Are We Too Busy to Care? Some Thought on Effective Incident Management

A recent analyst study found that 88% of organizations are “doing Project and Portfolio Management (PPM).” This finding could lead many to believe all is well with this critical business process so essential to strategic success. This is hardly the case as studies also show PPM is still generally immature in enterprises today. The lack of maturity is largely due to the fact that most organizations are addressing only a subset of PPM capabilities. So though almost every organization can lay claim to doing PPM, few are actually doing PPM for all its worth. Many of these organizations will continue to miss out on the incredible possibility and promise of this essential business capability until they grasp and appreciate the full scope and potential of PPM.

One of the greatest barriers to realizing the full potential of PPM is an enterprise-wide awareness of the span of PPM and the likely gap that must be overcome to achieve it. There is a plethora of great PPM insight contained in the numerous books, methodologies, and frameworks available today, but using this volume of information to get everyone on the same page is a daunting challenge. The key is to use a simple approach and model to quickly establish a common understanding of this critical business discipline and to easily foster the conversations and discussions to drive the endeavor to raise PPM proficiency.

This brief webcast will present a PPM model that is easy to remember, easy to communicate, and proven to quickly illuminate the gap between existing immature PPM processes and the full scope and potential of comprehensive Project and Portfolio Management.

Portfolio planning activities have struggled to gain respect in most businesses. Lack of enterprise-wide orchestration arises from a lack of effective involvement and intimate business knowledge – not simply of operations and processes, but of business imperatives, obstacles and desired outcomes. And the information systems aspects continue to be planned in splendid isolation from the business, causing IT people to mistakenly celebrate victory when a new IT system goes live. However a project only really starts when the IT goes live, and so the planning needs to be fully integrated. This can only be accomplished first by building strong relationships with business peers that will result in measurable value creation. The next step is to implement a sophisticated PPM system that can handle the extreme complexity of orchestrating all the business and related technology portfolio of initiatives, capable of optimizing the plans (and the outcomes) as the business environment changes.

To achieve this, a new PPM model needs to be created to look at portfolio management in a holistic way, enterprise-wide. Planners need a capability that will generate multiple scenarios and real-time decision support. This dimensionality and complexity is well beyond the capacity of the human brain. By implementing such a tool, IT would be positioned as a critical partner with the business – not just in implementing mainstream information systems, but also in helping the business with a much better way to plan and manage all of its key initiatives effectively

This session focuses on how enterprise leaders and divisional leaders and IT leaders should be working in harmony to orchestrate great business outcomes, rather than looking after their parochial interests.

The development of a solid product innovation strategy is undoubtledly a collaborative effort, and company cultures that support an open and robust dialog will be more able to evolve their strategies to address their changing business environments.

Attend this webcast featuring Michelle Jones from Stage-Gate International as she discusses how these companies are better equipped to address risk and derive more value from their product innovation efforts. Also hear why aligning your product innovation strategy is an important precursor to making continuous strategic assessments and project prioritization decisions.

All attendees will gain insight into the 5 key elements that comprise a consensus based innovation strategy, the importance of clearly communicating that strategy to drive strategic portfolio management, and the metrics to measure performance.

This event is approved for 1 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credit.

Wall Street expects it and customer demand it – accountability from Sr. Executives for the future direction of their organizations. How can executives ensure their strategic plans are in action and on track? How can they shift and pivot to changing market conditions along with the risks and impacts to the long-term vision and goals? How do you thread accountability from planning to execution to results?

Join this session, where David Werner, Senior Principal Product Marketing Manager, CA Technologies, speaks with Rick Morris, published Author and Owner/President of R2 Consulting about ways to bring more accountability through your strategic plan.

A recent analyst study found that 88% of organizations are “doing Project and Portfolio Management (PPM).” This finding could lead many to believe all is well with this critical business process so essential to strategic success. This is hardly the case as studies also show PPM is still generally immature in enterprises today. The lack of maturity is largely due to the fact that most organizations are addressing only a subset of PPM capabilities. So though almost every organization can lay claim to doing PPM, few are actually doing PPM for all its worth. Many of these organizations will continue to miss out on the incredible possibility and promise of this essential business capability until they grasp and appreciate the full scope and potential of PPM.

