Tag Archives: Service Management

ESM, ITSM, Leadership

The Real Reason IT Can’t Keep Up – and What Needs to Change

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When business leaders say they need to “move faster,” they are rarely talking about speed for its own sake. They mean faster time-to-market, faster recovery from disruption, faster answers, and a greater ability to change direction without rebuilding the business around new technology. But IT can’t keep up.

AI has only made the gap more visible. As Newsweek noted in 2026, AI adoption is forcing organizations to compete for the same limited pool of budget, talent, and attention already needed to maintain existing systems. AI is not reducing pressure on IT; it is increasing demand across infrastructure, services, skills, and spending.

The problem is that this pressure is not new. In many organizations, business demand has been growing faster than IT’s ability to respond for years. IT is expected to enable innovation while still carrying the weight of reactive support, operational complexity, and “keeping the lights on” work. As that imbalance grows, speed becomes harder to deliver—even when the intent is there.

IT hasn’t been able to keep up – and if something doesn’t change, it’s only going to get worse.

Symptoms of an IT organization that isn’t keeping up

Those pressures do not show up only in missed deadlines or overloaded teams. They show up in visible patterns across the organization—patterns that signal IT is struggling to keep pace with what the business now requires.

Personal technology outpaces corporate technology – Employees often have access to faster, easier, and more modern tools at home than they do at work. When workplace tools feel outdated or restrictive, people turn to “shadow IT” or “shadow AI” to get work done. While that may improve individual productivity in the short term, it undermines collaboration, consistency, and knowledge sharing across the enterprise.

Policies constrain instead of enable – Good policies explain why the policy exists and provide useful guidance that helps the organization achieve intended outcomes while minimizing unintended consequences. But when policies are not updated to reflect current market conditions, emerging technologies, or new ways of working, they create friction. In those cases, the effort required to comply can outweigh the risk the policy was meant to manage.

IT and business strategy are disjointed – As I’ve discussed previously, many organizations still develop IT strategy separately from business strategy. The result is fragmented initiatives, poor investment decisions, underused technology, and missed opportunities to create value. Research from Grant Thornton found that while 93% of business leaders are investing more in technology, only 27% say their technology is fully aligned with business goals.

IT’s house is not in order – One of the clearest signs that IT is falling behind is the absence of foundational delivery disciplines. IT practices are not aligned to organizational goals, work is managed in isolation from the rest of the enterprise, and business governance over systems and services is weak or missing. Since IT cannot create business value on its own, these gaps make it harder for the organization to move with speed and confidence.

Together, these symptoms make it harder for the enterprise to move quickly, coordinate effectively, and respond confidently to change.

What’s holding IT back?

These symptoms do not happen by accident. They usually point to deeper structural issues in how IT is organized, governed, and connected to the business.

Lack of transparency – IT often lacks a clear, end-to-end understanding of the organization’s value streams. While IT may understand its own internal workflows for systems or application development, it often struggles to see how those systems and applications contribute to broader business value.

Processes without purpose – People in IT are often busy doing work, but the reason behind that work is unclear—or no longer valid. When processes continue without a clear connection to outcomes, they create effort without delivering meaningful value.

IT is not aligned with the enterprise – As I’ve discussed before, IT often lacks a clear understanding of how the enterprise operates and creates value. Instead, IT treats its non-IT colleagues as “customers,” which can create an unnecessary barrier between IT and the rest of the organization.

IT services are not defined – The way people, processes, and technology come together to enable business outcomes is often not clearly defined, documented, or agreed upon between IT and the rest of the organization.

Lack of governance – Business decision rights are often undefined for products and services provided by IT. As a result, ownership of those decisions is frequently ceded—consciously or unconsciously—to IT. In effect, IT ends up making, or being asked to make, business decisions it does not own.

Tool sprawl – A “technology first” approach to business problems often leads to a proliferation of tools. A 2026 report from Auvik found that SaaS sprawl continues to outpace visibility for many IT teams. Sixty percent of organizations report discovering unauthorized SaaS applications at least monthly, reinforcing how difficult it is to maintain an accurate view of what is running across the environment.

If these are some of the forces slowing IT down, the next question is what can help. This is where service management should matter—but only if it evolves beyond a narrow operational focus.

Service management can help – but not the service management found in many organizations

Many organizations have adopted the operational side of service management, but those practices alone have never been enough. The business, technology, and consumer landscape has changed. Organizations need greater velocity, customers expect better experiences, technology environments are more complex, and work happens everywhere. In that context, an operationally oriented, “inside-out” approach to service management falls short.

What organizations need now is service management that supports business outcomes, enables value co-creation, and improves measurable business impact. That means helping the organization pivot safely, respond to market change, adopt emerging technologies with discipline, and manage growing cyber and operational risk.

For IT to shift from reactive work to strategic business enablement, service management must evolve. It should strengthen governance and control, become more responsive and value-driven, and focus on how the organization uses people, processes, and technology together to deliver differentiated outcomes. Here are a few examples (referencing ITIL®[i]practices) of how service management can help.

Portfolio management – Helps the organization work on the right things. It clarifies which products and services should exist, governs them across their lifecycle, and supports decisions about what to fund, improve, or retire.

 Strategy management – Ensures the organization’s desired outcomes are clearly defined, agreed, maintained, and translated into action.

Service design – Focuses on creating modern, scalable, and resilient digital services rather than treating systems and applications as ends in themselves.

Service desk – Becomes the hub for the consumer experience, not just a function that reacts to incidents and requests.

Measurement and reporting – Shifts the conversation from IT activity to enterprise performance, using measures that reflect business results rather than technical effort alone.

Monitoring and event management – Enables earlier detection, automated response, and more predictive operations, reducing the amount of reactive work carried by IT teams.

Continual improvement – Builds the learning loops needed to keep adapting. In a fast-changing environment, improvement cannot be occasional; it must be part of how the organization works.

Start by asking better questions

If IT feels like it is constantly behind, the issue is rarely effort alone. More often, the problem is that demand has outgrown the structures, governance, and operating practices needed to respond safely and effectively. That is why simply asking IT to “move faster” will not solve the problem. Organizations need a more business-connected approach to service management—one that improves visibility, clarifies ownership, strengthens decision-making, and helps turn technology work into business outcomes.

If you want IT to help your organization move faster, start by asking a different set of questions:

  • Do you have clear service ownership?
  • Are decision rights defined?
  • Can you see how technology work connects to business value?
  • Are you reducing reactive work—or just funding more of it?

