Problem management - the Art of the Possible

By Simon King

According to Timothy Chou's book, Cloud, in 2004 Oracle reported to in it's Annual Shareholder meeting that they received 100m requests for service.

Most of us might assume that this would be 100m requests for fixes and patches.

The analysis was quite the opposite. In fact just 1/10th of 1 percent (0.1%) resulted in new software fixes.

99.9% were answered by knowledge already in a library, patches in a distribution system or knowledge in peoples' heads.

Uh oh! Report time

How many of you remember as a kid the trauma associated with Report time at school?

I'll never forget my report cards. The trouble was that my brother was incredibly smart and always had all A's across the board.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as effective at convincing my teachers that I knew what was going on. 'Nuff said.

IT report cards

When it comes to time for IT to report to the business we're not always that good at communicating in terms that the business understands.

As a result anecdotes about Outages, Software incompatibility and poor Performance prevail.

Absent a good set of reports covering the full range of services that IT provides to the business and  written in terms that the business can relate to, we leave ourselves exposed to the poor reputation that corporate IT often has.

Service Quality

I think there is a better way.

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it.
It is what the client or customer gets out of it."  Peter Drucker

Instead of focusing on specific activities (projects) and events (incidents and events), we need to talk to our customers about what they were expecting - a comprehensive view what they received and why. And changes expected to further improve service delivery and lower costs.

Talking in (customer) tongues

I'd like to recommend an enlightening IT annual report that highlights a forward  thinking way of sharing to Business customers what IT has accomplished.

Its very noticeable that Mark Settle (now IHS CIO) chose to lead with a description of the Services that his team provides to the business and how much they cost.

He then goes on to describe:

- How well Services are delivered
- Delivering new capabilities
- Service Desk performance
- Avoiding rework
- Asset utilization
- Automation

An informative read, and a lesson in how to communicate in business terms to our customers.

How does your IT team communicate with it's customers?

Driving a successful Platform Strategy

By Simon King

When reviewing service portfolios, I think we we have a major problem - Diversity.

Darwin informs us that Diversity is Good.

Survival of the Fittest ensures the best solution dominates.

And it's true. Diversity enables Optimal performance in different sets of conditions. But it also drives Risk, because future conditions are an unknown. And it drives Specialization of capabilities which can limit flexibility.

What does this mean for IT?

From a resource perspective such consumption comes at a cost. In the past we have selected Best of Breed solutions for problem domains. As a result we spend a lot of time and money on just making it work.

• Integrating solutions. 
• Building data warehouses. 
• Keeping systems running.

Too much is being spent on just Keeping The Lights On rather than innovating to support and drive the business. As a result the business impression of  IT is that of an expensive but necessary step child. Barely tolerated because they're part of the family.

What's the alternative?

One solution to a Best of Breed approach is to open things up with a Platform. A Platform doesn't try to do everything itself.

A Platform provides a foundation on which other Services can be deployed.

A Platform elevates the level of functionality.

A Platform interconnects organizations - suppliers and customers.
Current examples of such Platforms include:

• Amazon for e-commerce
• eBay for auctions
• iTunes for content
• Salesforce for customer relationship management

Platform Thinking

But building a Platform doesn't automatically ensure success. There are some unique differences in the dominant Platforms of today.

Each of the example Platforms has a set of common capabilities that make them so effective

1. Connection: Simple for others to plug into the platform to share and transact
2. Gravity: strong attraction for participants - producers and consumers
3. Flow: fosters the exchange and co-creation of value

Today, every organization is faced with the fundamental question underlying Platform Thinking.

How do I enable others to create value? 

Building a better mousetrap may have worked in the past - but it's left us with high cost and low differentiation. A platform might just do the trick.

Are you defining a platform approach to take advantage of the opportunities they offer? 

Recommended reading
http://www.chiefmartec.com/2012/05/marketing-technology-suite-platform-or-portfolio.html: Scott Brinker
http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Playbook-Battle-Tested-Capturing-Keeping/dp/1591840384: John Zagula and Richard Tong