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Nov 23, 2013

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.

Jul 3, 2013

AXELOS - new name of the joint venture managing ITIL and PRINCE2 certifications

As we mentioned in a previous post, Capita plc and Government Office created a new joint venture to promote and manage ITIL® and PRINCE2® certifications.
On 1st July 2013 the joint venture has been launched under the new name - AXELOS.
 
CEO of AXELOS is Peter Hepworth who came from Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, anyone?).
 
AXELOS will be the owner of the intellectual property of the Best Management Practice portfolio. It will manage licensing schemes, accreditation and support of examination institutes, training organisations, and consulting organisations.
 
Have a look at the official press release.
 
A few less known curiosities:
  • On average one ITIL exam is taken every 1.5 minutes.
  • ITIL exams are available in 21 languages in over 150 countries worldwide.

Let us all hope these latest development will turn out for the best of international IT Service Management community.

UPDATE: Axelos shows first signs of life. Have a look at http://axelos.gtml2.com/axeloslz/lz.aspx?p1=054481S1&CC=&p=1&cID=0&cValue=1, first strategy hints and some nice market research figures there.


May 2, 2013

Cabinet Office let the 51% of ITIL/PRINCE2 to Capita plc


Her Majesty decided to let the 51% of ITIL/PRINCE2 ownership to Capita plc, a company selected after an extensive procurement process to create a new Joint Venture organization. 

Cabinet Office will get 10 million pounds advance and three additional annual payments of 9,4 million pounds. In return, Capita will own 51% of a new Joint Venture (JV) organization. Government Office keeps 49%.

That's a lot of money. And this transaction opens a lot of questions, for all involved subjects. What will change for ATOs, authors of central and complementary publications, certified companies and individuals? Who will write new versions?
How is the new JV going to triple the revenue in next ten years? Who is going to receive the short end of the stick? Furthermore, why is Cabinet Office selling a piece of a golden goose?

We on ITIL side of the fence recognized the V3 and 2011 pumped up the pyramid of revenue-generation. Owner of ITIL will earn much more in this new frame. Is the government really that bad in managing money generators as ITIL and PRINCE2 after thirty-something years of experience?

Time will probably tell. But I have a huge problem with patience...

Mar 10, 2013

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 genĂ¼gend)". 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%.

Customer Survey Grades


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?