Speaker, comedian, variety artist and Bill of Rights proponent, Chris Bliss, delivers intelligent and timely commentary about our world, in the tradition of American satire, ranging from Mark Twain to Jon Stewart. Jay Leno, who featured Chris repeatedly on the Tonight Show, has called him "one of the brightest comedians around," with the Washington Post adding that "if you're looking to laugh, you can't do much better than Chris Bliss."
Jeremy Gutsche has been described as "a new breed of trend spotter" by The Guardian, an "intellectual can of Red Bull" by Association Week, and "on the forefront of cool" by MTV.
Jeremy is a New York Times best-selling author and award-winning innovation expert, one of the most requested keynote speakers on the planet and the founder of TrendHunter.com – the world's #1 most popular trend website, attracting over two-billion views from 150,000,000 total visitors.
Prior to Trend Hunter, Jeremy grew a $1-billion portfolio for a bank and today, over 500 brands, billionaires and CEOs rely on his unique expertise to “Find Better Ideas Faster”. Before his dot-com success, Jeremy studied innovation at Stanford, completed an MBA from Queen's University, became a Chartered Financial Analyst, and graduated as a Chancellor Scholar from The University of Calgary, where he was later awarded Graduate of the Decade. He is routinely sourced by the media, from The Economist to CNN and Entertainment Tonight to The New York Times.
Click here to purchase Jeremy’s book and bring it to Pink18 to get it signed!
One of our highest-rated keynote speakers ever, Eric is back with another round of highly-inspiring content, this time based on his new book, Moving To Great.
Think of a time when you were at your best. Maybe you felt confident. Or powerful. Or passionate about life. What if you could be your best more often? What if you could unleash the same power again and again?
Eric says, “Most of us get glimpses of the greatness within us, but these glimpses are few and far between. Moving To Great offers a proven and powerful way to unleash our best, more of the time.”
Today, Eric inspires and trains thousands of leaders every year, around the world, to unleash their potential. His curriculums have helped more than a quarter-million leaders and have been translated into nine languages.
In a humorous and inspiring style, this session will offer practical insights into human nature, along with a step-by-step approach to get those insights to work, boosting your performance in every part of your personal and professional life.
Click here to purchase Eric’s book and bring it to Pink18 to get it signed!
Trust is a fundamental, bottom line issue. Without it, leaders lose teams; salespeople lose sales; and organizations lose reputation, retention of good people, relationships and revenue. But with trust, individuals and organizations enjoy greater creativity, productivity, freedom and results. Through David’s industry leading research, The Trust Outlook™, and firsthand experience working with the world’s highest performing organizations, David reveals how top leaders and organizations drive business results to become the most trusted in their industry.
Key Takeaways:
David is the CEO of Trust Edge Leadership Institute, national bestselling author of The Trust Edge, inventor of the Enterprise Trust Index™, and director of one of the nation’s foremost trust studies: The Trust Outlook™. His work has been featured in prominent publications such as Fast Company, Forbes, The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal. David has delivered life-changing presentations on six continents, with audiences ranging everywhere from FedEx, Toyota and global governments to the New York Yankees and the Department of Homeland Security. Get free resources and more at www.DavidHorsager.com and www.TrustEdge.com.
Click here to purchase David’s book and bring it to Pink18 to get it signed!
As a Senior Executive in a global IT services organization, David has a great deal of experience and is very well positioned to clearly describe the risks and opportunities for IT today.
In this highly-interactive session, David will present and discuss with you the most urgent and far-reaching issues of the day for corporate IT. These challenges are relevant and impactful for all organizations and it is YOUR responsibility to gain control and influence over them. So where do you start?
Agreeing and understanding these four primary challenges is not even half the battle. We must follow up with actions to ensure our respective businesses are protected from risks, and well positioned to exploit the opportunities.
Attend this session to hear valuable perspectives and strong advice for how to:
The session ends with David’s famous checklist of “Here’s What You Need To Start Doing Tomorrow Morning!”
IT Service Management (ITSM) has come a long way since ITIL was first introduced in 1996. Initially ITSM was just a “process thing”, then came support from compatible tools and finally a realization that the biggest risk factor was the culture of the IT organization and people’s potential resistance to change.
