itSMF USA On-Line Conference: Are We There Yet?

ITIL®4 represents a significant mindset and behavior shift for IT Service management. One of its core concepts is the Value chain – by definition requiring end to end collaboration. But traditionally we have been operating in department and framework SILO’s - COBIT, BRM, Agile, DevOps and now ITIL4. Not only that, but Agile and DevOps stakeholders see ITIL as out of date within an increasingly agile world.

Taking the step from where we are to where we need to be with ITIL is not a one off ‘Implementation’. It is a journey of iterative improvement. Yet at the Same time the world around us is continually changing requiring us to be agile and able to change at pace. The business is throwing ever more demands and opportunities our way. Products and features need to be deployed – Now! Critical systems need to remain stable, reliable and available. But what about change and improvement work!...

Welcome to the world of digital transformation and digital disruption. Many organizations are now adopting ITIL4 as part of their ITSM journey, but are struggling to translate theory into practice and create the necessary buy-in and commitment from end-to-end stakeholders.

MarsLander is a business simulation that can be used to bring the end-to-end stakeholders to experience and explore solutions to these challenges.

Interested in learning more about MarsLander: ITSM the Next Generation? If you've ever been curious about the MarsLander Simulation and how interactive, learn-by-doing workshops have revolutionized training, register today.

We’ve all had to work to keep ITSM top of mind within our organizations. During this session Joey Blomker will provide strategies on how to sell ITSM to all levels of the organization. Danielle Hibbert will follow up on how to keep stakeholders engaged along the ITSM journey. At the end of the event you should walk away with strategies to frame ITSM to your leadership team and keep them engaged no matter where you are on your ITSM journey.




In this presentation, we will discuss

Value Propositions
Enabling the ‘cool projects’
Critical Success Factors Engaging Stakeholders along the Journey
Buy-In (Selling, Scoping, Expectation Mgmt)
Program Initiation and Execution (Buy-in, change champions, ongoing communications)
Phase ‘Next’ (maintaining momentum, showing value, remembering the ‘why’)


More details coming soon!

Coming soon

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota

Agenda: 1:00 - Welcome - Yvonne Houle, itSMF Minnesota LIG
1:05 - Bringing Command and Control to the Chaos: Blue Cross' Journey to Orchestrate Activities for Major Incident Handling - Gary Ledo, Process Analyst, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota
1:45 - Q&A
1:55 - Wrap Up

This session features two presentations. Russ Thyret will present strategies to manage technical staff with a special focus on managing remote workers. Followed by the presentation, Cyber Security – What You Need to Know to Operate Securely in the Cloud by Roc Paez.

Panel Discussion:

Yvonne Houle, President Minnesota LIG
Justin Hawkins, Time2Market
Allan Acosta, 3M

This webinar will focus on industry resources available to help you improve management of your IT Service Management (ITSM) program. The opportunity points towards improving both management and governance. This session will give you an unique perspective on blending ITIL and COBIT improvement guidance with program structure, improvement, change enablement constructs from John Kotter and Plan-Do-Check-Act from Ed Deming. Using a repeatable approach will be emphasized. The COBIT 2019 Implementation book, which provides a playbook / template, will be covered in detail.

Today’s organizations move via a project-to-project perspective requiring the need to embed Change Management within an their organizational capabilities and competencies. Our panelists of Change Manager panelists will discuss how they leverage Organizational Change Management to assist their organization’s ability to embrace Change Management within the enterprise.

With the consumerization of enterprise IT, employees are expecting the same level of service excellence from IT service management (ITSM) solutions. Users expect enterprise services to be delivered instantly, in the device and channel of their preference, with a high degree of personalization and without having to talk to someone. Leading enterprises are now transforming toward ITSM+ by embracing cognitive AI, Robotic Process Automation and Conversational Experience, which promise to boost productivity while using fewer resources, achieving greater cost savings and delivering an engaging customer experience for enhanced satisfaction.

In this talk, we will start by drawing the Service Desk Journey, from Help Desk to Today's Segregated Service Desk, highlighting business and operational challenges affecting Employees, Customers and Service Desk Service Agents. We will then introduce the new paradigm shift of ITSM+, and present in great detail a novel five-layer reference architecture. We will walk the audience through each of the comprising layers and conclude with how to get started in this disruptive digital transformation.

Questions? Visit https://aisera.com

Regardless of industry, what we do with technology defines what we can accomplish as a business. ‘Running IT like a business’ redefines how IT organizations operate: as a high-performance business within the business. Having a deeper understanding of IT financials drives smarter decision-making which results in more time to get more done. Join us for this informative webcast to learn how Align is changing the strategic value of IT.

Join us for 60 minutes to hear about ITAM within today's unforeseen pandemic world. Our topics will speak to how ITAM is more important than ever in today's technological society and the impact of current events that we are all grappling with including how ITAM can help manage risk and create a positive impact on recovery in the coming weeks and months.

Session will cover an intro and update to resources for COBIT 2019 and alignment and harmony with ITIL and all other models. Five books and toolkits will be covered. Discussion will focus on using the resources with common sense - to realize huge value. COBIT helps provide context, structure and content for consistency. A framework of frameworks. No need to make it up anymore, COBIT content can help you. This will not be a dull presentation – we’ll dig into your real challenges and opportunities and how COBIT or other resources might help.