Service management should help answer those questions. If it is not, this may be the right time to rethink what service management is for and how it should support the business.

[i] ITIL is a registered trademark of the PeopleCert group.

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Business Relationship Management, ITSM, Leadership

CEOs want tech results, not tech talk – Here’s how to deliver

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While many CEOs know that the use of technology is crucial for business success, what they don’t know or understand how technology use contributes to that success.

According to this CIO.com article, CIOs reported that less than 2% of their CEO bosses understood the totality of the technology stack.

And in today’s $24 trillion global digital economy, that is a problem.

The right technology solutions can enable competitive differentiation for any organization. But organizations need to have the right skills and mindset in place to enable, support, and deliver that differentiation.

Investments in technology is expensive – a wrong decision can cost an organization significantly. Those poor decisions can often be traced to the lack of an integrated business and technology strategy. In some cases, the IT strategy is developed separately from business strategy .  IT doesn’t help itself either – how can CEOs decide where to make investments in technology when IT proposals discuss technology benefits, such as uptime or features, rather than business results like growth, margin, or customer experience?

According to this McKinsey article , many CEOs struggle to understand exactly how IT initiatives and investments drive revenue, customer experience, and efficiency. As a result, IT looks like a cost center. But more than that, projects and investments in technology often become fragmented and underused, resulting in missed opportunities for new products, services, or operating models. One need look no further than the well-documented technology “misses” of companies like Kodak, Blockbuster, and Nokia.

Good service management is the solution

Good service management can solve the technology understanding gap between CEOs and CIOs. But many CIOs often think “we’ve tried that and it didn’t solve this problem.”

But did those organizations really implement good service management? Good service management is not just standing up a service desk and installing a ticketing and workflow tools. Good service management is not just utilizing service management practices to manage IT.  Good service management facilitates value realization and business results.

Think about it. Without alignment and integration with the rest of the organization, the IT organization cannot deliver the value and results expected from investments in technology. And this is exactly what good service management does. Good service management is much more than just implementing some tool and standing up a service desk. Good service management requires a holistic view of how technology enables value realization and business results.

Good service management starts with (I’ve said it before) alignment of IT with business goals. Adopting practices like portfolio management, business analysis, relationship management, and strategy management prevents implementation of “technology for technology’s sake” (like rushing to adopt AI-enabled capabilities for example), helps prioritize technology investments and IT efforts based on business impact.  Doing this will give CEOs insights into how technology enables return on investment and delivers business results.

But adoption of these practices only establishes the needed scaffolding for enabling and delivering the business value and results expected by the CEO from investments in technology.

McKinsey suggests two actions that every CIO must take with CEOs to close the understanding gap. Coincidentally, these two actions are foundational for good service management.

  • Meet with the CEO to clarify business outcomes, not technology. Identify and agree on 3-5 business outcomes where technology much help (such as growth, risk, customer experience) and capture these outcomes as plain, non-technical language statements.
  • Map IT to these outcomes by creating simple, one-page views that link business goal to technology capabilities to 2-3 simple measures that the CEO can track.

These two actions will have the following impact on service management and IT:

  • Identifies the right success measures for IT. Many IT organizations measure success in terms of technology (uptime, time to resolve, volume of tickets); measures that are meaningless outside of the IT organization. IT success should be measured and reported to the CEO in terms of business results – reduced waste, customer experience, and business growth.
  • Shifts the perception of IT as being a “cost center” to a “value enabler” by providing the CEO with regular visibility into how IT is enabling business outcomes.

Three things you can do now to help the CEO

  • Build better business relationships. Often the only interactions between IT and other business colleagues is limited to project meetings or interactions with a service desk professional. If you are an IT professional, when is the last time you met a colleague outside of IT for coffee to talk about how technology helps – or gets in the way of – doing work and delivering business results? These meetings will provide huge insights into how technology is perceived within the organization.
  • Define services in terms of business processes and outcomes. Stop putting off or ignoring this task. Services facilitate the realization of business results. The more the IT organization defines services in terms of business processes and outcomes, the less the IT organization will be perceived as a “cost center” and barrier to getting work done.
  • Start reporting the right things in the right way. Stop reporting metrics outside of IT that have no meaning to anyone outside of IT. Start reporting metrics like reliability and cost avoidance that are related to business objectives.

Technology doesn’t drive success – understanding how it enables success does. CEOs and CIOs who close that gap through strong service management transform IT from a misunderstood cost center into a true value enabler.

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ITSM, Leadership

The ITSM blind spots holding back your business

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In today’s digital economy, IT is no longer just a support function.  The products and services provided by IT are engines for business growth, enabling a differentiated set of capabilities in the marketplace.

Effective ITSM transforms IT into a powerful engine that drives exceptional business performance and fuels sustained competitive advantage.

Yet, too many organizations have a blind spot when it comes to ITSM.  Too many organizations view ITSM only as a back-office activity, providing support and resolving tickets. A significant reason why this situation exists is that many ITSM implementations are focused only on managing the work of (some parts of the) IT organization, and not the business of the business.

I’ve talked about this before – too many organizations take a technology-first approach to service management, rather than investing effort in establishing a mutually-agreed understanding of the benefits of ITSM. Many organizations’ ITSM efforts are not aligned with business goals and objectives.  These ITSM implementations are focused on what has happened, seemingly looking through the rear-view mirror rather than looking through the windshield, to proactively becoming  a business enabler. These ITSM environments are perceived as being overly bureaucratic, unable to respond to or quickly adopt new capabilities or technologies in response to ever-changing business needs.

These organizations have created – and maintain – a blind spot when it comes to ITSM.

What’s been overlooked – or ignored?

For many organizations, ITSM is only the service desk and the ‘core four’ practices – incident, change, service request, and problem management.  Are these practices necessary?  Absolutely.

But by only implementing these ‘core four’ practices, organizations will have overlooked opportunities to change the perception of ITSM to business enabler.  What has been overlooked?

