One of the most knowledgable and well-travelled ITSM industry experts in the world, David has extensive experience interacting with IT managers from all the over the globe, including 20 years of visiting and working with IT professionals in Asia. 

David will present his views on the opportunities and challenges facing those responsible for IT Service Management; specifically:

• The opportunities available to us from "Strategic Problem Management" – where a real commitment to Continual Service Improvement, if performed effectively, can result in a direct contribution to the bottom line
• There seem to be so many management frameworks and new technologies and services available to us – how do we sift through and make the right choices of what to exploit?
• Customer expectations and knowledge of IT possibilities are ever increasing – how can we stay ahead of these unrelenting series of demands?
• Our IT teams need to be focused and motivated to deliver relevant, top quality IT services to our businesses – what knowledge and techniques should they be embracing?

At Pink Elephant we travel the world advising large organisations how to manage processes, technologies, services and people in ITSM. Many of the criteria for success are common to everyone, but here David will discuss what he believes is different for IT leaders in Asia.

Follow David on Twitter @pinkerdavid

Panel of ITSM Experts:
Cathy Kirch, Process Architect, Allstate Insurance Company
Jerry York, VP/CIO, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSC)
Troy DuMoulin, Vice President, Professional Services, Pink Elephant
George Spalding, Executive Vice President, Pink Elephant
Rich Razon, Co-founder, PureShare

In this final session we have two key objectives:

1. Provide you with a recommended next-steps approach for how to apply the ideas, guidance and recommendations from the past 2 days. This means we will highlight the key learning points from the program, pointing out the essential activities we believe every organisation should address, as well as decision criteria for the optional activities, including: risks and opportunities; resources; timings; prioritisations.
2. Provide you a valuable opportunity to pick the brains of our Expert presenters – don’t miss it!

From Pink Elephant’s deep experience and understanding of what makes a great ITSM organisation, we have identified 8 absolute must do projects that each and every IT organisation should embrace. You’ll not only hear WHAT they are in this session, but you’ll also be advised HOW to initiate and improve each one. For each project we make sure to review:

• Goals and activities
• Essential meaningful metrics and reporting strategies
• RACI matrix (responsibilities, accountabilities, consultations and information distribution)
• Critical success factors
• Expected benefits

Follow David on Twitter @pinkerdavid

Read David's blog: http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/president

What’s really behind the hype? Do cloud services help or hinder the progress of your business? Will adopting new business models make your business more agile and cost-competitive? How do ITIL® and other industry standards fit in?

Join George to learn the answer to these questions, plus take away the Pink Checklist for how to choose the right suppliers and services in the cloud.

Meet the co-author of ITIL's fifth Lifecycle book, Continual Service Improvement!

A “continual improvement” mindset cannot be adopted by any team simply by reading the CSI book and agreeing with the concepts described therein. You need to capture the hearts as well as the minds of your team, and - most importantly - you need to empower them with the right approach, resources and support. Here George – as the co-author of ITIL’s CSI book - will describe a very realistic and down-to-earth view of how he believes continual improvement can be injected into the bloodstream of your ITSM team; resulting in a reduction in downtime and costs, improved services and a more rewarding and enjoyable work routine for your team. At the end of this session you will have the knowledge needed to return to your workplace and:

• Set up a weekly CSI Steering Group
• Assign CSI roles and responsibilities
• Define reports and metrics to support CSI
• Set targets for improvements

If your Service Desk is like most others it will be constrained by limited resources and increasing demands to respond to customers almost instantly! But what about all the other core activities that fall into the domain of the ITIL Service Desk, especially the need to get to the root cause of incidents by identifying problems and initiating fixes through changes? The first objective for any IT Service Desk is to be the SPOC (single point of contact) for its customers. Beyond that the focus then needs to be on clearly organising the different types of work to be managed, ensuring each unit of work is given the right level of attention. From this session you will take away strong recommendations for how to:

• Define, record and assign activities
• Escalate work efficiently and effectively
• Allocate resources and responsibilities to ensure all tasks are completed effectively