Please join the itSMF Continual Improvement CoI for a BrightTalk Session, “How to Make Continual Improvement as part of business strategy and drive results”, scheduled for 1PM EST on Thursday, March 19, 2020.

In IT Service and Operation Management, delivery of key services with high availability, low cost, and high customer satisfaction are becoming key success metrics for CIOs and IT leader’s strategy. The Continuous Improvement process plays an increasingly important role in the company because it allows the organization to proactively drive continuous optimization across people/process/service/technology to increase business efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage.

No matter where an organization is in their digital maturity cycle, the improvements sought can be incremental over time or achieved with a breakthrough moment that tries to increase effectiveness and efficiencies to fulfill a company’s objectives. Here are some key dimensions that must be accessed to achieve faster time to value:

•What are the benefits of using a continuous improvement business strategy?
•How to assess if your corporate culture promotes Continual Improvement Management (CIM)?
•How to know when to apply a continuous improvement business strategy?
•How to make improvement at agile speed and show impact?

This presentation will provide a playbook and best practices that helps organizations to bring strategic alignment and outcome-based approach to drive continual improvements. You will also learn how to make greater use of the creative potential in the minds of your employees and customers using an easy to use framework where everyone feels included in driving the desired impact in their respective work area.

Silicon Valley ITSMF is hosting a global Women if IT Webinar Series This kickoff is an online global webinar. A series of profiles, tips and topics around elevating the Women in IT Service Management. Kickoff is at the end of February, and will continue with a series of women in IT leadership programming and activities. Focus awareness and illustrating why women in leadership is simple, user experience is incomplete without a complete representation of men and women’s use of technology. The diversity of experience , use and mindset fuels innovation. Women are leading, they are just not making it to the sufficient board room levels. We can do so much leveraging the successes that exist and producing more. Kick off with profiles in excellence, tips and career resources For advancing Women in IT Leadership

Senior IT leaders like you are increasingly challenged to develop digital strategies for your organization. This can be one of the most significant challenges you face, as there are no comprehensive frameworks to compare against your peers or to assess your ability to drive positive change.

An organization’s digital maturity must be assessed across all key dimensions:

•Strategy: Is the organization aligned around a vision?
•Culture: Is the organization fostering the mindsets and behaviors critical to capturing digital opportunities?
•Customer Journeys: Is the organization able to provide the desired customer experience over end-to-end journeys?
•Capabilities: Does the organization have the systems, tools, digital skills, and technology to achieve its digital goals?

This presentation will provide a blueprint that helps organizations take stock of their digital maturity and compare it with their peers in the industry. By leveraging the capabilities-based framework described in the blueprint, organizations can identify initiatives to achieve the desired digital maturity.

Many enterprises still enjoy success with legacy service desk solutions such as Footprints, Track-IT, and Remedy. Many DevOps and software driven enterprises use Jira effectively to manage their service desks. But these solutions, often perpetually licensed, may be customized to meet many internal business needs – but do not have the latest configuration management capabilities like predictive analytics, dependency mapping, gamification, auto-discovery and robust change management workflows. Many lack a CMDB (configuration management database).
So … wouldn’t it be great to have a CMDB without the hassle of changing your entire service desk functions?
Plus, most CMDB’s today require migrating from a fully amortized, perpetually licensed solution to a recurring, SAAS solution.
This session:
•Lists reasons to keep your legacy service desk
•Identifies key intersection points on how a traditional service desk can be complemented with a modern CMDB
•Points-out what deficiencies may hurt the most
•Emphasizes the plusses often out-weigh the negatives.
Keeping your legacy service desk may make sense for many enterprises when you find options to extend their capabilities. Learn how.

Value Stream Mapping is a powerful technique introduced as part of LEAN practices which helps organizations to identify work bottlenecks, prioritize improvements, and dramatically improve workflows. The ITIL 4 Service Value Chain introduces this concept into the ITIL guidance, and challenges us to map our workflows across the Value Chain activities to demonstrate how we facilitate the co-creation of value with our service customers. In this session we will cover the ideas of Value Stream Mapping and how to conduct a Value Stream Mapping Session, then assess how the Service Value Chain provides a model for assess how IT practices facilitate desired outcomes, from incident response to service request fulfillment to new service design.

IT Security and Resiliency will be at the core of service desks leading into 2020.

That puts advanced security solutions and risk management at the top of the list, as ITSM leaders prioritize their resources and build multi-faceted strategies to protect company data and reputations from potential threats as criminals increasingly try to exploit the service desk especially through the password reset process.
This webinar will discuss what the present threat landscape looks like, what tactics are being utilized, and how to best position yourself to protect against these very real threats.
Key takeaways-
• Why social engineering has become the top security risk for the service desk
• Create a secure and formal process for authentication of users who call in for a password reset
• Where service desks should be prioritizing resources to prevent data breaches now!

Erika Flora, CEO of BEYOND20 and Lead Editor of the upcoming “ITIL 4 Leader” publication will discuss what's coming down the pike with the new ITIL 4 release. We will also discuss: differences between ITIL v3 and ITIL 4, what to do with your ITIL v3 credits, new concepts tackled in ITIL 4; and we will leave lots of time for Q&A.