  • Service Strategy – What is the plan for developing, providing, and supporting technology-based products and services that align with business goals and objectives? How will these products and services create value and enable competitive advantage? What trends and emerging business demands should be considered? Unfortunately, many organizations have not considered defining their strategy for service management.
  • Portfolio Management – A defined portfolio of products, services, and related service management investments enables strategic decision making. Effective portfolio management helps minimize technical debt, prioritize initiatives, and aligns service with business goals.
  • Service Design – Having a formally-defined, holistic approach to designing the products and services that provide the capabilities required by the organization is critical for the realization of business value. In many organizations, service design is the domain of only the application development teams, often with no involvement from users or other parts of the IT organization.
  • Measurement and Reporting – Many organizations capture measures and produce reports only because the tools that are in use do that – and even then, those measures and reports are about IT. Measures and reports must be purposeful and specific to the audiences (there is more than one!). If we understand how products and service enable business success (see service strategy), then we know what is important to the organization to measure and report.
  • Continual Improvement – Development and implementation of products and services can never be “once-and-done” activities. Business needs in response to marketplaces are continually evolving.  Continual improvement provides a means of dealing with the ever-evolving needs of the organization.  Yet, many ITSM implementations have not defined a formalized approach to continual improvement to deal with these ever-evolving needs, contributing to the perception of IT being nonresponsive.

Shining the light on the ITSM blind spots holding you back

There is no quick fix for addressing these blind spots in ITSM implementations.  Addressing these blind spots will require collaboration, thoughtful experimentation, good governance, and commitment.

However, there are simple actions that can start to shine light on those blind spots.

  • Regularly job shadow non-IT colleagues for a day – Learn how IT-provided products and services facilitate the work being done by non-IT colleagues – or get in the way. Shadowing also encourages empathy between IT associates and  non-IT colleagues and can provide input into future service designs.
  • Critically evaluate your current reporting – Are the measures and reports being produced by IT reflect organizational outcomes and business value? If not, it’s time to revisit that organizational mission/vision/goals statement and learn what is important to the business – and measure and report on that.
  • Challenge the status quo – Just because work has always been done in some manner doesn’t make it right. Where are the gaps in the ways that IT and non-IT colleagues interact? What work is being done that just doesn’t quite meet organizational requirements? Even small incremental improvements make a difference.

A “business results first” ITSM mindset transforms IT from a back-office support function into a proactive catalyst for business success. By shining a light on the blind spots in your ITSM environment and embracing strategy, portfolio management, holistic service design, meaningful measurement, and continual improvement, IT can truly enable competitive advantage, innovation, and organizational growth. The journey starts with collaboration, curiosity, and the courage to challenge the status quo—lighting the way for IT to become a valued business enabler, not just a resolver of tickets.

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Human-Centered Design, ITSM

ITSM is failing your customers – here’s why

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When it comes to who is the “customer”, many ITSM implementations are simply confused. And this confusion is why ITSM is failing your customers.

Some IT organizations think the “customer” is someone that contacts a service desk. Others think the “customer” is someone who defines the requirements for a service. But that definition quickly fades once the implementation project is completed and the project sponsor resumes their normal duties. Still other ITSM implementations ignore identifying the “customer”, as these implementations feel that it isn’t necessary to define services in terms of business value and business results.

I recently completed a Humanising IT™ [i] masterclass led by Katrina MacDermid and Wesley Eugene.   During that class, we discussed how so many ITSM implementations, despite the best of intentions,  fall into the “who is the customer?” trap. The Humanising IT approach cuts through this confusion with a simple, but powerful, distinction between the roles of the customer and the user[ii]. The customer is the person deriving value from business services. The user is the person using technology to deliver value to the customer.

Taking this concept of user and customer one step further renders an interesting proposition. IT delivers products and services to a user, who then delivers business value and results to a customer. Is this the reason ITSM is failing your customers?

Why ITSM implementations often fail customers

I must admit that this is a different interpretation of the customer and user roles than I’ve typically followed. However, it could explain how many ITSM implementations have missed the mark when it comes to delivering business value and business results. As I’ve said before, many ITSM implementations are about managing IT, not about delivering or enabling business outcomes.  What could be possible if ITSM implementations shifted focus externally to the humans that use the services provided by the business?

But many ITSM implementations – many IT organizations – haven’t focused on the humans that use the products and services provided by the business. In fact, the products and services that IT delivers are often not built or delivered with humans in mind. Procedures used by IT are often IT-focused, not business-focused. The performance targets and measures for these products and services are defined by IT, not by the people that use the products and services. IT designs products focused on technology “wow factors” (as defined by IT) and less on the people that will be using them.

And because the focus is on IT, and not on the customer, the associated ITSM implementation is basically used to set expectations for the user. Even in that situation, those expectations are defined by IT, usually with little to no input or agreement from users.

How human-centered design can help

The correlation between employee (or user) experience and customer experience has been long established: when organizations enable better experiences for employees (“users”), employees in turn provide better experiences for customers.

When employees feel valued, engaged, empowered, and supported, they are more likely to go the “extra mile” for customers. When employees have the right technologies and solutions, they can resolve customer issues quickly and creatively. Positive employee experiences foster empathy and collaboration, which employees pass on to customers.

What are some things that IT organizations can do to enable a better user experience?

For IT, this means providing users with intuitive and streamlined processes, systems, and products, built with the user in mind. This means listening – and acting on – user feedback. This means providing empathetic support of users.

In other words, make the experience with IT a humanized experience. And the best way for IT to deliver a humanized experience for the user is to include the user as part of the development of solution designs – a core principle of human-centered design.

But getting users involved in solution design is often not so easy. First, it requires a mindset shift within IT to focus first on solving problems, not implementing solutions and technology. Convincing non-IT managers to participate in solution design and decision making can be a challenge. Many non-IT managers are reluctant to allocate resources without a clear return on investment or to take ownership of solution designs. IT often struggles to communicate in non-technical terms, and users often lack the technical understanding needed to contribute to solution design discussions. This results in communication gaps, making it difficult to translate user needs into technology requirements. There are often differences in priorities between IT and users; what’s important to IT may not have the same weight with users. Finally, an organization’s culture may get in the way. If an organization values traditional, hierarchical structures and predictable outcomes, the organization may be hesitant to have users participate in solution designs as it can introduce expected feedback or challenging of existing assumptions.

Three things IT (and ITSM) can do to stop failing the customer

Here are three actions that IT – and ITSM – organizations can take to stop failing the customer.

