but now even more so as part of the fourth industrial revolution. Here’s three that I see as key:
1. Keeping relevant: and interfacing with all the other methods, of which there are so many, each contributing its own value. One way we can help is by sharing our knowledge, bringing in younger generations into our community, I feel a great place to start is to seek out youngsters or grads and get them involved in some work experience
2. Pivoting to the cloud: some are part way there, yet feels like a long way to go, where ITSM (perhaps) becomes a broker / service integration (SIAM) of a mix of cloud platforms and micro-services. I’d expect this to accelerate now that knowledge workers have proven they can work from home/anywhere
3. Service strategy vs layers of abstraction: ITSM really needs to step up our work with our colleagues in architecture and make conscious decisions about legacy and abstraction layers
- Are we just going to layer RPA bots and AI/algorithms over the top of all these old systems and have even more complex system stacks to manage? Or are we going to work with architecture to champion retiring some of the legacy and build more flexible fit for purpose micro services?
- We need to start having conversations like this, about simplification and rationalisation, by demonstrating opportunities to reduce outage frequency, impact and reduced support complexity so that we can return business value
What's the most valuable piece of advice you have been given in your professional career?
Yay! I love this question, as it happily reminds me of my late mum, whose advice, way back when I was a teenager: was for me to “find something you like doing and get someone to pay you to do it” – my mum was proof that this worked as she was a professional
freelance editor and leader in her field for over 40 years – where she effectively read books for a living!
What advice would you give young people who have chosen a career in technology?
Again, pick something you enjoy and stick with it, make sure you keep current (certifications, industry events, networking etc) and learn from everyone, particularly the people willing to give you tough love/feedback
What do you like to do when you are not working?
Spending time with my family (we have a 2yo), Travel (back when travel was allowed!), Food (Asian, Mexican and barbeque are all top of the list), Fitness (to work off the food) and I have an unhealthy obsession with the latest tech news; I use an aggregator app called Flipboard (which was a startup, but now owned by CNN) it brings lots of news sources and interests into one place
What was the title and author of the last book you read?
"What the Dog Saw”, by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m a big fan of all of his books. I saw him speak to launch a book a few years ago, he’s a captivating storyteller
One word that could describe your experience of itSMF Australia?
Community and a second word; steadfast – but in my opinion we need to reinvent this one together (as while it’s a good quality some of the time, we don’t want to get stuck in our ways)
Have you ever been to an itSMF Conference, if so what was your Conference experience like and do you have a lasting memory?
Sure! I’ve been to a couple in the UK and two here in Australia, the most memorable by far was the boat party in QLD last year.