itSMF UK to the rescue at itSMF Belgium Conference
After a urgent request for a replacement Plenary speaker from itSMF Belgium Chair Steven deSmet, for their 2010 Conference "Yes We Care!!", itSMF UK CEO Keith Aldis tasked Member Services Manager Chris Roberts to find a high quality replacement within 24 hours (The Conference was in 8 days).
After discussions with a few experienced speakers the itSMF UK Chairman Barry Corless stepped up to the plate and agreed to give the 2nd Plenary of the day entitled "Probably….the 10 best Service Improvement tips ever."
The itSMF UK Vice-Chair Colin Rudd had already agreed to give the opening Plenary entitled "Service Design and the Service Catalogue: A practical approach and case study"
The 2010 itSMF Belgium Conference took place on Thursday 18th March at Metropolis in Antwerp at what was a joint Conference and cinema multiplex venue, which attracted 442 delegates, mainly from the Benelux region. In the basement was were the accompanying Exhibition was held and were the refreshments were provided.
The Conference was held (as is normal) in English as not everyone speaks both official languages (French and Flemish) and this is accepted by the delegates.
The opening Plenary given by Colin Rudd in his normal style of using the stage to communicate to the delegates and used a case study relating to a FTSE 100 Company which was a mature Service Management organisation with two data centres. He then walked the delegates through areas such as Service Acceptance Criteria, Business Critical Services and two types of Service Catalogue. He also did a review of a Common Service classification to put the services in either Business facing or Supporting services sections with a criticality rating assigned.
He then described how he used a common service criticality weighting calculation against different services to utilise resources. Also covered was how service design rules were developed based on an initial analysis of services. The Service Acceptance criteria were then reviewed and then revised, which included the key points: Projects designed to achieve acceptance from the start, Automated and modular, Without service acceptance, projects remain in project status as the responsibility of the Project Manager, With Service Acceptance, a project will be accepted into BAU operation and support and Exceptions must be owned, documented and agreed
This led to a revised design criteria based on business criticality, with the solution design driven by 5 key business inputs: Public facing Service, Approximate no of users, criticality to business units, revenue impacting and product or legally impacting.
This was well received by the delegates and was a good start to the Conference.
The Conference then split up into parallel sessions, some presentations and some as workshops held in sponsor linked rooms.
The topics included areas such as CMMI, ISO/IEC20000, Operational Excellence, Social Networking and People based presentations.
At the end of the afternoon Barry Corless gave the 2nd Plenary presentation on his thoughts on the best Service Improvement tips.
This was an amusing and thought provoking presentation which looked at several key areas and started with a quote "If the change outside the organisation exceeds the change within, the end is near" from GE CEO Jack Welch. The tips started with a thought provoking "ITIL Isn't the only game in town" and then went through "Make it Manageable" , "Single Process is impossible - well almost", "Prepare for life after quick wins" each with some real world examples to fully explain with the final few including "Measure" and "Engage and Inspire"
This graphical presentation was well received by the delegates and then after the wrap-up from the itSMF Belgium team all delegates were invited to a drinks reception in the Exhibition area.