One of the greatest barriers to realizing the full potential of PPM is an enterprise-wide awareness of the span of PPM and the likely gap that must be overcome to achieve it. There is a plethora of great PPM insight contained in the numerous books, methodologies, and frameworks available today, but using this volume of information to get everyone on the same page is a daunting challenge. The key is to use a simple approach and model to quickly establish a common understanding of this critical business discipline and to easily foster the conversations and discussions to drive the endeavor to raise PPM proficiency.

This brief webcast will present a PPM model that is easy to remember, easy to communicate, and proven to quickly illuminate the gap between existing immature PPM processes and the full scope and potential of comprehensive Project and Portfolio Management.

Improving service quality relies on a solid configuration data foundation. A Configuration Management System (CMS)-based on a CMDB and automated, intelligent discovery- provides the data everyone can trust and build on. It delivers the accurate, up-to-date information to the right users. But the data alone does not cut it; an accurate and up-to-date service model is also needed.

Join this webinar to learn how to boost your services' quality and develop a more successful service desk with a CMS, automated discovery, and automated service modeling partnered with increased process maturity.

At its most basic level, communication is the transfer of information and ideas between two or more entities. In the context of organizational project and program management, communication is a core competency that, when properly executed, connects every member of a project team to a common set of strategies, goals and actions. Unless these components are effectively shared by project leads and understood by stakeholders, project outcomes are jeopardized and budgets incur unnecessary risk. Effective communications leads to more successful projects, allowing organizations to become high performers and risk 14 times fewer dollars than their low-performing counterparts.

This webinar reveals the communications challenges that prevent organizations from accomplishing more successful projects, and identifies key initiatives enable organizations to improve their communication as they face their own unique challenges in an ever-changing complex and risky environment.

This session is approved for 1 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credit.

A recent comprehensive survey commissioned by CA revealed some very clear trends in portfolio management and provided evidence of what distinguishes a strong portfolio performer from a weak one.

In this engaging presentation report author, Andy Jordan will explore these indicators and provide recommendations for how your organization can become more adaptable, agile and responsive to portfolio changes.

Learn how you can build improved effectiveness into your portfolio execution approach, and how communication can contribute to your success.

This event is approved for 1 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credit.

The C-level suite agrees that aligning business and technology objectives are an essential element in achieving what’s necessary to win, retain and serve their customers, however, are they putting their money where their mouths are? The data tells a different story. According to Forrester Research, while two thirds of CIOs and CMOs agree that the CMO is an active participant in strategic planning, the perception of CIO involvement varies significantly between the two roles. Moreover, half of surveyed PMO leaders feel they have all the tools in place to competently manage the portfolio pipeline. Companies are routinely adopting practices to deliver faster and better; it’s time for executives to do the same. Effectively managing a portfolio that enables business leaders to achieve their strategic objectives requires tooling that supports pragmatic practices in order to gather data at the right level and at the right time.

This presentation examines portfolio management trends and best practices that high achieving organizations have applied to turbo charge their planning process.

Forrester Research, Inc., The State Of Strategic Execution In 2015, January 27, 2015

This event is approved for 1 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credit.

At a time when digital transformation is driving significant change across all industry sectors, it is critical that organizations are able to align functional and cross-functional project activities to their strategic objectives. In the digital economy, the lines between technology, new product development, applications, service delivery and change management are increasingly blurred, and it's vital for the business to have an integrated view, not only to support strategic planning and investment prioritization, but also to effectively manage these initiatives through execution. The project portfolio management process must also evolve to handle both fast-moving digital initiatives and longer-term projects, with a shortened feedback loop that engages project teams and business stakeholders, and provides visibility at all levels. This session will address topics including:

·How to align projects to business goals in planning AND execution
·Why PPM is vital for a digital project portfolio
·How PPM can unify cross-functional initiatives
·When to consider changes to PPM processes
·Why project visibility is critical to successful business change

This event is approved for 1 Professional Development Unit (PDU) credit.

What sets high-functioning IT organizations apart from the rest? That’s something every IT leader wants to know. After all, we live in a highly competitive business climate and IT performance can be the difference between success and failure. To conquer the challenge, we need to be informed and collaborative and we need to do this in a cost-effective manner.

In this webcast, you will hear from two experts on some of the technology that’s driving today’s high-functioning IT organizations. Find out how your company can be aligned, agile and ready to respond to ever-changing business requirements and competitive pressures.

IT organizations are in constant pursuit of improved efficiency and service delivery to be able to truly enable the business. One of the critical building blocks in achieving optimized service delivery is the Service Catalog.

