Keys to ITIL success

DENVER – ITIL is about people and changing their behavior. If you can get that message across to your IT staff, you've won most of the battle for improved IT processes. This was the major message from keynote speaker Neville Teagarden, senior vice president and CIO for ProLogis, during Network World's IT Roadmap in Denver this week. (Also read about Internet-borne viruses being foiled by Software as a Service, based on another IT Roadmap talk.)

ProLogis, based in Denver, is a global industrial real estate developer with operations in 20 countries, $36.3 billion of assets under management and 1,500 employees. Teagarden is the midst of deploying operational standards to help his 100 IT employees cope with the company's meteorite success.

IT executives pursing ITIL or COBIT (ProLogis uses both) need to understand that asking people to change the way they work will stir employees' fears. Executives can overcome this by creating a high-level vision for the IT staff, Teagarden suggests. This will help employees understand the ultimate goal of process standards. ProLogis chose a formula race car's pit crew as a mascot-like idea. "The average time for a pit stop in Formula 1 auto racing is 8 seconds," he said. Every movement is orchestrated so that the team works efficiently together. That's the role model that he wanted to set for the IT department

Setting aside the time to work on ITIL is also a challenge. "You have to prioritize it," Teagarden said. He created an ITIL leadership team, including himself, and signed all members of it up for an intensive workshop. Such a workshop, where employees will be asked to objectively analyze their behavior and work processes, is guaranteed to get emotional, Teagarden warns. "So don't try this at home," he says. Professional facilitators are a must and the boss has to be just one of the players, not the top dog. "It is very important to check your title at the door," he adds. At the end of the workshop, ProLogis employees created a vision statement that every person signed. That visual reminder of the workshop, and the goal to create a more efficient work environment, helps people stay committed to the process.

Limit the scope of the standards to be adopted, too. Understand that, as written, ITIL is too big to attack in its entirety. Instead, do yourself a favor by selecting a more compact flavor. ProLogis chose the Microsoft Solutions Framework and modified that one step further to create its own subset of processes. Also he advises limiting the work to a small number of processes at first. Otherwise, you'll inadvertently "create a bureaucracy," Teagarden warns.

IT executives should further create a simple message about the goal of the ITIL project and train all IT employees how to communicate this message. In ProLogis' case, that message was the "pit crew vision." In this way, every time an IT staff member found themselves chitchatting with an executive, such as on the elevator, staff members were prepared to deliver an easy-to-understand explanation of the project.

Network World's IT Roadmap conference will take place in seven additional cities during 2008. For a full schedule see here.