Visible Ops Adding Realism To Itil Process Improvement

Writen by Pat Moore

While ITIL has provided a proven framework to assist with the increasing challenges associated with maintaining a more efficient, secure and compliant IT organization, only a handful of tools are publicly available to support the execution of ITIL-based improvement efforts. But a quick review of the Visible Ops handbook from the Information Technology Process Institute (ITPI), may give way to more tactical discussions on realistic service improvements for your ITO.

Visible Ops focuses mainly on the effective management of change as it relates to IT processes and applies to all any system related infrastructure component or attribute managed by IT (servers, databases, firewalls, network devices, storages systems, etc.). The handbook takes a common sense approach at leveraging ITIL and industry best practices through a straight forward and primarily non-technical narrative that serves a more functional audience.

Visible Ops was created through an industry study of "high-performing" IT organizations. Over the course of three years, the ITPI examined effective IT operations and security processes within these organizations, documenting characteristics that consistently contributed to the most efficient provision of IT services. In the end, the Visible Ops framework was developed, consisting of four phases driving increasing control over an IT environment. Each phase addresses related issues and provides indicators and descriptive steps to garner specific benefits each step of the way.

Phase 1: "Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response"

This phase looks at reducing the amount of unplanned work as a percentage of total work done to less than 25%. According to the ITPI, an estimated 80% of IT service outages are self-inflicted. Controlling changes that add significant risk to service provision and reducing MTTR through more efficient Change and Problem Management will add the most immediate value relative to process improvement efforts.

Phase 2: "Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts"

Phase 2 focuses on the creation and maintenance of your inventory of IT production assets. As a result of inefficiencies in standardizing the replication of IT infrastructure, the ITPI recommends a comprehensive inventory of assets, configurations and services to identify CI's and attributes with low change success rates, high MTTR and substantial downtime costs to ensure these components and their associated attributes are well protected.

Phase 3: "Establish Repeatable Build Library"

By establishing a library of repeatable builds with an initial focus on the "fragile" IT infrastructure, IT organizations can ensure the most critical assets and services are cheaper to rebuild than to repair. This phase primarily focuses on implementing an effective Release Management process to gain efficiencies in IT services.

Phase 4: "Enable Continuous Improvement"

Based on the previous phases and the progressive integration of the ITIL Service Support processes (BS 15000 equivalent of Release, Control and Resolution processes), phase 4 concentrates on the implementation of process metrics to enable continuous IT service improvement and ensure alignment with overall business objectives.

Bottom Line: Through continuous exposure and feedback obtained from various IT audiences, the ITPI believes Visible Ops has gained acceptance as a consistent and intuitive framework for IT process improvement when coupled with the ITIL framework. In the end, Visible Ops can foster good dialogue and a starting point for where and how to start your IT service improvement efforts. But more importantly, Visible Ops puts the focus back on common sense as a common practice.

Patrick Moore is a independent consultant and technology writer residing in Los Angeles, CA USA. Patrick can be reached at moorep@itilworx.com.