If you're a manager in ITSM then you rely on people to implement any new strategy or tactic; and you need people to embrace and adhere to any new operational practices. But it doesn't always seem to work that way in practice! We often hear about "resistance to change" as a major barrier to improvement and success. In fact it's usually cited as the number one reason why IT projects fail. In this session you will have a very unique opportunity to learn about how to lead people through change from two accomplished individuals – a highly respected industry expert, and a real-world honest view from a well seasoned IT executive. Jan and Jerry's agenda includes:

• Why employees resist change
• How to avoid resistance in the first place
• How to identify resistance when it starts
• And how to deal with resistance when it happens

At the conclusion of this session you will be much better prepared to go back to your workplace and manage resistance from your staff. Risk of project failure will be greatly reduced, and that means you can expect to gain credit for positive results as IT projects are rolled out on time, within budget and delivering the real business benefits that were planned at the outset!

Troy is a one of the world's leading ITSM and ITIL authorities! An author of two highly praised books – Defining IT Success Through The Service Catalog: A Practical Guide and Service Management Strategies That Work – Guidance For Executives – and a veteran of numerous process improvement projects during the past 15 years, Troy has helped hundreds of IT practitioners around the world to better understand the right way versus the wrong way to address key ITIL and ITSM implementation issues.

Your Director needs to see certain “boxes checked” before authorising any project requiring valuable resources (money, tools and/or time). But it’s not just the availability of resources that determines whether an initiative can proceed – it’s also the risk/benefit relationship and the likelihood for success.

In this session, Cathy – a Pink Elephant’s ITIL Practitioner Of The Year award winner – will present details of her organisation’s Release Management Project; one of their most recent initiatives. Her session will include: an overview of ITIL at Allstate; why and how Release Management was selected including audit findings and problem statement; how they assembled the required teams and lesson learned; Project planning including approach used, scope, assessment results, and key deliverables; early wins and defined measurements; and future plans and continuous improvement.

In 2011 Pink Elephant (and the other sponsor IT services organisations – Hornbill, GamingWorks, HDI, LCS and TSO) delivered an “ITSM Extreme Makeover” to the University of Texas Health Science Center.

Jerry - the CIO at UTHSC - and his team support a large complex IT infrastructure and organisation that includes over 3,000 enrolled students and a total workforce of 5,800 teaching staff and health care professionals. In this Part 1 session, Jerry describes the implementation roadmap that was used; which includes 4 major components:

• Strategy
• Design/Build
• Transition
• Operation

All underpinned by Process Governance, Organisational Change Management, Communication, Education Planning and Continual Service Improvement.

Jerry will explain each one in detail highlighting what was needed to successfully address all key planning and implementation activities. At the end of this session, you will understand what is required by way of a practical template to successfully plan for, build and implement your own ITSM program.

Using the approach described in yesterday’s part 1 session, Jerry will now describe the real-world application of the plans envisioned for his organisation. Specifically he will address:

• How IT's plans were aligned to business objectives
• How IT KPIs and metrics were defined to support those objectives
• Primary risk factors that were kept in mind as the improvement plan was rolled out, and how they were mitigated
• Adjustments to the plan, including the review process for mid-course corrections
• Lessons learned about the importance of focusing on people – and results!

We often hear ITSM practitioners complain about not getting the ear of the CIO, and how they should go about getting management commitment. Well – if that's a concern for you then don't miss this session. A CIO speaks out – loud and clear!

In the “Spotlight On Technologies” stream at this year’s Conference you will hear Pink Elephant’s own George Spalding describe the success criteria for what a good tool should be able to do to address the most common operational needs in ITSM. He’ll also feature examples and demonstrations of some leading tools and technologies that you may wish to investigate further beyond each session.

