In the very near future, we willl be introducing a series of short “How to” ITIL videos on this blog that will focus on implementing ITIL core concepts effectively in the real world. Since the ITIL is not a theory, but an aggregation of practical strategies for managing and supporting IT services, many of my customers get caught up in the lingo and don’t spend enough time “doing” ITIL. We’ll look at one section each week from Strategy, Design, Transition, Operation, and Improvement and describe some specific how-tos that have worked for customers of ours that you will likely find effective in your organizations too. Please feel free to react to what you see and post your own advice and guidance based on your experiences!
Category: ITIL
Deep Creek Center launches industry’s most comprehensive ITIL learning program
Solution will alleviate access problems for ITIL Intermediate and Advanced training programs via rich media classes.
“The market has had a difficult time providing access to the Intermediate and Advanced ITIL learning programs that many organizations need to ensure the success of their ITIL adoption activities,” said Patrick von Schlag, president of Deep Creek Center. “Deep Creek has offered accredited private on-site and rich-media self-paced learning options for a number of years, and these options meet the needs of a number of customers. But for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as businesses located outside of major IT markets, access has been very limited. In addition, the needs to consolidate demand have resulted in very high class cancellation rates around the industry. Deep Creek is the first ITIL provider to commit to run all of its courses, and to provide the guarantee that customers need to commit money and time to training their staff in ITIL best practices.”
“Supporting the ITIL training space has been very challenging”, stated Andrew Wight, CEO of CompuWorks, a leading IT training provider in Boston, MA. “While there are many companies with broad needs to train their teams in ITIL Foundations, taking care of students with more sophisticated needs has created a supply/demand problem in many regions. Deep Creek’s instructor-led online live programs help to address this issue and help us meet the needs of our enterprise class customers who are serious about making ITIL work in their organizations.”
Deep Creek and its partner channels train millions of students annually in IT and IT management disciplines. Deep Creek Center is a leading provider of IT skills development, certification, and learning consulting services. We help organizations plan, build, and validate effective, integrated learning solutions that provide demonstrable, tangible business results.
Building a Service Culture
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Course Description
The basis for IT service provider organizations to deliver better value to their business customers begins with creating a “service culture.” Service culture is much more pervasive than a simple “customer service” perspective; it pervades what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and provides the fundamental basis for how to establish more efficient and more effective IT organizations.
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Outline
- Services and Outcomes
- The Value of IT
- Developing Specialized Organizational Capabilities
- Understanding Service View
- The Service Lifecycle
- Strategy
- Design
- Transition
- Operations
- Improvement
- Implications of Services
- Governance
- Processes
- Procedures
- Cross-functional activities
- Risk Management
- Organizational Change
- Metrics and Measurements
- Reporting and SLAs
- Moving to a Service Culture
- Establishing Services
- Controlling Service Changes
- Building and Maintaining Alignment
- Playing your Position, but understanding the team’s goals and objectives
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Deploying and Improving your Release and Deployment Management Process
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Course Description
An Implementation Workshop for Making ITIL Work™
Most organizations have invested in implementing release and deployment management in their organizations (even as a subset of change) and have invested in tools and training to improve the performance of their teams. Yet, for many organizations, there is a stubborn lack of progress. High turnover, process/tool alignment, and governance issues prevent you from getting the results you intended.
