OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 8-14-08

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 14, 2008 meeting

Present: Mike Allen, Joel Manfredo, Larry Godec, Tina Haines, Bob Houghton, Randy Farner, Jeff Hecht, Mitch Morris, Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips

We welcomed Mike Allen, The Irvin Company, as our guest speaker, and new member Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, to her first meeting.

We reminded members to reserve the evening of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. for the SaaS special event, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.

Please check Attachment A for the list of topics chosen for the rest of the year, the dates of each meeting and the person who has volunteered to prepare the introduction.

The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.

Topic: IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Joel Manfredo, ex-CIO at the Irvine Company (TIC), introduced Michael Allen, Director of Process Excellence, and described the context for the ITIL initiative at TIC – poor change control. Mike described ITIL as a framework of 11 common sense, service oriented principles – it is the What, rather than the How. Created by the British Government in the ‘80s to address inefficiencies with providing IT services, it is now at Version 3, which was released in June 2007. There are 5 core books entitled: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL Service Strategy is about the practice of service management, principles, strategy, economics (IT financial management, ROI, service portfolio management, demand management), organization culture, technology and operations. ITIL Service Design is about service design principles and processes – service catalogue management, service level management, capacity management, availability management, service continuity management, information security management, supplier management, application management, data and information management, requirements engineering, and design considerations (organization, process and tools). ITIL Service Transition is about transition principles and processes – transition planning and support, change management, asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, validation and testing, evaluation and knowledge management. ITIL Service Operation is about principles and processes - event management, incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, access management, monitor and control domain management. It is also about functions like service desk, technical management, IT operations management, and application management. ITIL Continual Service Improvement processes include the 7-step improvement process, service reporting, measurement, ROI for CSI, and SLA management. To operate IT like a business, it behooves you to embrace ITIL principles to provide reliable, available and serviceable IT services and infrastructure. It leverages Deming’s PDCA model. Widely accepted in Europe, it is quickly moving into the US market. Mike recommended starting with one aspect of your IT operations that needs improvement. TIC started with change management to add structure to a somewhat chaotic environment by dedicating resources in 2004, and the metrics show the value. Mike’s handout lists what they have done – self-assessment, 5-year plan, incident and problem management, configuration management and IT service continuity. I recommend that you read his entire handout to get a better sense of all that they have accomplished. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio

We asked members to share with us their experiences with ITIL.

Mitch Morris, IAMPO, told us that his environment is still very immature with respect to IT. He is evaluating ERP systems with the intention of replacing custom software. He is also trying to educate both management and users in the need for IT policies and procedures. In past positions, he has implemented many ITIL concepts.

Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said before listening to the presentation, he would have said that they did nothing with ITIL. He now realizes that they do a lot in areas like demand management. The need for availability is increasing, and they need predictable procedures to handle change management. The business is still very immature, as it grows from 200 to 1000 employees, and they tend to be sloppy about a lot of things. But the business is starting to be more demanding so his first step will be to do a self-assessment.

Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that at the Auto Club and Mercury, they have implemented many ITIL procedures in name, but not in spirit. Problems keep reoccurring, and there is little route cause analysis. What he likes about ITIL is that it gives you a checklist of processes and procedures that one should implement to run IT as a business.

Bob Houghton, DDI, said that at Western Digital, with 26,000 all over the world, the need for such a process was recognized so that they could communicate the cost of poor IT practices. Implementing IT services based on the ITIL model brought the cost of IT per drive down from 26 cents to 6 cents. At DDI, they are coming out of bankruptcy, and had just failed a SOX audit in change control. They had to use ITIL to get some structure.

Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, initial reaction to ITIL was “what’s in a name”. But since she has been working with her new division in the last 18 months, mostly in the UK, she has came to see that ITIL is very much accepted as a body of work which is supportable. Their problem today is that they are in a very profitable aerospace industry, and have tended to become lazy. So it is good to have a foundation for providing IT services. ITIL is in demand by both the government and their customers. She complimented Mike and TIC for doing a really good job of relating process maturity to the business.

Larry Godec, First American, is a big fan of ITIL. They have implemented many ITIL concepts and find that it is an excellent foundation for IT service provisioning. With the demand for high availability, it has become absolutely necessary to control changes, and manage demand. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts due the real estate crunch, he has had to reassign his ITIL full time resource. He is contemplating bringing him back to do another assessment.

Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they are not ITIL compliant. It would seem to him for this to be critically important for all CIOs to know how compliant they were to the ITIL principles in all aspects of providing IT services. If they don’t know, then they need to do at least do a self-audit, if not hire a company to do one, like TIC did.

Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said the first thing they did was address change management. They were able to show $ savings from implementing ITIL principles. When she joined Corinthian Colleges, they had multiple years of failed SOX audits. After implementing change management, they have moved to address incident management. Listening to Mike, she realizes that there is another whole level that they need to address. They are at best at 50-60% of where they should be.

This was a very good session, thanks to Mike’s presentation and a very lively discussion.

See you on September 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260