  • Cultivate an “experience” culture – Promote a culture that values and celebrates collaboration, empathy, and continual learning[iii]. Culture change happens a step at a time, so persistence pays off. When users participate in a solution design, publicize it. Share what was learned. Talk about how the new solution enabled positive employee experiences.
  • Map the internal user journey – An internal user journey map is a visual representation of how employees interact within an organization, including the user’s actions, thoughts, and emotions. From an ITSM perspective, identify when users interact with IT systems, processes, and tools to achieve a specific result. Doing this will identify pain points and improvement opportunities with those systems, processes, and tools.
  • Map the customer journey – Like an internal user journey map, a customer journey map depicts how customers interact with an organization, from initial awareness to post-purchased. Like an internal user journey map, the customer journey map will help identify improvement opportunities for the organization. But the benefit doesn’t stop there for IT and ITSM. Not only does this help IT (and related ITSM practices) understand the customer journey, but also helps IT develop empathy regarding user and customer interactions.

As organizations continue to journey further into the digital economy, a humanized customer experience will become a competitive differentiator. IT organizations, and their associated ITSM implementations, must embrace the benefits of adopting human-centered design in developing solutions. Involving users in solution development results in more humanized outcomes that improve both the employee and customer experiences.

[i] Humanising IT is a trademark of HIT Global.

[ii] Katrina Macdermid, “Human-centred design for IT service management”, Norwich, TSO, 2022, p. 30.

[iii] “Engaged employees Transform Customer Experience. Here’s Why”, https://www.reworked.co/employee-experience/engaged-employees-transform-customer-experience-heres-why/ Retrieved June, 2025.

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AI, ESM, ITSM

Will AI break ITSM out of its IT operations cage?

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AI is about to break ITSM from its IT operations cage.

Many ITSM implementations are less about service management, and more about IT operations, or IT process management, or IT measures and reports. Here are some examples:

  • To many organizations, ITSM is about a weekly meeting to discuss changes to the computing infrastructure, attended by people that have little qualification or authority to discuss, much less approve such changes.
  • To many organizations, ITSM is about pulling together a group of individuals, sitting them down in front of computer screens and telephones, calling that group of people a “service desk”, then provide little training and less enablement for responding to all IT-related issues or questions.
  • To many organizations, ITSM is about establishing a portal through which consumers of technology can register requests for the IT organization to fulfill.
  • To many organizations, ITSM is about implementing a tool, several out-of-the-box workflows (that may or may not be suitable for the organization) and publishing a few reports that have no meaning to anyone outside of IT.

In other words, for these organizations, ITSM is not about the organization at all. ITSM is not about how people, process, and technology deliver business outcomes and enable business value realization. In these organizations, ITSM is about IT.

AI is about to change all of that.

AI will push ITSM front and center

Frankly, AI can nail (has nailed) down the operational aspects of ITSM. Current AI capabilities are well-suited to take on many of the operational aspects of ITSM, like routing work, resolving simple incidents, gathering, analyzing, and logging information, tracking assets, suggesting knowledge articles to resolve an end-user issue, and more.

And that’s the challenge that introducing AI will have for organizations that adopted ITSM only to manage IT operations. With the use of AI, IT will become increasingly visible to the rest of the organization. As a result, ITSM can no longer be a “back office” activity, but rather “front-and-center” as organizations navigate within a digital world. But are IT and organizations ready?

When IT cannot articulate how its products and services deliver business results and enable value realization (beyond cost savings/avoidance), the answer is “no”.

Why is this a problem?

The fact is that many ITSM implementations have ignored the very practices that would enable the “business value and outcomes” conversation with executives. Practices like portfolio management and service catalog, (real) problem management, and continual improvement, for example.

Because these practices have been ignored, IT organizations cannot discuss topics like service cost models. They can tell you what infrastructure costs, or how much is being paid out on support contracts and licensing costs…but not what makes up the specific costs of designing, delivering, maintaining, and supporting services. They can’t predict how investing in improvements will benefit the larger organization and ultimately the business customer. They can’t correlate business value streams to specific IT products and services that enable business results.

Some implementations have isolated service management activities that should be approached from a holistic perspective. In many organizations, service design activities are typically performed by application development teams that are focused on writing code, but with little or no involvement from those that will be supporting or using the solution post-implementation.  Another example is organizations that perform software deployments to production environments outside of the purview of an ITSM change management practice.

It gets worse. According to this Forrester post, organizations that have invested in ITSM are finding that more and more of those investments are going toward paying additional costs from maintaining the tools rather than improving ITSM capabilities and driving business benefit.

AI will force Service Management to be an organizational capability

Service management has typically been considered an IT function, but in an ever-increasing digital world, that just won’t work. Service management must be an organizational capability.

For service management to be truly effective, it must reflect and support entire organizational value streams, not just the IT portions. Technology is no longer department specific. Technology connects entire value streams within all organizations. But it doesn’t stop there; in the digital ecosystem, it’s technology that connects organizations to partner organizations to deliver products and services. If enterprise-wide workflows that support value delivery all the way to the customer are missing or undefined, the result is a bunch of disjointed, siloed activities that result in a poor customer experience, missed business opportunities, and loss of competitive capability.

AI will manage the operational aspects of service management, and push ITSM out of the back office. Businesses must start now to elevate their organizational service management capabilities.

Breaking ITSM from its IT operations cage

What first steps should organizations take to begin to make service management an organizational capability? Here are some suggestions:

  • Invest in training – One of the challenges with current ITSM implementations is that the people involved in the delivery and support of products and service have not been properly trained in service management concepts. Rather, they blindly follow whatever the ITSM tool does, and do not understand the broader concepts and contexts of “service management.”
  • Map organizational (not just IT) workflows – Develop value stream maps or customer journey maps to illustrate how work moves through the organization or where customers interact with the organization. Include the touchpoints where people, processes, and technology enable the business results and value desired by the organization. These maps capture information that is foundational for developing a service catalog.
  • Identify business measures – Using these completed maps, identify the performance measures that reflect business outcomes and value.

The era of AI is not just an upgrade for ITSM – it’s a complete transformation for organizations.  As AI takes over the operational heavy lifting, ITSM’s true purpose can no longer be confined to just IT.  Instead, service management must evolve into a core organizational capability, seamlessly connecting people, process, and technology across entire value streams to deliver real business outcomes. This shift is not optional; it’s essential for organizations that want to thrive in a digital world where technology is the backbone of value delivery and customer experience.

Now is the time for organizations to break free from legacy mindsets, invest in holistic training, map out end-to-end workflows, and measure what truly matters to the business. By doing so, they can ensure that service management becomes a strategic enabler – one that drives innovation, agility, and competitive advantage in the age of AI.

