Agile Service Management: Delivering Enterprise Ready Cloud Services

IT operations have been dramatically affected by the onset of cloud services. Keeping up with the pace of change and the demands of ever changing business pressures puts IT professionals in the center of the storm of digital transformation. I have spent a good deal of my career in corporate IT departments and I am always struck by the intensity of the challenges presented to those teams. Those teams are under pressure to deliver more, with greater speed and less staff. Working in Microsoft IT we were no exception to these pressures and in many ways we had additional challenges. Part of the charter of Microsoft IT is the requirement to test our products with our own employees before releasing them to the general public. This puts additional operational stress on our people because the days of shrink-wrapped software releasing once every three years are over. We must release battle tested products to our world wide audience but are required to dramatically increase our pace of testing, feedback and delivery.

 Many of us in IT, and especially in my former group responsible for the deployment and adoption of Office 365 for Microsoft employees, tried to come up with methodologies that would respond to this ever changing menu of cloud services available for our employees. The processes shared here are insights into transforming IT, its workforce and methods for delivering those services. It is by no means an exhaustive list of all the innovations available to us as IT professionals nor is it the be-all end-all method for how all IT groups approach the issue inside any company. Part of these insights come from my time in Microsoft IT and are representative of many people’s hard work to respond to these pressures.

The design and testing of this framework also represents a commitment to experimentation that is often discussed but not truly embraced by corporate cultures. Our management says to “fail fast” as a method of learning but gaining trust in that cultural transformation is difficult for those of us in IT who have spent careers measuring ourselves based on on-time and under budget delivery.

 A part of my job is to discuss this transformation of process and people with other IT departments around the world. It is my pleasure to share this work here for further innovation and re-purposing for those who are on the journey of managing cloud services and transforming their careers in the process. My only ask is to give credit where credit is due if you re-purpose this knowledge in your own organization and share how you’ve taken it further with me online via @Karuana or a message on LinkedIn.

 What is Agile Service Management?

 Agile Service Management (ASM) is the combination of traditional Agile software delivery methods with a framework for the enterprise readiness of any service capability to your employees. It combines process and tooling that will provide a foundation for the shift of mindset required for individuals and corporate IT in a cloud service world. The framework requires flexibility to accommodate the small, medium and large size of change that cloud services deliver to employees. It rests on a foundation a well designed and active service portfolio of IT services that focused on business value rather than the technical components of a particular product. That service portfolio and the change of thinking it represents is foundation to the ability to deliver on the promise of ASM.

 Three Outcomes of Agile Service Management

 There are three outcomes that must express themselves in ASM for it to be successful:

Deliver better services and experiences – We’ve heard employees complain about corporate IT for as long as we have been members of these departments. Motivated employees will often utilize software to get their jobs done that has not been sanctioned by IT, creating a “shadow IT” infrastructure and sometimes sanctioned by divisional leadership. This is not because they are flouting all our policies but because they seek agile, easily configured productivity software that they can use to get their actual jobs done. Corporate IT must meet their needs in ways that preserve the security and compliance of corporate data.

Develop a meaningful and modern workforce – Our traditional IT skills need to be expanded to drive innovation, competitive advantages for our businesses and increased satisfaction with our services. IT leadership must invest in its people to provide them with the opportunity to expand their skills in relationship management, listening and feedback systems, adoption best practices and Agile service delivery. All of these are new tools in the corporate IT departments arsenal and are essential to success.

Drive accelerated and reliable outcomes – Traditional waterfall project scheduling simply does not deliver value to the business quickly enough. The investment in transforming service capability delivery schedules into a monthly sprint cycle is essential in meeting the quickly changing needs of your business stakeholders. The health of your services as measured not only via service telemetry but by the utilization of your employees is another critical factor that must evolve in this cloud and hybrid based world.

What is a Service Portfolio?

 The role of IT is changing and to keep up with changes it is critical that IT professional make deep partnerships with business unit leaders within the organization. Marketing, finance, sales, human resources and operational leaders require IT services to become successful. Often, due to a breakdown of communication and a lack of shared goals, these business leaders are taking it upon themselves to deliver IT services. Many time this is also in response to the frustration of working within the delivery constraints of IT departments. Business leaders need fast solutions and there are times when corporate IT (even to me!) seems slow and inefficient. There is a further challenge in the communication skills required to forge these relationships between IT and business leaders. To begin the journey to close that gap the idea of a service portfolio was born.

 The ITIL definition of a service portfolio is a simple list of all the capabilities that IT can deliver to the company. It best practice models these services are written in easy to understand, business language rather than IT jargon. They are free from product names though the service design package will often reference current technologies in production within the company. Some examples might be:

• Collaboration Services: Enable employee collaboration on business processes and assets in a secure, reliable and accessible manner.
• Communication Services: Enable employees to securely communicate via digital communication services including voice, video and conferencing capabilities.
• Discovery Services: Enable employees to seamlessly location the correct people, data and assets required to efficiently serve the needs of customers, partners & stakeholders.

Steps to Enterprise Readiness – A Checklist for Service Delivery

Even small IT departments function best when there is a clear framework for delivering value. What is shown here is one such framework though there are many. This framework incorporates 3 distinct areas of knowledge:

 All three bodies of knowledge, Agile development, ITIL\ITSM and DevOps methods converge on the role of the IT Professional. There is great confusion about how to integrate the best of these 3 models into a format that will work for large and small IT departments.

 Steps for Enterprise Readiness

 The steps shown here represent a checklist of areas that mature agile service management staff are attending to when they are launching, managing and driving adoption of services in their environment. Small IT departments may have one individual covering several areas simultaneously while larger departments may break each area out across specialty groups. In either case there is always a main Service Manager or Product Owner (depending on your ITSM/Agile lingo) who is the main steward of the experience. This person has accountability for health, use and management of the service. This role may be for a large portfolio such as “communication services” or it may be broken down into components such as voice, video or conferencing components within the communication services portfolio.

 Finding, training and supporting this person with the right resources is critical to transforming IT delivery and employee satisfaction. If this person is only technical and does not have the necessary user empathy or experience to lead or hire proper adoption & training specialists you will not get the full value of the transformation.  As an IT profession we are developing more and more of these individuals who have technical, business and adoption acumen. If you already have this person in your organization VALUE THEM because we are not yet commonplace!

Reference Materials

There are many great references to help drive this change. If you read nothing else READ THIS ONE! Agile Project Management with Kanban by Eric Brechner.   With even a passing knowledge ITIL and Agile writing of what a service portfolio is you can make great gains in both delivery and culture by implementing the ideas in this text.

NOTE: This article is republished on this forum from my original writings in 2017/2018