Many organizations by now have taken the first step and implemented a customer facing service catalog. The question now is how to realize and unlock its full potential, e.g. to truly understand what services are necessary, to analyze the services and to optimize the investment in the services that are being offered to end users.

In this session we will take a look at some of the key challenges and obstacles to implementing and optimizing a service catalog and how to transform a static service catalog into one that becomes a true extension and enabler to the business.

The Service Catalog is how IT engages with the business. It is the starting point for delivering services.

Along with the promise of greater cost transparency and better demand management, it gives IT the opportunity to create and demonstrate value across multiple business dimensions. An effective Service Catalog ties in perfectly with user needs and expectations and delivers tangible business results. So how do you build such a Catalog?

Continuing our conversation on Persona based Service Catalogs, Unisys brings to you this engaging session in which Nikolina Bartels King, Global Director, End User Services Advisory Practice delves into the nitty-gritties of creating a persona driven service portfolio and offering it via a persona based Service Catalog.

And what do you do next after you build a business-relevant Service Catalog? Service Request Automation and Fulfillment is your next challenge. Caryn Ishida, Edge Service Management Architect discusses the need for planning, automation and orchestration among key service fulfillment teams. Learn how automated service request definitions increase the speed of order fulfillment and get out of a manual workflow process.

Join us on this interactive webinar in which we cover the many dimensions of Service Catalog creation and implementation.

The Service Catalog is one of the most important and critical deliverables in an implementation, yet it is surrounded by a lot of confusion and hype. Is the Service Catalog simply a ‘menu’ of services? How is a Service Catalog ‘actionable’? How does Request Fulfillment fit in? What does a ‘Service Request’ actually mean? In this session, Doug Tedder gets beyond the voodoo and breaks down the relationships between the Service Catalog and Request Fulfillment processes.

In the era of the APP economy where business models are being disrupted daily, there is a trend towards IT becoming a service broker increasingly leveraging a cloud supplier model for delivering services. How does this fit with organizations service management making technology solution decisions? What are the governance and service level management implications of these trends? Do they warrant a sophisticated approach to SLM? Or can traditional SLM practices and service desk SLM capabilities handle this new world. What are the implications of the service broker scenario on change management? Does change management go away or take on a different role? Is it easier or more difficult? Is the BAC still needed?

These are just some of the questions that moderator extraordinaire Allen Houpt will pose to our distinguished panelists, including Troy Dumoulin of Pink Elephant, Randal Locke CA’s ITIL Texas Ranger and Robert Stroud will discuss in this frank debate on the real value of service management!

This event qualifies for 1 priSM Continual Professional Development (CPD) credit.

Many believe an IT service catalog is a vital element of a successful service management strategy, representing the capabilities and image of the IT organization. There’s no lack of seemingly sound advice. Then why is it the catalog is all too often where the service experience begins and ends, badly for the customer? What is the secret to a well-designed service catalog? Does it really require you to define your services at the outset? What is the customer’s role in a design?

In this presentation we shall explore how successful service businesses approach designing a service catalog customer love to use, including:

 The 5 common mistakes with traditional IT service catalogs initiatives;
 The role of a catalog in the customer’s service experience;
 The relationship between a service portal, knowledge base, fulfillment process, and the catalog.

Value-Driven Service Management – An innovative Approach to Industrializing Services
In this age of digital transformation, IT organizations don't just support the business – they are the business. This leads to a significant change in how IT organizations needs to be operated today. Value-Driven Service Management is a new approach to digitize and industrialize services to not only provide value to the business but also support business growth.

Service catalogs have traditionally been focused on delivering internal resources but with the growth of cloud usage, IT must now extend this process to external cloud services. Yet, current service catalog functionality does not match the dynamic nature of cloud or have the fast and easy buying experience users expect, causing a lack in visibility and control for IT.

Join Gravitant as we talk about a new concept emerging called the service store, which provides users the experience of an app store while being powered by a dynamic service catalog. Learn how using this approach can set the foundation for your cloud strategy in the key areas of multi-provider management, governance, cost visibility, and more.

Working with WildPackets, TRAC Research, a market research and analyst company that specializes in IT management, published research findings on key trends in the Network Performance Monitoring market. The research highlights some challenges, and well as some common misconceptions, with the state of Network Performance Monitoring solutions.