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Moving People to Solution State

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Event online 22 Feb 18:00 – 19:00

7 steps to dymestify Demand and Portfolio Management

Has your organisation an unstable or foggy view on her demand, you might also struggle with portfolio management. In the past 20 years we have seen IT evolving from a technical oriented team to a more business-oriented department. Service Management became hot and in the latest evolution value is the key word. But how do I organise my demand? What is Portfolio Management really? And why is it so complicated?

In this presentation, Pieter Hoekstra will talk about the 7 steps to improve your grip on demand with portfolio management. During this 1 hour session, the participants will also work in a short break out to experience one of the steps. The impact of Technical Dept will be explained in relation to a Minimum Viable Service. And how release management is one of the cornerstones to manage the workload while keeping a professional way of working and to manage expectations.

Register via event.begrip.be

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Link to EU website

The Conference on the Future of Europe is a unique and timely opportunity for European citizens to debate on Europe’s challenges and priorities. No matter where you are from or what you do, this is the place to think about what future you want for the European Union.

The European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission have committed to listen to Europeans and to follow up, within their sphere of competences, on the recommendations made. 

By spring 2022, the Conference is expected to reach conclusions and provide guidance on the future of Europe.

Who can take part?

European citizens, from all walks of life and corners of the Union, with young people playing a central role in shaping the future of the European project. 

European, national, regional and local authorities, as well as civil society and other organisations who want to organise events and contribute ideas.

All participants shall respect the values established in our Charter of Principles. 

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Your organisation as a Service Value System

I see so many people mixing up Service Value System, Value Chain and Service Value Stream. If you remember:
– An organisation is like a service value system.
– A service is like a chain, and the Service Value Chain provides a set of activities that can be helpful in creating value streams.
– So what is the service value stream? exactly, it is the workflow that makes teams perform in the right direction.

But ITIL4 does not tell you how you should implement and what architecture is needed for your services. If you use 5 processes and 8 workflows, you get back in control of your service. But first, take a look at your organisation, a Service Value System.

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QLA: Do not jump over the meaning of a service in ITIL4, ask the 7 extra questions

Why is it important to spend more time in understanding what a service really is, while value is moving up in the value chain of ITIL? In this blog, I will highlight the major improvements of ITIL, and explain how you can explore together what a service is, by asking the 7 extra questions and creates the foundation of your QLA.

There are 4 major things evolving in ITIL. Where Strategy was the key thing in ITIL V3, value is the central element in ITIL4. Also, the processes in ITIL V3 became practices, and moved to the end of the training material. The “Value Chain way of thinking” has been introduced. A small change is the evolution from the 4 Ps (People, Process, Product and Partner) to the 4 Dimensions. My personal favourite is the Service relationships in ITIL4. There is still a relationship between a service provider and customer that needs to be managed, but the provider is also a customer, and by thinking in a relationship chain, it is also valuable to think further, about the client of your customer.

The Value of understanding Service
One of the most interesting things that I experienced, working with several organisations, is that most of them are not aware of what a service really is. If I ask: “what is the most favourite service for your client (very helpful or effective), for your own organisation (nice profit) or for your own staff (easy to do)”, I realize that the organisation is not aligned. And sometimes, if I explore further what the meaning is of the word service (and product), a sensitive discussion starts. It seems that it has not been clarified within the organisation what a service exactly is. And let us be honest, ITIL is not helpful with their definition about a service either (A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks). If you then want to explain that a service has a utility part, but also a warranty part, it becomes a bit more confusing.

So it is worthwhile to have this service discussion, which makes it more specific if you can say: “we provide access to a service, we have some goods that needs to be handed over to the client to make use of our service and ….. we do give support on our service from 9.00 – 18:00”. You can also split your service in a functional element (fit for purpose) and a second part: fit for use, which relates to how the service performs, (quality). But you should make the same split for the goods and the support. Support has also its functional part, (giving explanation “how to”), and the fit for use part, the moments that the support is available for example.

Co-creation, is doing the service exploration together
In the academic world the product view is called the “goods-dominant” (G-D) logic. The customer or service view is known as the “service-dominant” (S-D) logic. Service Dominant Logic (Vargo, Lusch source) describes the change in our founding pillars (or Foundational Premises as they call them) of our economy, where we embrace the concepts of “value-in-use” and “co-creation of value”. You can do this work together during the whole lifecycle of the service, in several sprints. This is the fun part of your work: You will realize (and realize) what the Minimum Viable Product is and make valuable steps for all the stakeholders, by using the seven extra questions below.

The 7 extra questions to understand your service -> QLA
Most of us, trained in ITIL, are used to ask the following two questions regarding a service

What are all the functional elements (utility) of the service?
What are all the functioning (warranty) or quality aspects of the service?
However, the real value is hidden in the 7 extra questions, that helps within the relationship to explore what you really want to do together. And remember: each service is a combination of goods, access to the service and the support on the service.

  • What are all the functional elements (utility) or scope of the support related to the service?
  • What are all the functioning (warranty) or behavioural aspects of the support related to the service?
  • What are all the functional elements (utility) related to the good(s) within the service?
  • What are all the functioning (warranty) or quality aspects related to the good(s) within the service?
  • What are all the functional elements (utility) or scope of the support, related to the goods within the service?
  • What are all the functioning (warranty) or behaviour aspects of the support, related to the goods within the service?
  • And, is it clear who owns the goods within the service?

What I recently learned, you could use this nicely as a template for you SLA, or should we call it QLA? Question based Level Agreement. Enjoy, and find out what a service is for your customers!

Written and published also for Van Haren Publishing by Pieter Hoekstra