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ITSM

Why your ITSM house of cards is a bad deal for your business

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Is your ITSM implementation like a house of cards, prone to fail with the slightest disturbance?  Here’s some examples:

  • A request for change that isn’t appropriately vetted yet is implemented within the live environment. Subsequently, that implemented change results in an extended outage of a critical business system.
  • Service interruptions are characterized by frantic efforts to restore service, cause analysis exercises that produce more theater than substance, and lost opportunities for improvement.
  • A seemingly simple service request that requires extraordinary effort and time to fulfill.
  • An IT organization that is surprised when the failure of a third party’s product or service cripples the business.

ITSM, done well, delivers effective and efficient services and practices based on the use of technology.  Done well, ITSM connects IT efforts and technology investments to business results and strategy.

Instead, what many ITSM implementations produce (or reinforce) is siloed behavior, disjointed delivery efforts, lack of transparency, and poor end-user satisfaction. Further exasperating the situation is that in many cases, IT doesn’t even understand how what it does enables business results and value realization.

Why does bad ITSM happen within good IT organizations?

Every IT organization has talented people who are knowledgeable, smart, and have outstanding technical skills. These people are motivated to be the absolute best that they can be and are driven to  succeed. Good ITSM should augment the efforts of these talented people and enhance the overall performance of the IT organization. ITSM should help the IT organization become a valued, respected, and competitive differentiator for a business.

Sadly, this is not the case with many IT organizations. Many implementations have fallen short of achieving the benefits of good ITSM and wasted the talents and efforts of people within IT because the foundational elements needed for success are missing. What are some attributes of a “house of cards”  ITSM implementation?

  • Taking only a “technology-first” approach – While having the appropriate tools are important, good ITSM doesn’t result only from the implementation of technology. With a technology-first approach, ITSM thinking becomes limited to the capabilities of the technology, and not how ITSM should meet the needs of the business.
  • No alignment to organizational strategy – ITSM implementation is about IT, not about how IT efforts and provided technologies enable the achievement of business goals and objectives. Other than justifying the organization’s investment in the selected technology, there is no business case that was developed to help executives recognize the value of the investments in ITSM.
  • No shared and agreed understanding of ITSM benefits – Some organizations believe that ITSM is just something “that the service desk does” for processing a user request or managing an incident. Making a bad situation worse is that many within IT think that ITSM has nothing to do with the work that they are doing.

How did this happen?

There are several reasons why ITSM is no more than a house of cards for many organizations.

Many ITSM implementations suffer from short-term thinking, prioritizing technology implementation over business value and employee experience, or even worse, prioritizing internal IT concerns over business results.

A house of cards ITSM implementation is often the result of inconsistent processes and a lack of governance, exasperated by poorly designed, implemented, and unenforced policies.  As a result, different parts of the IT organization manage its work differently, making transparency into IT difficult.

In most fragile implementations, ITSM was treated as an IT initiative, not a business initiative.  Had business stakeholders been involved from the beginning, ITSM would be business-oriented, with reports and measures that matter. Instead, ITSM became a layer of bureaucracy for interacting with IT.

Regardless of how it happened, there’s been no reason for senior business management to care about ITSM – until now.

Why business executives need to care

Historically, many senior business executives have paid little attention to service management – and understandably so. Reports contained data that had no meaning to executives. Performance metrics produced by IT said one thing, but end-users told a vastly different story regarding their experiences with technology and processes. ITSM was viewed simply as something being done at the service desk. With so many foundational elements missing, many ITSM implementations gave executives little reason to care.

But times are changing – and changing fast.

Businesses are rapidly and increasingly relying on technology to drive the business –  and the customer experience – to new horizons.  With ever increasing frequency, customers are interacting with technology, such as intelligent automation, chatbots, natural language processing, and generative AI, and not with humans.

But without good ITSM, how can an organization ensure that technology is delivering the desired value and outcomes needed by both the business and its customers? There are many known cases (including the UK’s NHS IT program[i], Canada’s Phoenix Pay System[ii], and Knight Capital Group software deployment[iii]) where businesses that ignored good service management practices and have experienced significant and embarrassing failures.

The fact is that today’s digitally driven businesses require good ITSM for business success. The question that was usually never answered remains – how will your ITSM implementation support your business’ strategy?

Today is a good day to prepare for the ITSM of tomorrow

Good ITSM is more relevant today than ever for modern, digital businesses. Here are three steps for moving ITSM from a house of cards to a reliable and solid business capability.

  • Develop a business capability map. A business capabilities map is a visual tool used to depict what a business does, not how it does it. A business capability describes the capacity, materials, and expertise an organization has or needs to complete its work.[iv] One of the things that makes a business capability so interesting from an ITSM perspective is that capabilities have outcomes.
  • Conduct an ITSM capability assessment. Not to be confused with a maturity assessment, a capability assessment evaluates the organization’s service management abilities, capacity, and skills. Do not limit this assessment to IT operations – look at ITSM capabilities holistically, from strategy through design, development, transition, and continual improvement.
  • Do a gap analysis between the business capability map and the ITSM capability assessment. What areas of business capability are well-supported by good ITSM practices? Where are the gaps between business capabilities and ITSM capabilities? What are the impacts of those gaps? What needs to be done differently from an ITSM perspective to meet the demands and requirements of those business capabilities?

Stop relying on an ITSM approach that is built as a house of cards. Completing the above steps will start your ITSM implementation on an incredible transformation to strategic capability, both for the organization and for IT.

[i] Asgarkhani, M. (2022). Failed tech deployment initiatives: Is poor IT governance to blame? European Conference on Management Leadership and Governance, 18(1), 524–528. https://doi.org/10.34190/ecmlg.18.1.728

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] https://dougseven.com/2014/04/17/knightmare-a-devops-cautionary-tale/

[iv] https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/a-quick-guide-to-business-capability-maps , Retrieved February 2024.

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ITSM

Is your ITSM approach looking through the windshield…or at the rear-view mirror?

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“In the business world, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

Sadly, this 1991 Warren Buffet quote applies to many ITSM implementations. Why?

Because the focus of those ITSM implementations is on what has happened, instead of what is happening.

Think about it. Our respective businesses are focused on the view through the metaphorical windshield. The view through the “windshield” represents both what is happening now and the journey ahead. And while the future is unknown, businesses try to create the future by establishing goals and objectives. From a business perspective, the possibilities and opportunities for success are typically found when the organization is looking through the windshield.

