ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL Timeline/History

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” - Winston Churchill
"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.” - George Bernard Shaw

After ITIL history and ISO/IEC 20000 history posts, this blog has received quite a few requests to create a parallel timeline for the two. We have finally made some time for it and the result is this fancy poster. It is nice to notice the interest of younger IT people for the historical evolution of ITIL and ISO 20k.


ISO 20000 and ITIL History

We did our best to collect and consolidate the timeline details from various relevant sources. I will be glad to correct it if someone from the audience notices any inconsistencies or new important events.

Since this one looks OK, I made it available as a PDF poster.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Grading

What grades do you use in customer satisfaction surveys? How are grades influenced by the culture of the country? What to do if you perform surveys in different countries with different background?

I have been discussing customer satisfaction here a few times. Related to that, let me share a brief anecdote with you:

We implemented a new Service Desk SW on a customer's site. They are a managed services company providing support all over the world, 24x7. After the resolution of every ticket, contact person on a ticket receives a mail notification with a link to a short web-based survey.

There were just a few questions regarding speed of resolution, communication, competence of support people and overall satisfaction with the ticket resolution.

Grades were 1-5, with the above explanation that 1=poor and 5=excellent.

We received quite a bunch of survey results at the beginning, which was the intention. Here and there, a low score was received, but we were not alarmed, you can't please everyone. Service Manager was in charge to treat all grades below 3 as a customer complaint and to follow up with customers to raise their satisfaction.

Then one day we received two very bad results, averaging below 2. Both from the same market. Alert! We are doing something wrong.

So Service Manager sent apologetic mail with a inquiry what went wrong and how can we improve, blah...
The answer came quickly, from both customers, saying they are sorry, but they thought 1 is better and 5 is poor.

Was something wrong with the survey code? Customers sent us their screenshots, everything is fine, the explanation at the form header clearly stated "1=poor and 5=excellent". Both customers were from Germany. On a request to explain how they misunderstood this clear instruction, they said: "German school grading system is 1 to 5, a one being the best grade (Sehr gut), and five the worst - insufficient (Nicht genügend)". So they didn't bother looking at explanations, they automatically presumed that this survey from another country complies to their long-term grading experience in German scholar system. Can't blame them.

Therefore we looked arround, what are grading standards in school systems around the world?

USA and influenced states use ABCDEF grades. Europe differs very much depending on history, somewhere 1 is bad, under the German skirt it is excellent (Chezh republic and Slovakia also).
Eastern European countries, Asia and Oceania use either Russian 1-5 system or percentage system 0-100%.

Interesting details:

• Venezuela uses rather exotic 0-20 grading system
• Ecuador and Serbia (opposite hemispheres) use similar 5-10 grading systems where 5=fail and 10=excellent.
• A lot of countries use different grading systems for primary, high school and university grades.

So what approach to take in grading customer satisfaction in order to make it intuitive regardless of their local education background?

 

We had only two solutions:

• Go to using 1, 2, 3, 4 grades, where customers won't be able to relate to their finer graded school system. 1-4 is also good because it eliminates the indifferent middle grade, and it forces a customer to decide for better or worse 2 or 3.
• Take the -2, -1, 0, 1, 2 grading approach. Good: it is self-explanatory, negative numbers can't be good. Bad: it leads the customer to a mediocre "0" grade, suggesting that it is OK.

For now, we are using the second proposed grading system, accepting the downside that some customers see nothing bad in selecting a "0", which is a neutral grade.

An additional tweak would be to change grades to -1, 0, 1, 2, which would "push" a customer towards positive grades some more.

What metod do you think is most apropriate for you?


Related articles:

Customer Satisfaction 
How bad do we need it in IT Service Management? Where is it mentioned and where is it dealt with in ITIL V3? How do we manage it in real life?

Customer Satisfaction Survey: What Methods To Use?
How to gather customer satisfaction data? What methods are there? What ITIL says? What methods will work for you?

ITIL 2011: Free Mind Map

Surprisingly lot of you people asked for my refreshed ITIL 2011 edition mind map.
Since you have seen pictures of it in my previous posts, you know I have it ;)   I've put it here for free download.


ITIL 2011 Mind Map

Mind you, this is still my working version, so please let me know if you find any typos or errors.