This workshop will help you and your teams to overcome these challenges and get your Release and Deployment Management process back on track. This program is an in-depth, practical workshop to help you:
- Assess your current capabilities
- Identify gaps in your processes, tools, and governance
- Set specific and achieveable goals for driving improvements to your process
- Establish appropriate policies, procedures, and work instructions for your teams
- Align your processes with your tooling configurations
- Focus on key metrics to drive intended performance
- Improve your knowledge management
- Improve your release success rate and reduce the number of incidents
- Improve quality and availability of services
Key areas of focus in the course include:
- Defining process objectives
- Establishing Policy and Governance
- Process Workflow Improvements
- Defining your Release Management Plans and Policies
- Building Release Packages and assessing potential conflicts
- Building Process alignment with Change Management, Configuration Management, and Service Validation and Testing
- Driving logistics and readiness for Pre-Deployment
- Ensuring that Early Life Support is finite
- Defining and aligning Roles and Responsibilities
- Defining key metrics
- Understanding how to leverage your service management tools more effectively to support your process implementation
- Getting buy-in from senior management to support your IT Service Management activities
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Length
2 days
(Private offerings of this course can be extended one or more additional days to include detailed application of the course concepts directly to your organization’s processes and tools or to allow integration of this program with Change Management and/or Configuration Management workshops)
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Deploying and Improving your Incident Management Process and Service Desk
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Course Description
An Implementation Workshop for Making ITIL Work™
Most organizations have some type of help desk or service desk and have invested in tools and training to improve the performance of their teams. Yet, for many organizations, there is a stubborn lack of progress. High turnover, process/tool alignment, and governance issues prevent you from getting the results you intended.
This workshop will help you and your teams overcome these challenges and get your Incident Management process and Service Desk back on track. This program is an in-depth, practical workshop to help you:
- Assess your current capabilities
- Identify gaps in your processes, tools, and governance
- Set specific and achieveable goals for driving improvements to your process
- Establish appropriate policies, procedures, and work instructions for your teams
- Align your processes with your tooling configurations
- Focus on key metrics to drive intended performance
- Improve your knowledge management
- Improve your time-to-resolve and first-time-fix rates
- Improve quality and availability of services
Key areas of focus in the course include:
- Defining process objectives
- Establishing Policy and Governance
- Process Workflow Improvements
- Using Categorizations to drive improvements and investments
- Using Priority to allocate resources
- Building a Knowledge Base that drives increased first-call resolution
- Managing Escalations and building working OLAs with support teams
- Defining and aligning Roles and Responsibilities
- Building alignment between Incident Management and other process and functional areas
- Defining key metrics
- Understanding how to leverage your service management tools more effectively to support your process implementation
- Getting buy-in from senior management to support your IT Service Management activities
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Length
2 days
(Private offerings of this course can be extended one or more additional days to include detailed application of the course concepts directly to your organization’s processes and tools)
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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How to Succeed with ITIL®
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Course Description
This consultant-led, in-depth training and mentoring course is an effective way to introduce an executive management team to the concepts, relationships and benefits of an IT Service Management program using well-accepted IT frameworks, methods and standards.
During the program the participants discuss IT Service Management goals and objectives, service lifecycle management, process objectives, activities, procedures and work instruction development, tool alignment, policy development, relationships, key benefits and critical success factors.
Delivery Format: Instructor-led or Webinar
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Length
2 days
Course Outline
- What is IT Service Management?
- Who Needs It, and Why?
- What Is the Scope of ITSM?
- The IT Service Lifecycle
- Frameworks, Models, and Quality
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operations
- Service Improvement
- Process Benefits and Challenges
- Critical Success Factors
- Achieving Operational Excellence
- An ITSM Roadmap
Prerequisites
None, although Foundations certification facilitates conversation and planning activities.
Exam
None
Reference Material
Each student will receive a workbook.
Related Courses
ITIL Orientation
ITIL Foundations
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Deploying and Improving your Configuration Management Process
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Course Description
An Implementation Workshop for Making ITIL Work™
Most organizations have invested in implementing configuration management in their organizations and have invested in tools and training to improve the performance of their teams. Yet, for many organizations, there is a stubborn lack of progress. High turnover, process/tool alignment, and governance issues prevent you from getting the results you intended.
