How can you make IT operations more agile and lean?

1 Agile and lean principles

Agile and lean are two complementary approaches that aim to deliver value to customers faster and better, while minimizing waste and maximizing efficiency. Agile focuses on iterative and incremental development, collaboration, feedback, and adaptation. Lean focuses on eliminating non-value-added activities, optimizing the flow of work, and continuous improvement. By applying agile and lean principles to ITOM, you can create a culture of innovation, flexibility, and customer satisfaction.

2 DevOps and SRE

DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) are two practices that can help you implement agile and lean ITOM. DevOps is a culture and methodology that bridges the gap between development and operations, and enables faster and more reliable delivery of software and services. SRE is a discipline that applies engineering principles to operations, and ensures the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of systems and services. By adopting DevOps and SRE, you can automate, monitor, and optimize your IT operations, and improve the quality and performance of your IT products.

3 Cloud and automation

Cloud and automation are two technologies that can support agile and lean ITOM. Cloud is a model that provides on-demand access to scalable and flexible IT resources, such as servers, storage, networks, applications, and platforms. Automation is the process of using software or tools to perform tasks or workflows without human intervention. By leveraging cloud and automation, you can reduce the cost and complexity of your IT infrastructure, increase the speed and agility of your IT service delivery, and enhance the security and compliance of your IT environment.

4 Metrics and feedback

Metrics and feedback are two elements that can help you measure and improve your agile and lean ITOM. Metrics are quantitative indicators that track the progress, performance, and outcomes of your IT operations. Feedback is the qualitative information that you collect from your customers, stakeholders, and teams about your IT products and services. By using metrics and feedback, you can evaluate the value and quality of your IT operations, identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement, and implement the changes and enhancements that matter.

5 Collaboration and learning

Collaboration and learning are two skills that can help you foster agile and lean ITOM. Collaboration is the ability to work effectively with others, across teams, departments, and organizations, to achieve a common goal. Learning is the ability to acquire new knowledge, skills, and competencies, and to apply them to your work. By promoting collaboration and learning, you can build a culture of trust, communication, and innovation, and empower your IT staff to solve problems, share best practices, and learn from failures.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?