Of course, if you decide to dig deeper, I recommend buying a full set of books from TSO or Amazon.

Download my ITIL 2011 Mind Map here.

If you don't have a MindJet MindManager, you can have a look in flash here (it will ask you for a viewer installation). Hope you enjoy it!

ISO/IEC 20000 - A Brief History

From DISC PD 005 over BSI 15000 to ISO/IEC 20000. Specifications, requirements, Code of practice.

History is a myth that men agree to believe.
Napoleon

ISO/IEC 20000 Timeline

I have been looking around for some brief document with ISO/IEC 20000 history, and I could not find anything useful.

Here are a few major points I have collected from various sources in ISO/IEC 20000 history.

1995: British Standard Institution (BSI) published the first version of DISC PD 0005:1995 - Code of Practice for IT Service Management. It described only four basic ITSM processes.

1998: BSI publishes a revised version of DISC PD 0005:1998 and it already described all five process areas and 13 processes as we know it today.

2000: Published BS 15000:2000 - Specification for IT Service Management which was used together with the code of practice DISC PD 0005.
Also in 2000, the third supplementary document entitled DISC PD 0015:2000 IT Service Management Self-Assessment Workbook was published.  It was a questionnaire that enabled anyone to make an assessment of its compliance degree with BS 15000.
Some serious revisions and rewriting followed, resulting in standard documents very similar to today's norm:

2002: BS 15000-1:2002 IT service management - Specification for Service Management;
PD 0015:2002 - Self-Assessment Workbook

2003: BS 15000-2:2003 IT service management - Code of Practice for Service Management
The same year a new PD 0005:2003 Guide to Management of IT Service Management was published with explanations of the purpose of BS 15000, and also the framework guidance on how to use the standard processes and implement them.
BSI 15000 was adopted by many service companies in UK, and countries worldwide accepted it.

2005: BS-15000 was placed on the “fast track” by the ISO. By the end of the year, with some moderate changes, it was published as ISO/IEC 20000 standard:

• ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 Specification  is very formal, it defines processes and provides assessment/ audit criteria.
• ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 Code of Practice that gives HOW-TOs and describes best practices for implementation of Part 1.

Standard was unchanged for four years. Adoption was a bit slower due to somewhat lower ISO maturity level of the standard. The norm requirements were very demanding, and supplemental documentation was scarce and sometimes ambiguous. There was a need for some additional documentation:

2009: ISO/IEC TR 20000-3:2009 Guidance on scope definition and applicability  was published. It provided guidance on scope , applicability and of conformance for service providers

2010:

• ISO/IEC TR 20000-4:2010 Process reference model - describes  the service management system processes implied by ISO/IEC 20000-1 at an abstract level.
• ISO/IEC TR 20000-5:2010 Exemplar implementation plan for ISO/IEC 20000 -1 - provided guidance  to implementation of ISO/IEC 20000 by example and advice.

2011. April:  ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011 - new version of specification is out.

2012. February: ISO/IEC 20000-2:2012 - new Guidance on the application of service management systems published.

If someone has an update or a correction to this, I will be very glad to update the post. Thank you.

Related posts:

ISO/IEC 20000 Essentials
A few more words on ISO/IEC 20000

ISO/IEC 20000 Rediscovered
Describing differencies and similarities of ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000

ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000 Compared
ITIL V2 - ITIL V3 - ISO20000 comparisson table

Hope this helps. Have a nice day!

ITIL Service Manager Exam Quick Reference

As I can see, a lot of people are still training for V2 ITIL Service Manager exam. Just for their convenience, I have added a few .pdf documents that I created while preparing for this exam.

Documents are not very tidy, maybe there is a typo here and there and they are not polished for publishing, but they are full of referent facts. And of course, they are free.

So here they are for you:

• Service Support Quick Reference PDF
• Service Delivery Quick Reference PDF

ITIL V3 Mind Map Download

There is a lot of stuff in the new V3 core books. I have read most of it, and I was overwhelmed with new slang, archetypes, processes, acronyms.

After the second reading, you start noticing that there even exists a connection between the graphics and the text in these books. One just has to read carefully.

Memorizing and putting things in a perspective can be difficult when grasping such a broad scope. Mind mapping can help to some extent.