Continuing the metaphor, the focus of so many ITSM implementations is the rear-view mirror – a view of what has happened. Make no mistake – trending and performance reports, monitoring tools that deliver event alerts, and recently-written knowledge articles are important contributors to good ITSM. But those reports, tools, and articles are typically inwardly focused, discussing items and topics that are relevant and meaningful only to the IT organization. In other words, those ITSM implementations are more focused on yesterday and less on the future.

The impact of always looking in the rear-view mirror

Why is the “rear-view” perspective an obstacle for ITSM implementations? I would argue that the perspective of continually looking back is not aligned with business goals and objectives. This is one of the factors between ITSM being perceived as a business enabler versus ITSM viewed as a costly expense.

It comes down to this question – what does your business perceive as “value”? Candidly, business value is rarely – if ever – found by looking in the rear-view mirror. In my experience, businesses perceive value when actions taken within the organization result in achieving business  mission, vision, goals, and objectives (MVGO). Businesses perceive value when the data captured, used, and maintained within the organization produces information that enables timely, fact-based decision-making. Businesses perceive value as innovation, responsiveness to the market, increased revenues and profitability, delivering a differentiated experience, and standing out from competitors.

Shifting the ITSM view to the windshield

Does your ITSM implementation enable your business? How does your ITSM implementation help the organization to achieve its MVGO? For many organizations, ITSM is more about IT and less about their businesses. Few organizations (in my experience) develop and maintain a service portfolio, much less a service catalog. I rarely find ITSM implementations reporting measures that relate to the business objectives; rather, most measures and reports align to internally defined IT performance targets.

I’m not suggesting that IT departments stop supporting and delivering the operational aspects of ITSM. I am suggesting, however, that ITSM implementations expand their scope to include the “windshield”. The mindset must shift from seeing ITSM as a means of control or just implementing some tool. The mindset must shift to viewing ITSM as a business enabler.

This means that ITSM implementations must become more strategic from a business perspective. Strategy is about aligning resources and efforts to achieve organizational goals – in other words, looking through the windshield, not just the rear-view mirror.

Shifting the ITSM view to the windshield

Here are some tips for shifting ITSM from just a “rear-view” mirror perspective to also include the windshield.

  • Learn the business of your business. By understanding the business, IT professionals can make informed decisions, improve their communications with non-IT colleagues and become more proactive in developing technology-based proposals for growing and improving business activities.
  • Understand how people, processes, and technology (PPT) enable business outcomes. How does (or can) people, process, and technology enable the organization to achieve its MVGO? What are the vital business functions of the organization? How does PPT enable those business functions?
  • Think and act in terms of business outcomes. How can (or does) ITSM enable or deliver the business results that impact MVGO? Having answers to this question will help shift the perspective and perception of ITSM to a more strategic and business-aligned capability.
  • Measure and report things that are relevant and meaningful to your business. Frankly, no one outside of IT cares how quickly the service desk responds to requests or how many incidents are closed. Identify, measure, and report on metrics that have an impact on the business of the business.
  • Shift SLAs from an IT operational focus to a business focus. In my experience, what many ITSM implementations call a “Service Level Agreement” (SLA) are neither agreed with anyone outside of IT, or discuss the business impacts of IT services. Unfortunately, this is an approach that is deeply engrained within many ITSM implementations. Begin the shift by working with non-IT colleagues to map a frequently followed value stream. Doing this will result in a mutual understanding of the value stream, the business drivers, and success criteria. Use this information to then document and agree a business-focused SLA for that value stream.

In many organizations, ITSM has not achieved its potential. Part of the reason for that is that those ITSM implementations are too focused on the past and only on the IT organization. What could be possible if those ITSM implementations also look ahead rather than just looking behind?

Need some help shifting your ITSM perspective from just the rear-view mirror to what is happening now and ahead?  Let Tedder Consulting and our proven and impactful approach change your ITSM environment to a business enabler.  Contact us today!

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AI, ITSM

Five critical steps for making a good AI/ITSM decision

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There is no question that AI-enabled technologies have the potential for significant positive impact for organizations overall, and for ITSM specifically.  This recent TechTarget article highlights a number of positive business impacts resulting from the adoption of AI-enabled technologies, such as new capabilities and business model expansion, better quality, more innovation, and personalized customer services and experiences.

New and existing ITSM-related vendors are rushing into the space with solutions like AI-powered automation, conversational AI, intelligent chatbots, predictive analytics, and agentic AI (A web search on these terms will return numerous examples!).

And we’re only scratching the surface.  New AI-enabled capabilities are on the horizon, such as:

  • AI agents capable of executing discrete tasks independently based on personal preferences or providing customer service without requiring specific prompts.[i]
  • AI-powered cybersecurity in the form of automated, near-constant backup procedures and AI tools for managing sensitive data to enhance data protection and resilience.[ii]
  • Small Language Models (SLM) that aim to optimize models for existing use cases. SLMs can be trained on smaller, highly curated data sets to solve specific problems, rather than act on general queries (like Large Language Models).[iii]

But just because these rapidly-evolving technologies represent the “latest shiny new thing that really helps” (a tip of the cap to Paul Wilkinson) doesn’t mean that you should succumb to the fear of missing out by just “doing something”. In my experience, a new technology alone rarely (if ever) solves a business challenge.  When it comes to technology investments, it’s better to make a good, informed decision, based upon the unique needs and challenges faced by your organization.

Yet, AI-related technologies can have and are having a significant positive impact on ITSM environments. Many organizations are already benefitting from the use of AI-enabled chatbots, automated ticket management, and service request automation.

The pressure to introduce AI-enabled capabilities to ITSM implementations is real. But which tools?  What capabilities?  How can one decide?

Five critical steps

Here are my five critical steps to making a good AI/ITSM decision.

