itSMFI 2017 Forum Focus - June Forum Focus ITSMFI | Page 30

We sleepwalked into the 21 st century with our 20 th
century mindset
The keynote speaker was Andrea Kis from ISG, a supplier on
the bleeding edge of developing SIAM as a concept. Andrea’s
presentation was very well designed with few slides, not too
much text and many beautiful background images – a
pleasant addition to the speech rather than your usual
black-text, white-background, over-texted slides. The main
message was to forget ‘the box’ – 'them’ (the business) and
‘us’ (the IT department).
Andrea also gave an example from real life: A maintenance
window on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was missed due to
a 2.5 hour IT issue, and more than $50m was wasted. The
answer from the service provider: Our service level target has
not been breached. (Just take a moment to let that one sink
in.)
The future of sourcing in a historic perspective
Among the others speakers were a shared session with a
customer and a supplier, namely Historic England, caretakers
of historic properties in the UK, and the supplier Littlefish.
They emphasized that the customer doesn’t care whether
it’s one or the other supplier, only whether it’s working.
They also compared service integration to a conductor
orchestrating an ensemble in a concert (a view I would
personally challenge, however, in that integration of
services rarely enjoys the privilege of knowing what the
other musicians (suppliers) are doing, why and when.)
I took home two messages from that session:
Communication is paramount, so appoint a service
ambassador – eg if you use MVP (minimum viable product),
then viable is more important than minimum!
Successful first conference on SIAM
All things considered a very inspiring and educational day.
The conference was perhaps a little heavily represented by
suppliers. Therefore, my last session for the day was a
refreshing change in viewpoint, this time by none less than
the BBC. Tony Stevens used a chicken-and-egg metaphor on
technology versus business adaptation: Are the needs of the
business driving technology, or will the business simply have
to live with what we provide them? The key is to get it right
the first time and avoid a ‘ready-fire-aim’ culture.
“CIO, how does your current team support the goals and vision of the company?
– We don’t know, they didn’t come to us.” (Andrea Kis)
30 itSMFI Forum Focus—June 2017