This workshop will help you and your teams to overcome these challenges and get your Service Asset and Configuration Management process back on track. This program is an in-depth, practical workshop to help you
- Assess your current capabilities
- Identify gaps in your processes, tools, and governance
- Set specific and achieveable goals for driving improvements to your process
- Establish appropriate policies, procedures, and work instructions for your teams
- Align your processes with your tooling configurations
- Focus on key metrics to drive intended performance
- Improve your knowledge management
- Improve your change success rate and reduce the number of incidents
- Improve quality and availability of services
Key areas of focus in the course include
- Defining process objectives
- Establishing Policy and Governance
- Process Workflow Improvements
- Defining your Configuration Management Plan
- Using Identification activities to define the key attributes you want to track and manage
- Building Process alignment with Change Management, Release and Deployment, and Service Validation and Testing
- Defining “enough” Configuration Management to enable your organization to gain the optimal benefits
- Driving effective use of Configuration information by your other process areas
- Defining and aligning Roles and Responsibilities
- Defining key metrics
- Understanding how to leverage your service management tools more effectively to support your process implementation
- Getting buy-in from senior management to support your IT Service Management activities
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Length
2 days
(Private offerings of this course can be extended one or more additional days to include detailed application of the course concepts directly to your organization’s processes and tools or to allow integration of this program with Change Management and/or Release and Deployment Management workshops)
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Deploying and Improving your Change Management Process
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Course Description
An Implementation Workshop for Making ITIL Work™
Most organizations have invested in implementing change management in their organizations and have invested in tools and training to improve the performance of their teams. Yet, for many organizations, there is a stubborn lack of progress. High turnover, process/tool alignment, and governance issues prevent you from getting the results you intended.
This workshop will help you and your teams to overcome these challenges and get your Change Management process back on track. This program is an in-depth, practical workshop to help you:
- Assess your current capabilities
- Identify gaps in your processes, tools, and governance
- Set specific and achieveable goals for driving improvements to your process
- Establish appropriate policies, procedures, and work instructions for your teams
- Align your processes with your tooling configurations
- Focus on key metrics to drive intended performance
- Improve your knowledge management
- Improve your change success rate and reduce the number of incidents
- Improve quality and availability of services
Key areas of focus in the course include:
- Defining process objectives
- Establishing Policy and Governance
- Process Workflow Improvements
- Using Categorizations to drive improvements and investments
- Using Priority to allocate resources
- Building Process alignment with Configuration Management, Release and Deployment, and Service Validation and Testing
- Establishing CABs and ensuring effective impact assessments
- Defining Standard Changes and Change Models to speed changes through
- Defining and aligning Roles and Responsibilities
- Defining key metrics
- Understanding how to leverage your service management tools more effectively to support your process implementation
- Getting buy-in from senior management to support your IT Service Management activities
Who Should Attend?
Senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in learning about IT Service Management.
Course Length
2 days
(Private offerings of this course can be extended one or more additional days to include detailed application of the course concepts directly to your organization’s processes and tools or to allow integration of this program with Configuration Management and/or Release and Deployment Management workshops)
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Polestar ITSM Simulation
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Overview
This highly-interactive simulation is a high-impact, energetic way to accelerate understanding, involvement, and acceptance of ITSM and ITIL best practice in your organization. Facilitated in the fast world of global online retail, Polestar™ ITSM brings to life the behavioral and process issues faced by IT organizations. This is done through a realistic scenario to which participants can directly relate to and have actual experience of. This unique experiential learning approach causes breakthrough understanding of ITSM and ITIL best practice and transforms learning into an engaging, fun and highly memorable shared experience. This class is targeted at senior IT and business executives, IT management, staff, consultants, project managers, business liaisons and others interested in experiencing ITSM and ITIL in a real time operating environment.
How it works
Normally delivered over 5 rounds, the Polestar simulation is designed to introduce key ITSM and ITIL concepts through gaming dynamics. Polestar simulations can be delivered over more or less rounds, dependent upon the organizational challenge. The simulation structure reflects the service management lifecycle approach as defined by ITIL. In addition, the simulation experience continues between rounds through defined transition phases which require the participants engagement in planning for strategic and operational continuous service improvements. The following aspects of ITSM are considered during each round:
The Benefits
- Accelerated understanding of the benefits of ITSM best practice to large audiences
- Rapid familiarization with ITSM terminology and ITIL processes
- Understanding of how ITSM best practice can facilitate alignment of IT to business objectives
- Understanding of what can be achieved in business terms through the successful implementation of ITSM and ITIL
Round 1
Working in silos (IT and the Business)
Communication issues and chaos
Introducing the Service Desk and Incident Management
Round 2
Refining and improving Incident Management
Introducing Problem Management, Knowledge base and Trend Analysis
Introducing Availability and Capacity Management
Introducing Configuration Management
Introducing Change Management
Introducing Service Level Management
Round 3
Maturing the Service Desk and Incident Management
Maturing Problem Management and Knowledge base
The importance of Change and Release Management
Service Continuity Management
Event Management
Round 4
Introducing Financial Management
Maturing Configuration Management
Round 5
Demonstrate importance of processes and their relationships
Review how ITSM maturity has evolved and the benefits to the business
Training Delivery Options
Our classroom program includes instructor facilitation, game materials and booklets that will enable students to successfully complete the program.
