Service Management Office - Driving critical change

I have been actively involved with some programs, where Fortune 500 companies are implementing / have implemented Service Management model. As any other model reengineering effort, there are various meanings to it. Some people would call it as implementing ITIL and some would acknowledge that it’s more than that. Some would see it as diminishing influence of projects; some would call it as a balancing act.

One thing we all have to acknowledge that implementing service management thought line is a huge culture and political change. For years, we have seen IT funding going directly into project portfolios. We have been managing IT in a particular fashion for decades. The behaviors of individual and the political structures have thus evolved within organizations.

The issue around Business IT alignment has also been a focus in parallel. It’s been debatable if the projects, IT does, are valuable to business or not. Is IT all about various software projects and programs, which open and close with specific scopes, or is there a bigger constant entity which aligns with business environment? With advent of service management, that constant value oriented entity have started taking shape. All goodness!

However, the journey is not that straight. There are many dimensions of challenges involved with implementing service management in IT companies. Here are few in my opinion –

• Technical – What technologies will suit this new service orientation?
• Political – Who is doing it?
• Cultural – We do it this way/ this wont work here
• Operating model – Which functions to bring together and which one to divide
• Maturity – We are not ready yet!
• Dependencies – Can we do it without completing something else?
• Skills – Do we have right skills?
• Governance – How and who would manage what?

Actually, there is a bigger list but for the sake of this discussion, we can start with these. These various dimensions of challenges feed each other too. That’s why, when we start a service management implementation program, people know ,in general ,what we are trying to achieve, however very few of them would know the answer to “how”. The art of implementing effective and efficient service management model is the key and the journey starts with acknowledging the magnitude and dimensions of overall change.

Service Management Office (SMO) becomes a key driver to influence this change. Establishing an SMO itself demonstrates a visible organization and leadership commitment to service program. The leadership direction & involvement, as sought by almost every management and quality model, gets align to this body. 

If architected correctly, it would involve representations from various sections of organization and establish alignment and integration. The SMO should acknowledge other bodies, such as PMO, and should have a charter of involving them in service oriented journey.  We have to keep in mind that even SMO can’t survive in silo. Services and projects are 2 key pillars of IT organizations and they have to be working in synch. The structure of a SMO should also evolve with the maturity of service management model, which encompasses people, process, partner, product, and of course the measurement system. 

In a way, your SMO becomes the center of this change. People associate service management journey and value to it. It sought commitment from leaderships, business and entire organization. It motivates solving political scenarios and positively influencing value oriented culture change.

Of course, implementing a right fit SMO (service management office) is also an art. If implemented wrong, it would harm!

Feel free to add your comments, experience and opinions. It’s sharing knowledge which matters!