  • Define overarching goals for using AI within ITSM. It’s easy to become captivated by the latest products and features, especially in today’s AI/ITSM market frenzy. But chasing new products and features usually results in a short-sighted approach to technology adoption that will likely not meet longer term goals and needs. AI within ITSM should not be approached as a point solution; rather, AI should be considered within the broader perspective of ITSM. How will adding AI capabilities address current challenges?  How will adding AI enable the organization to realize future ITSM objectives? Defining overarching goals for AI in ITSM – in business terms – ensures that broader perspective .  Defining overarching goals also establishes the foundation for measuring AI/ITSM success.
  • Conduct a SWOT analysis of the ITSM environment. Conducting a SWOT analysis identifies a company’s internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external threats and opportunities. Understanding an organization’s ITSM SWOT identifies the critical factors that must be considered before developing an AI strategy. A SWOT is a good way to understand an organization’s readiness and ability to take on an AI initiative.  Having the right stakeholders participate is critical to the success of a SWOT. Include stakeholders (especially non-IT colleagues) that have an interest in both ITSM and in AI capabilities and use.  Include stakeholders that will freely share thoughts and ideas and have a pragmatic understanding of organizational issues and challenges.
  • Develop the AI strategy. What is the approach for bringing in AI into your service management implementation? An effective AI strategy is not about finding places to “plug-in” an AI solution. It’s about understanding the organizational change, data, skills, budget, and infrastructure that will be needed for successfully utilizing AI technologies within the ITSM environment to help achieve the organization’s mission, vision, and goals.  Use the results of the ITSM SWOT as an input to this strategy.
  • Define evaluation criteria. The next step is to define the criteria by which potential AI solutions will be assessed. Defining this criteria up-front helps prevent falling victim to ‘shiny object syndrome’ and identify the solution that is best for your organization. As part of that criteria, consider the solutions alignment with the AI/ITSM strategy, costs (initial, ongoing, and cost effectiveness), the effectiveness of the solution to leverage issues identified in the SWOT, and how the solution enables the pursuit of potential future opportunities.
  • Develop and present the business case. Gaining and maintaining the commitment of senior management is critical for success.  When a potential solution is found, develop and present the business case for that solution. Discuss the technical and cultural challenges that come with AI adoption. Discuss the opportunities that AI with ITSM will provide.  Discuss how a solution will address SWOT and align with the AI strategy.  Discuss the benefits of implementing the solution , how risks will be optimized, and how success will be measured.  Discuss the consequences of doing nothing. Most importantly, ask for management commitment.

Cautions

Before moving forward with introducing AI within an ITSM environment, here are some cautions of which to be aware.

  • Good AI will not fix bad ITSM. The adoption of AI technologies can enable and enhance ITSM capabilities. However,  AI is not a “magic wand” that solves issues like poor process design, inadequate service management governance, and ineffective measurement and reporting.
  • Don’t overlook data quality and governance. Many organizations have data quality and data governance challenges. AI needs data – lots of it – and that data must be accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. Data quality and governance is not just a challenge for ITSM, it is an organizational problem.
  • Is there an ITSM strategy? Many organizations are not achieving the full potential of ITSM adoption. Rather than applying ITSM holistically, many implementations have only focused ITSM implementation on IT operational issues, and not on how ITSM enables business outcomes. Without an overarching ITSM strategy, AI investments risk becoming short-sighted and expensive point solutions that do not address business needs.

Augmenting the ITSM environment with the right AI capabilities can be a huge benefit for the organization, ITSM, and the employees of an organization.  But introducing AI within ITSM is not a decision to be taken lightly. Taking a systemic approach to identifying, justifying, and selecting solutions sets the right expectations with stakeholders and helps ensure successful introduction of ITSM with AI.

[i] https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2025/01/innovation-experts-predict-top-tech-trends-for-2025.html , Retrieved January 2024.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/articles/us187540_tech-trends-2025/DI_Tech-trends-2025.pdf , Retrieved January 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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ITSM, Leadership, Organizational Change

Nothing will change. Unless you change.

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A few years ago, I was invited to conduct an ITSM assessment for an organization. While the request itself wasn’t unusual, it was unusual in that I had conducted an ITSM assessment for that same organization a few years prior. The  IT leadership of the organization had not changed over that time, apart from a different person leading their ITSM adoption efforts. But I was intrigued by the prospect of revisiting a past client engagement to learn whether my previous recommendations had had the positive impact that I had determined was possible.

After conducting interviews, examining their ITSM policies and procedures,  reviewing their IT strategy, and evaluating their ITSM performance reports, I was disappointed to find that there had been no substantial change in their ITSM journey from when I first visited.

I confronted the CIO with my findings. During our conversation, he acknowledged that there had not been much progress in their ITSM journey. He went on to ask if I would simply just tell them exactly what they needed to do, based on my “deep” knowledge of his organization.

I was taken aback. It had been a few years since that first assessment. Over the course of the two engagements,  I had spent about a total of 30 days interacting with the organization – hardly what I would consider a qualification for having a “deep knowledge” of the organization.

So, I took a deep breath, looked the CIO in the eye, and told him that – that I felt that 30 days of engagement over a few years doesn’t constitute a “deep” knowledge of the organization. Further, it was not an issue of not knowing what needed to be done – what needed to be done was clearly outlined in both assessment reports. The issue was that no one – including the CIO – wanted to change.

And then I said it.

“Nothing will change unless there is change.”

And with that, our meeting ended. I packed up my laptop,  left the building, drove away….and  subsequently was not invited back.

Everybody wants change. No one wants *to* change.

I see it all the time. People within an organization get enthusiastic about making a change, improving what is currently being done, expanding and enhancing their capabilities, thinking in terms of possibilities. Excitement fills the discussions within the conference rooms. People leave meetings eager to get started.

And then the time comes for the work that needs to be done to make the change….and sadly, things often go kaput.

What happened?

The 3 U’s of failed change

I’m no psychologist, but from everything that I have read, experienced, and observed about failed change, it seems to come down to the basic human instinct of fear of change. In my experience, that fear of change presents itself in one or more of the following symptoms that I call the “three U’s of failed change”.

  • Unknown – Change pulls people out of their personal comfort zones, where they feel safe. According to this article, this uncertainty feels like failure to our brains, and our brains automatically work to prevent us from failing.
  • Unprepared – Many people resist change because they feel unprepared. Provided training doesn’t really prepare people for the change, and as a result, there is a feeling of loss of mastery. Communications aren’t two-way, so there is no opportunity for feedback or to get answers to questions.
  • Unwilling – Even though people know that processes and systems aren’t working as well as they could, people have become comfortable in their interactions with those processes and systems. They “know” where the issues are, and how to make things work despite those issues. Changes to those processes and systems are perceived as a threat to the personal value of the people doing that work.

These are powerful reasons why change fails, but they are not insurmountable.

How can anything change…unless *you* change?

