the use of ITIL. But, before long, the bottleneck moves somewhere else. The organization then searches for something to help solve that pain: it may choose an approach with no continuity with the previous solution, resulting in fragmented management. Consequently, different camps emerge around the idea that “you use ITIL for that but, for this, we use approach X”. Approach X is not necessarily wrong, but needs to be connected within a solid, overarching management approach.

2. The project fails for some reason – wrong tool choice, lack of management support, silos with special interests protecting their domain, etc. Then, ITIL is blamed and the organization seeks an alternative, which it may find in the short term. However, in the long term, it returns to problem 1: a disjointed, fragmented organizational management that moves from one pain point to the next.

Using ITIL as a “band-aid” (sticking plaster) is unsustainable

The typical issue with ITIL adoption highlighted by David Cannon is something Jean-Claude Beaudry has seen first-hand:

“Often, when helping organizations define their journey, very few talk about adopting good practice and getting better at what they’re doing.

“Using ITIL can be treated as a ‘band-aid’ or quick win to alleviate a pain point, but what was achieved isn’t sustainable, and, without realizing it, things go back to the original state and habits. Instead, organizations need to recognize the need to continue working on something, based on data and proof, to achieve a level of quality.”

David Sweeney – Visiting Associate Professor at Texas A&M University and lead author of ITIL Strategy (Version 5), noted that organizations immature in ITIL can adopt service management tools, thinking the tool will “do” ITIL. Instead, without fully understanding ITIL practices, it brings complications:

“It’s a mistake to think a tool will fix problems unless there is a clear vision of the digital product and service model and value streams,” he said.

The risk of sanctioning a tool vendor’s view on how an organization’s operations should work, he added, is that – years later – the company may change to another tool without ever considering its requirements, maturity level, or value streams.

This emphasizes the necessity to have a continual improvement foundation to identify what the company needs before selecting tools.

Continual improvement – becoming proactive and growth-oriented

So, why should practitioners and organizations give due consideration to continual improvement as a kick-off point for ITIL adoption?

Though Architecture Management provides, as Beasley describes, “a structured approach to designing and evolving an organization’s systems, processes and technology”, continual improvement enables organizations to build and evolve cohesively in a fast-moving context.

A continual improvement approach – whether formal or less formal – enables an organization to become more proactive and growth-oriented, rather than reactive and individual-situation-oriented. Equally, it is less likely to say: “We finished this and it works; let’s move on to the next thing.”

“Even the most successful projects carry the seeds of unintended consequences and the inability to respond to unforeseen changes,” Cannon said.

“But continual improvement ensures that successful projects stay successful and that poorer quality work can be detected quickly and corrected without going through the cycle of seeking a scapegoat and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

Taking ownership of continual improvement

By treating continual improvement as a practice, ITIL defines both the processes and the associated roles necessary. For example, nominating a practice owner and a continual improvement manager to ensure that practice, product, and service owners are always looking for the next issue to fix.

“This gives the momentum to look clearly at where they are, where they want to go, what’s achievable in the next period, while organizing the activity and measuring progress and achievement,” Beaudry said.

But in addition, he added, continual improvement enables governance: “When practice, product, or service owners run into constraints, adopting continual improvement brings the issues to the attention of senior leadership.

“This forces organizations to promote visibility around improvement. So, for example, a continual improvement register becomes visible and forces the articulation of priorities and outcomes.”

Sweeney’s advice is to start with a continual improvement register as the foundation for adopting other practices.

Citing his own experience in one organization, where continual improvement wasn’t emphasized, siloed teams defined their own processes, which created inconsistent improvement across the enterprise.

Later, based on a strategic plan with continual improvement at its heart and with continual improvement champions identified and trained in higher-level ITIL courses, there was greater collaboration and integration of improvement initiatives. Ultimately, the performance of the IT team, which had embraced continual improvement holistically, outstripped that of every other IT team in the organization, becoming the model and template for a later consolidation programme.

“It’s important for leadership to provide the resources – time and money – to engage with continual improvement,” Sweeney said.

“Also, there will always be people who can’t get on board. Therefore, hire people who make continual improvement the basis of everything. Over time, this builds maturity into the culture; then leaders can step back because the organization moves forward on its own with improvement.”

And by using the ITIL Continual Improvement model step of establishing the vision, so improvement is aligned with business goals and objectives – this connects senior management’s expectations with clear actions.

“This enables and drives collaboration: by linking vision to value with tactical actions, it identifies who is doing what and how they contribute to overall value,” Beasley added. And he emphasized how executive leaders need to communicate that continual improvement is everyone’s job, but it must meet a corporate standard or risk strategic misalignment.

Beaudry concluded that “Continual improvement is a mechanism and a convincing model that connects senior management intentions to what product, service, and practice owners follow.”

Benefits and value of the continual improvement approach

As referenced by Beaudry, the ability of senior leadership to articulate their vision through ITIL’s continual improvement model is a clear benefit: “Their voice and needs are present and, as the model revisits the vision, this promotes trust and confidence in the practice, product, and service owners – knowing that what is delegated will be in line with strategy.

“And it gives the organization an objective way to clearly measure progress and show value, allowing entire departments to adopt a more sustainable way of improving on what really matters and not pursuing improvement activities based on individual, ‘pet’ projects.”

ITIL, Sweeney explained, defines that value is co-created through demand (business as usual) and opportunity (improvement). The latter, he estimates, accounts for between 30% and 50% of the value an organization achieves.

“Continual improvement is the foundation for everything and is involved in every value chain activity,” he added.

Continual improvement and ITIL (Version 5)

While continual improvement is already a well-established part of the ITIL framework, in ITIL (Version 5) it plays a key role in the new product and service lifecycle model.

“The new lifecycle model – the ‘diamond’ – requires more specificity on how continual improvement is implemented across the product and service domains,” Sweeney said.
And the persistent point about ITIL adoption raised by David Cannon – where some organizations seek quick fixes to problems and end up back where they started – remains true today.

“Organizations must realize that there is no ‘easy button, Sweeney said. “Continual improvement is difficult, and it takes time. In the end, discipline and commitment to improvement make life easier: for mature organizations, continual improvement is the foundation for everything and, while there’s still no ‘easy button’, increased maturity and effective practice allow the organization to iterate faster with less friction, so everything seems easier,” he added.

Using the ITIL continual improvement model every day, Beaudry said, compels an organization and its leadership to express the outcomes they want; creating an approach for product and service owners and reassuring senior leaders that their investment will enable a natural way to organize improvement, governance, and lead to a controlled outcome.

If you are part of an IT department or any service organization, do you have a robust continual improvement practice in place before embarking on a transformation programme? Is it able to respond at speed to make improvements following a transformation?

Explore what’s available in ITIL (Version 5) to support transformation and continual improvement in your organization.