Exam
None
Credits Earned
None
Course Director
Patrick von Schlag
Mr. von Schlag has more than 25 years of real-world experience managing IT and business organizations. He has served as a consultant, facilitator, and instructor in support of more than 200 ITSM program deployments, with a focus on practical benefits. He holds all 11 ITIL 2011 certifications and runs an accredited learning consultancy focused on Making ITIL Work ™ in real organizations. His customer list includes The Walt Disney Company, Microsoft, Nike, Sears, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, 2nd and 5th Fleet US Navy, DISA, IRS, Federal Reserve, The Hartford, Citigroup, Amgen, Los Angeles County, Port of Long Beach, GDIT, Accenture, Serco, Deloitte, and hundreds of other market-leading companies.
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Deep Creek Center picks Buzzquake to support communications with customers
“Deep Creek sought a world-class partner to support its communications with its customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders and to help us explain the benefits of our new, innovative blended learning solutions to the marketplace,” said Patrick von Schlag, president of Deep Creek.
“We were pleased to be selected for this work,” said Lynne D’Autrechy, president of Buzzquake. “It is strategically important to align ourselves with an organization as esteemed as Deep Creek.”
The contract calls for an overhaul of Deep Creek’s website and improved integration of various communications channels, including an expansion of their social media presence. You should then also embrace the future of communication by obtaining a Whatsapp business number from Your Business Number – a proven strategy to improve customer relationships and grow your business.
“Deep Creek has an extremely compelling business proposition; job one for us is to give that proposition a stronger voice,” said D’Autrechy.
“Buzzquake’s proven abilities in web-based marketing, social media, and press relationship management made them an ideal choice for us,” said von Schlag.
Deep Creek is a recognized leader in Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) training, which is arguably the most sought after curriculum in the corporate IT sector, both for its ability to help organizations improve efficiency and to enable dramatic improvements in quality and effectiveness of IT services to support business needs.
“ITIL is a set of practices for IT service management that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business and establishes a consistent framework that enables businesses to plan, implement, and improve performance,” said von Schlag.
The ITIL framework is owned by the United Kingdom’s Cabinet Office.
“Deep Creek has an exclusive agreement with multiple global training leaders to provide ITIL training via a blended delivery, combining the best of rich-medial e-learning with a day or two of intense classroom bootcamp-style review,” explained D’Autrechy. “Blended learning works better than either traditional classroom or e-learning solutions, and is a great combination of convenience and effectiveness.”
Empirical data support D’Autrechy’s assertions. Certification exam pass rates for government and private-sector organizations were significantly higher when students completed a blended course, according to case studies published by APM Group, the official accreditor for the ITIL qualification scheme.
“Deep Creek recognizes that tomorrow’s learning solutions have to be multifaceted – targeted learning that minimizes time away from work, maximizes learner engagement and enjoyment, and delivers results for participants’ companies,” said von Schlag. “Our programs move companies past talking and help them achieve specific benefits and drive cost savings and improved effectiveness through the use of frameworks like ITIL and COBIT and good practices in project management, business analysis and requirements gathering, and information security.”
“The strength of Deep Creek’s offerings combined with its dominant position in the marketplace will make our job a lot easier,” said D’Autrechy. “But we can’t take anything for granted; we still have to execute.”