Following on from the amazing success of our first Challenge Cup competition last year, where ‘Team Informa’ were crowned 2023 champions, we are delighted to announce that the itSMF UK Challenge Cup is back for 2024!
Facilitated by our delivery partner SXP, teams of up to four colleagues will compete against other organisations by playing the RUN-IT simulation – and the winning team will be the one that achieves the highest score!
The competition will culminate with a presentation to the winning team at the PSMA24 awards dinner in November – along with a prize of £1,000 for their selected charity.
Open to all member organisations and FREE to take part, submit your team entry today.
The Challenge
The essence of the RUN-IT simulation is for each team to run the IT services for an airline, ‘Global Air’. Although fictitious, the Global Air business model is based on a real airline and the strategies and their impacts in the simulation are based on industry researched and recognised metrics, adding to the realism of the experience.
While it is a competition, each ‘heat’ is designed to be a learning opportunity, with input about ITSM practices and technology, so that the whole competition can add real value to those that participate.
Based on the ITSM best practices, RUN-IT works at a high level with a change in focus as the simulation progresses – this is demonstrated in the homepage screenshot below:
Key points to note:
- Like the real world, users review reports and dashboards including value stream maps, and attempt to identify strategies to address immediate business needs, e.g., reducing lost opportunity and ticket volume through to improving the ‘flow’ of incident, request and development pipelines. Strategies implemented include application and infrastructure improvements, knowledge articles, self-service portal, and automation technologies.
- Learn how practices and technologies combine to drive business performance and customer satisfaction, as well as boosting business productivity and employee experience.
- Instant feedback on strategies selected versus the happy path reinforces learning and self-efficacy.
- Leaderboards show how teams are competing against their peers.
- Think of this as a complex business and IT model shrunk down into an interactive sandbox, where risk free experimentation can be done.
Challenge Cup Format
- Virtual delivery via MS Teams
- Each team competes once in one of 4 heats during October
- Simulation lasts for 4 hours
- Max 4 players per team – ideally mixed knowledge/experience
- Max 3 teams per organisation
- Mandatory pre-event ‘kick off’ for Team Captains
Team Entry
The window for team submissions is now closed – we will be in touch with all Team Captains to confirm your place and finalise dates and arrangements.
itSMF UK
itSMF UK is the country’s leading membership association for service management professionals – with members ranging from individual service management practitioners to large multi-national organisations.
We have spent the last three decades helping ITSM professionals both to be better and to do better. As the first of an international network of itSMF chapters, we continue to enrich the working lives of our members through our conference and events, professional guidance, focused content, annual awards, competency management, leadership council, member groups, and new communities of practice.
View our membership video or visit us at www.itsmf.co.uk