Is change working through your organization? Are you personally going through change? The answer to these questions is likely “yes”. Organizations are continually changing and evolving. As individuals, we are continually evolving as well. Think about it – what is different about your organization today when compared to two years ago? Compared to two months ago? What events or learnings over that time – both from a professional perspective and a personal perspective – have had an influence on you?

Change is constant – in our lives and in our careers. Here are some tips that I have found useful when experiencing change.

  • Educate yourself. Much of the angst around change is the fear of the unknown. To combat that fear, learn all that you can about what is changing. This will help restore any feelings of loss of mastery.
  • Ask questions. Fill in gaps in your understanding about what is changing. Listen for the “why” – the compelling reason change is necessary, and what success will look like after the change. This will help with any feelings of being unprepared.
  • Try it on. While it takes courage to push through the unknown, leaning into the change and exploring possibilities provides a sense of control. Being a pioneer within the change helps overcome feelings of loss of value. Trying on the change also provides you with valuable insights that you can use to make data-driven decisions about your next steps.

Change is a constant – in our organizations, in our jobs, and in our personal lives. Don’t let change paralyze you – take control. Educating yourself, asking questions, and trying on the change gives the you power and control you need to successfully push through the unknowns associated with change.

 

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AI, ITSM

Three AI truths with IT Service Management

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There’s no question that introducing AI capabilities can have a dramatic impact on IT Service Management (ITSM). Done well, AI adoption will free up ITSM professionals to do the work for which humans are uniquely qualified, like critical thinking, contextual understanding, and creative problem-solving. Furthermore, AI will enable organizations to realize many of the theoretical benefits of ITSM. For example, the use of AI and machine learning can leverage comprehensive in-depth data, not just a small recent sampling, for cause analysis, problem detection, and impact determination of problems. Another example is the use of AI can increase the observability of the IT environment and automate the remediation of incidents.

But AI is not a “magic wand” for ITSM.

Before introducing AI capabilities into ITSM, organizations must first consider these three AI truths.

Truth #1 – AI needs good data

For the use of AI to be effective, it needs data. Lots of data. But, if that data is inaccurate, lacks integrity, or is not trustworthy, then the use of AI will only produce inaccurate or poor results.

Data quality is an issue that many organizations will have to tackle before realizing the complete benefits of introducing AI to their ITSM implementations. These means that organizations will have to step up their technology and data governance posture. According to this recent Privacera article, a fundamental principle of data governance is having a high-quality, trusted data source.  Having trusted data sources enables capabilities like ITSM to make accurate and reliable decisions regarding service management issues. But if the data sources used by ITSM tools contain data that is unregulated, the ability to automate responses is significantly hindered.

Truth #2 – AI doesn’t mean process design goes away

The need for effective ITSM processes and procedures doesn’t go away with AI adoption. Machine learning can be used to detect data patterns to understand what was done to resolve an issue. But what machine learning doesn’t do is determine if what is being done is the best approach. Machine learning doesn’t consider organizational goals and objectives with the adoption of ITSM. Machine learning cannot determine what processes are missing or need improvement to gain needed effectiveness and efficiency with ITSM.

Truth #3 – AI doesn’t replace knowledge

“Reducing cost”, often in the form of headcount reductions,  is frequently used as the justification for AI investment, as the use of AI will enable ITSM activities to be automated. And it’s true – many of the ITSM activities currently performed by humans can and should be replaced with AI-enabled capabilities, such as the automated fulfilment of service requests, automated response to incidents, and problem data analysis. But one of the hidden costs of using AI to justify headcount reductions is the form of knowledge loss – the knowledge inside people’s heads walks out the door when their positions are eliminated. And this is the knowledge that is critical for training the chatbots, developing the LLMs needed, and to the continual improvement of AI and ITSM.

While AI can provide the “how” for “what” needs to be done, it cannot answer the “why” it needs to be done.

Good Governance facilitates AI-enabled ITSM

Without governance,  AI can do some serious damage, not just with ITSM, but to the organization. As the role of IT organizations shifts from being data owners (often by default) to being data custodians, having well defined and enforced policies regarding data governance is critical. This means that the frequently found approach to governance consisting of an IT track and a corporate track is becoming untenable. As organizational processes and workflows become increasingly automated, enabled by AI capabilities, governance must become cross-functional[i] , with sales, marketing, HR, IT, and other organizational functions all involved. Organizations must consider and address data-related issues such as compliance with data privacy laws, ethical data use,  data security,  data management, and more.

An effective approach to governance enables organizations to define their digital strategy[ii] to maximize the business benefits of data assets and technology-focused initiatives. A digital strategy produces a blueprint for building the next version of the business, creating a bigger, broader picture of available options and down-line benefits.[iii] Creating a successful digital strategy requires an organization to carefully evaluate its systems and processes, including ITSM processes. And as ITSM processes are re-imagined for use across the enterprise in support of organizational value streams, effective governance becomes essential.

Getting ready for AI-enabled ITSM

What are some of the first steps organizations should take to get ready for AI-enabled ITSM?

  • Formalize continual improvement. One of the most important practices of an effective ITSM implementation is continual improvement. As organizations are continually evolving and changing, continual improvement ensures that ITSM practices evolve right alongside those business changes. And just like service management, AI adoption is not an “implement and forget”; in fact, AI will absolutely fail without formal continual improvement.
  • Answer the “why”. To say that there is so much hype around the use of AI within ITSM would be an understatement. Before jumping into AI, first develop and gain approval of the business case for using AI within ITSM. How will success be determined and measured? What opportunities for innovation will emerge by relieving people from performing those tedious and monotonous tasks associated with the current ITSM environment? What returns will the organization realize from the use of AI within ITSM? What new business or IT opportunities may be available because of the use of AI within ITSM? A good business case establishes good expectations for the organization regarding AI and ITSM.
  • Begin thinking about how AI can be leveraged by ITSM process designs. As discussed in this recent HBR.org article, AI will bring new capabilities to business (and ITSM) processes. With these new capabilities, organizations will need to rethink what tasks are needed, who will do those tasks, and the frequency that those tasks will be performed. The use of AI will enable organizations to rethink their ITSM processes from an end-to-end perspective, considering what tasks should be performed by people and what tasks should be performed by machines.

The concept of augmenting ITSM with AI is a “no-brainer”.  However, success with AI in an ITSM environment requires a lot of up-front thought, good process design, solid business justification, and considering these three AI truths.

[i] https://2021.ai/ai-governance-impact-on-business-functions

[ii] https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/digital-strategy

[iii] Ibid.

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