An old friend called Project Management: Bringing Project Management into ITIL® v3
By Silvia Siqueira, PMP, ITIL® Manager
Sometimes we often forget to call that good old friend who used to give great advice. The same can be said for Project Management. The author provides a solution to organizations adopting new best practices: take the time to look back and see how other frameworks and methodologies can be integrated with ITIL® v3.
Stop for a minute! Think about someone you consider a good friend that you haven’t called them for a long, long time. Sometimes we have old friends that we love dearly but, with our crazy schedules and busy lifestyles, it seems that we don’t have time to stay in touch. We are caught up in our day-to-day activities and forget to call that good old friend who used to give us great advice.
The same thing happens when new frameworks and methodologies are introduced to improve quality in the industry. We start adopting new best practices and don’t have time to look back and see how other frameworks and methodologies should be integrated.
In today’s highly competitive market, CIOs are under huge pressure from their Business Organizations to deliver services on-time with high availability. Unfortunately, in reality, IT is not always ready to fulfill the businesses’ demands. Why is this? Limited budgets. Non-standard and manual processes. “Siloed” IT organizations. Lack of integrated solutions. Last but not least,“limited staff.”
It is common knowledge that ITIL® v3 is focused on IT Services expanding the Service Delivery and Service Operations seen in ITIL® v2, to the end-to-end Service Lifecycle. With the focus on Service in v3 , you may be asking:
- “How do we ensure that the Service will be delivered as requested”?
- “How do we ensure that the Service will add the most value to the Business Organization since we have so many requests”?
- With the Business Demands, the complexities of today’s Technology, the compliance requirements…How can IT effectively manage the “Service Lifecycle?"
Here is where Project Management comes into play within ITIL®.
As defined by the PMBOK®, a project is “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.” It is considered temporary because it has a beginning and definitive ending.1
Projects are results of strategic planning based on demands of the Business Organization. Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.2
Based on the statements above, Project Management techniques and processes, combined with the ITIL® v3 Service Lifecycle, provide the best practices to ensure the delivery of the IT Services.
As shown in the diagram above, let’s review some of the processes within Project Management that can be directly applied within ITIL® v3 Service Lifecycle:
- Strategic Planning: Identifying Business requirements (demands), establishing clear and achievable services, and prioritizing the diverse demands and ranking them by the time, scope, quality and cost.
Demands from your Business Organization should be documented and reviewed by both the IT and Business Organization. This should include: priority definition, Business value and return on investments. Then a decision would be made to define which demands will become a Project at all. The end result of the project will be the Service.
Today, there are specific automated solutions to help you to manage demands, optimize all the information gathered and ultimately help you decide which particular demands will be the best ones to deliver as IT services.
- Project Portfolio and Integration Management: Once the demand becomes a project, then the following steps would apply:
- Develop the project charter and preliminary project scope
- Develop the project plan and establish project guidelines
- Review the relationship between projects
- Establish the Project Portfolio and respective sub-projects
- Project Scope Management: Here, you will define and plan the scope of the project and the service. The project scope is the work that needs to be done to deliver the service. The service scope establishes the features and functions that will be delivered as a result of the project. Project scope also includes assumptions, constraints, work breakdown structure (WBS) and management of the WBS throughout the project.
When the scope is formalized it should be submitted to the business sponsor for formal acceptance. During the project, the scope must be managed to ensure the delivery of the Service that was agreed upon.
- Project Time Management: based on the scope and WBS, the next step is to define the respective project activities to deliver the service. Some activities are leveraged from ITIL® v3. They include but are not limited to:
- Service Design
- Define the new service in the Service Catalog and how the service will be offered by IT
- Establish the service levels for the new service
- Design for availability of the new service
- Plan for capacity and service continuity
- Develop Security guidelines and requirements for the new service
- Review assets that will be created or modified within the new service
- Define how the service and respective configuration items will be stored in the configuration management database
- Plan the support for the service
- Develop the service
- Service Transition
- Create the change request for the transition of the service to Operations
- Plan for the change
- Service Tests & validation
- Manage the Release of the new service to production
- Update Knowledge Base
- Update Configuration Management Database
- Release the Service
- Service Evaluation
The activities should include: sequencing, estimating of the various resources, estimating timeframes, scheduling development and scheduling control.
- Project Cost Management: Manages the financial aspects of the project and the service that will be delivered.
- Project Quality Management: Ensure that the results of the project will fulfill the service requirements.
- Project Risk Management: Plan and identify the risks that may impact the time, cost and scope of the project as well as the deliverables. Risk management plans for unexpected events that might happen and which actions will be taken in case the risk/event become an issue. Once an issue happens within the project, an impact analysis should be done to review how the project plan should be adjusted to avoid any changes to the deliverables.
- Project Human Resource Management: Plan and manage the humans resources that will participate in the project. You should formally:
- Define the staff required to deliver the project
- Acquire the team
- Get the team engaged in the tasks assigned to them
- Manage the team throughout the project
Human Resources management is one of the most important aspects within the Service Lifecycle. Most of the time, it seems that IT is constantly preoccupied with just “putting out fires,” so it is hard to allocate resources to work in a project proactively. Managing the allocated human resources is essential for successful delivery of the Service.
- Project Communications Management: at the initiation phase of the project, a communication plan should be defined, including which documents will be generated and who should be receiving those. Project performance should be part of the communication plan.
- Project Procurement Management: Plan for the purchase and/or contracting of the requested items for the service to be delivered within the project.
Isn’t it great to get back in touch with your old friend, “Project Management,” to help you deliver successful IT Services to the Business Organization? Project Management may have just the right advice for you today to deliver what your company needs tomorrow.
About the Author:
Silvia A. Siqueira, PMP, ITIL® Manager, Certified, ISO20000® Consultant Certified, began her career in Brazil and has over 20 years of experience in IT Service Management. She currently serves as Senior Solution Architect at Hewlett-Packard Software, based Dallas, Texas.
1 PMBOK® Guide 3rd Edition – Chapter 1.2
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