One of the key ITIL processes is Change Management, and many IT organisations include it as an early implementation and improvement focus. While not complicated, Change Management is a complex, multi-faceted process that many IT managers struggle with. Get Change Management right and it works, get it wrong and it becomes a bureaucracy that creates frustration and confusion that everyone wants to bypass – and that’s one of the biggest problems with Change Management! So what can you do to avoid this scenario?

Change Management is a control process that needs to have a good balance of efficiency and effectiveness. It also needs strong leadership and direction from a confident, well informed and connected Change Manager. In this session you’ll learn:

• The essential activities and responsibilities of a Change Manager
• The communication channels and methods for how the Change Manager needs to engage with all IT managers and other personnel
• A recommended approach for organising the work day and work week of the Change Manager
• Suggestions for how non-compliance to the Change process should be dealt with
• The metrics and reporting strategy to highlight the successes and challenges of the Change Manager and the Change process.

One big reason to look beyond ITIL in today’s business climate is the growing recognition of the business exposure and risk related to data loss, information integrity and security.  As organisations realise that the vitality and success of their corporate mission is tied to its digital business data it is imperative that all employees and partners share a common understanding of best practices related to managing this business critical asset.  The time is right for you to receive practical guidance on information security management. Enter ISO 27000. The ISO/IEC 27000 series of standards provides best practice guidelines for information security management, risks and controls within the context of an overall Information Security Management System (ISMS).

The 27000 series is deliberately broad in scope, covering more than just privacy, confidentiality and IT or technical security issues. It is applicable to organisations of all shapes and sizes. All organisations are encouraged to assess their information security risks, then implement appropriate information security controls according to their needs, using the ISO 27000 guidance where relevant. In this educational session, George will first provide a brief overview of the ISO 27000 series components and their relevance, including the certification process. He will then provide practical recommendations on how you can apply the guidance in ISO 27002 in your ITSM organisation; topics to be covered include suggestions for:

• Scope and detail
• Essential supporting activities
• Roles and responsibilities
• Tracking, reporting and auditing

What get’s measured can be understood; what is understood can be managed; and what is managed can be improved.

In this session Troy will begin with the end in mind by highlighting the most important and valuable ITSM service outcomes. He will then review the most important and valuable “internal” performance characteristics within ITSM that enable those service outcomes. Now that we have clarity on what needs to be managed to deliver the service levels our business needs, we can begin to consider how to establish a measurement framework for real-time, daily and weekly reporting of ITSM performance. And to make our lives as simple and relevant as possible, we can supplement those measurements with a dashboard summary of how we’re doing at any moment in time. At the end of this session you’ll have received clear guidance from Troy on:

• WHAT needs to be measured, and WHY
• HOW and WHEN to measure and report

You will then be well placed to begin your improvement efforts!

Read Troy's blog: http://blogs.pinkelephant.com/troy

Scheduled for release in early 2012, COBIT 5 is designed to meet the needs of stakeholders and align with today's thinking in IT management techniques and enterprise governance.

What is "Lean IT", and what should IT managers know about it? Troy will tell you. Numerous organisations have gained huge efficiencies and improved overall effectiveness by applying Lean concepts.

In this session Troy will explain Lean’s origins and major guiding principles. You’ll walk away with an understanding of what Lean Management is, an awareness of its business value and particularly how it can be applied in ITSM to:

• Improve process flows
• Remove bottlenecks
• Drive consistency
• Clarify meaningful metrics and enable effective reporting
• Improve quality

Follow Troy on Twitter @TroyDuMoulin

Do you and your colleagues view your IT department as a "learning organisation"? If this is a new concept to  you, Jan will explain what this means and why it is important for IT managers to understand these key concepts.

We all know the importance of People in ITSM programs. This session will show you how your team can improve the performance and quality of IT services by learning from their own actions. In ITSM too much reliance is placed upon ad-hoc improvement efforts through activities such as "root cause analysis"; in this session you'll learn how to systematically adopt Action Learning strategies and other Learning Processes to create sustainable Continual Service Improvement benefits.

Follow the recommendations in this session and you will observe your team become more effective and motivated; and your IT service quality and other important metrics will improve.