itSMFI 2017 Forum Focus - June Forum Focus ITSMFI | Page 7

I’m sitting passing through the Staffordshire countryside at 100mph on a Virgin Train when my
thoughts turn to agile. I recall a conversation with the CEO of one organisation who recently told
me their master plan for doubling sales. “I’ll just put ‘agile’ in front of everything I sell” they told
me. To an extent I can see the point. Agile development, agile project management, agile busi-
ness analysis, agile testing…there is not a part of the delivery supply chain that hasn’t been pre-
fixed by the word “agile” to spawn a whole new industry! Now I’m not decrying the need for
more agility. After all, who’d say no to getting a working product or service out the door faster to
realise quicker return or value on investment? But I see too many organisations willing to jump
on the ‘Agile Bandwagon’ without looking whether it has any wheels! My experience suggests
that those struggling the most are in the operational environment. They’ve been asked to deliver
“Agile Operations” having spent years mastering ITIL which they mistakenly believe cannot be
adapted to be agile. So here’s my look at 4 values from the Agile Manifesto and their applicability
to something that isn’t a software development project.
We value individuals and
interactions over processes and tools
For me, this value is always something of an oxymoron in the
agile dev and project management world, where the
“industry” is in a headlong rush to “lean” and “automate”
everything. I’m not sure that organisations like SDI and itSMF
have not been saying ‘people over process’ for years. One
service desk I audited about 8 years ago were doing stand-up
meetings every morning with their operations colleagues very
effectively. It’s NOT and NEVER has been about slavish
devotion to operations management processes; it is MORE
about individuals engaged in operational activity being
supported to have the confidence and capability to do their
jobs. There are still those in operational environments scared
7 itSMFI Forum Focus—June 2017
to experiment or put forward ideas for fear of ridicule and
reprimand. Worse, many don’t even possess a channel to
even suggest those ideas! A healthy and empowered service
improvement ethos with multiple stakeholders and active
feedback can help operations start a more agile journey.
Working software over comprehensive
documentation
Poetic licence here as I’m going to substitute the word
services for software. Doing that makes this an interesting
one if you are in the operational space. You could easily
argue that the operations documentation “minimum viable
product” for restoring service is recording “you did it, fixed”.
It means you can inform the customer at least. Your service