I have created a simple mind map for the purpose of my own data organization. I thought that sharing it with a community would be a good idea. So I have put it for download on this temporary space.

I took the measure of deleting the content that could be problematic as copyright goes. Still, a lot of public info and my own graphics are left inside. This is a working copy, and will be upgraded regularly. For now it is in Mindjet Mind Manager format, if you have trouble viewing it, let me know, I can maybe export it to xml.

A Brief History of ITIL

I have looked arround the web a little and was bored with the general ITIL history articles found on the web. There are a few inconsistencies and interesting myths circling around, like the one on the Falklands war and possible general war threat with Argentina, which are denied by the authors of V1.
The fact that Mrs. Thatcher came to power in 1979. and that ICT budget of UK government exceeded 8 bil. UK pounds was probably one of initiators of GITMM (or GITIMM, not sure).

So, here is a short list of important milestones:

1972: IBM starts research on quality service delivery called Information Systems Management Architecture (ISMA).

1980: IBM publishes Volume I of the IBM Management series titled "A management System for the Information Business", first public edition of ISMA.

1986: CCTA authorizes a program to develop a common set of operational guidance with the objective of increasing efficiencies in Government IT.

1988: "Government Infrastructure Management Method (GITMM)", is formalized and issued as 'guidelines' for Government IT operations in the UK focused on Service Level Management. Same year, the development team was expanded and work continued on Cost, Capacity, and Availability.

1989: GITMM title is inadequate. It is not a method, (last M), and it should lose its G letter in order to be marketable out of government. Renamed to ITIL.

1989: First 'ITIL' book published, Service Level Management, then Help Desk (incorporating the concepts of Incident Management), Contingency Planning, and Change Management. Books had 50-70 pages.

1990: Problem Management, Configuration Management and Cost Management for IT Services published.

1991: Published - Software Control & Distribution, on 89 pages.

1992: Availability Management, 69 pages.

1996: (July) First ITIL Service Manager class delivered in US by US company, ITSMI, 16 attended, 10 candidates, nine passes, one distinction, first US company authorized as an ITIL accredited course provider - ITSMI.

1997: Customer focused update to the Service Level Management book, 106 pages.

1997: ITIMF legally becomes what we know today as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF UK).

2000: Service Support V2 published, 306 pages.

2001: Service Delivery V2 published, 376 pages.

2001: CCTA became a part of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)

2002: Application Management, 158 pages, Planning to Implement IT Service Management, 208 pages and ICT Infrastructure Management, 283 pages, published.

2003: Software Asset Management, 146 pages, published .

2004: Business Perspective: The IS View on Delivering Services to the Business, published, 180 pages.

2006: (June) ITIL Glossary V2 published

2006: (June) APM Group Limited announced as preferred bidder of ITIL accreditation & certification program, over the itSMF International (expectant winner)

2007: (May) ITIL V3 five core books published.

2011: (July) ITIL 2011 update published.

Let's analyse this timeline a bit:

ITIL V1 was rather similar to IBM's ISMA, especially in support/delivery domain. Core ITIL V2 books did not differ much from ITIL V1. Only a few processes were altered slightly, but the focus and perspective was pretty much unchanged. And this process lasted for some 20 years.

ITIL V3 approximately doubled the scope, almost tripled the number of processes and functions and introduced a few new dimensions and perspectives. We have the first set of core books now, but a lot of time will be needed to develop all the complementary books, to groom and mature the training materials and to polish best implementation practices.

ITIL 2011 books grew 57% in weight and 46% in number of pages due to rewrite and redesign (larger font).

ITIL V2 Mind Maps Free Download

I have took the liberty of posting my ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery mind maps in .mmap form. I have created these while preparing for my ITIL Service Manager exam.
They are simple reference documents with basic bullets per process, but I hope you can use it and upgrade them if you wish while you study.
Documents will be on eSnips for the first time, until I migrate this blog to another domain.
Links to documents can be found in the upper left part of the homepage.
Soon I will post some of my V3 maps and graphs in the same place.

Incident Management Mind Map

I have process mind maps, and I am looking for a free tool to display them on the web. Until then, here is a JPG of Incident Management mind map.