In recent years we’ve seen many new practices, initiatives and innovations to help address these issues and make ITSM more practical and effective. In this session, David will outline the key enablers we should be using to help us deliver valuable business results through “Integrated Service Management”. You’ll hear about the new approaches to ITSM being launched in 2018, plus the DevOps culture and why the “Full Stack” is non-negotiable! He will also describe the importance of how “Lean & Agile Thinking” are the keys to increasing speed to market, improving quality and containing costs.
By the time you leave David’s session, you will have “immediate homework” to help make “Integrated Service Management” the new reality in your own organization.
Simply put, Lean and Agile both share a core philosophy of continuous improvement focused on enhancing the customer value of your products and services. This includes the way you design and build them, how you develop effective teams and how you lead your organization based on a long-term view. Both Lean and Agile are focused on the quest for fast flow, which includes the practice of Kaizen to eliminate waste and shorten customer lead times. For Lean and Agile principles to be executed successfully, leaders must change culture and often their own management behaviors, in support of the continuous improvement culture needed.
That’s where Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People comes in. This best-selling book is an all-time leadership classic that has sold millions of copies. Covey’s model for personal and team effectiveness has changed the lives of countless professionals for the better and has had a lasting business impact that is undeniable.
In this informative and inspirational session, Troy will look at these time-tested habits through a Lean leadership lens to explicitly highlight how each of the 7 Habits (Be Proactive, Begin With The End In Mind, First Things First, Create A Win/Win, Seek First To Understand, Synergize, Sharpen The Saw) relate to and support Lean principles.
IT has been muddling along for the last decade or so complaining about the rising costs of simply keeping the lights on. No time, resources or energy left to even think about innovation and enabling new business services. IT has become a utility, even a commodity. Sad, but true! Is it any wonder why the business is starting to look elsewhere for new innovative solutions to real-world business problems? They can cut a deal directly with a SaaS vendor with little more than a few clicks and a credit card.
A decade ago, Nicholas Carr wrote an article in HBR (Harvard Business Review) and later a book stating that IT, like many disruptive technologies before it, had peaked in its ability to provide real strategic advantage to the business. A decade ago, he was right. But not today. Move over Nick Carr, cuz the DevOps train is leaving utility-based IT in the dust and generating REAL business results simply by doing IT better, faster, and cheaper while focusing on delivering EXACTLY what the customer wants when they want it. Come learn the NEW facts of life from George. His presentation focuses mainly on DevOps and Agile, and how these approaches when used effectively can help IT to be a stronger internal business partner.
Do you live your life with fire and enthusiasm? Denise offers you a series of questions and a six step process to determine if you BURN, which includes how to get and stay motivated. What are the steps? First, you have to really want to be motivated and fired up. What? You think this stuff is easy? If it were easy, we’d all be happy and living our lives to the fullest. Staying motivated is sometimes hard, but when you want something badly enough, move to step two, which is about waking up. Denise believes most of us get so caught up in our busy routines we miss our lives. Years fly by us. Think of your next major birthday – maybe you will be 30 or 65. Think about what it will be like to be that age if you continue on your current path. Are you good with that? What do you want for yourself? Better health? Children? More friends? Better work? Wake up now and start working on it – or go back to sleep and miss your own life. It’s up to you. What are the other steps? Attend Denise’s very electric session to learn more, and then…start burning!
From the front lines of transformation many senior leaders can relate to the fact that it is one thing to establish direction and strategy, but it is another thing altogether to gain agreement and establish shared urgency that leads to execution.
In this engaging senior-level case study, Niel, winner of the 2016 IT Excellence Award: Case Study Of The Year, will share how to be successful in the three primary roles of senior leadership:
How does a leader achieve these goals at any level in the organization and build influential authority at the same time? Niel will share his stories of success and ups and downs at OC Tanner, as well as provide tips and information about tools for successful IT transformations, which he has used throughout his career. Join Niel as he walks you through the thought process used to create a business, rather than a technology, architecture that is centered on how the organization can create a competitive advantage.
Today, many IT organizations are facing significant pressure to adapt and evolve, while simultaneously providing robust, secure and highly-available environments. This pressure to change comes from many sources – be that technology, society, competition or even the economy.
So how does a leader balance these somewhat conflicting challenges while staying on course to deliver business value?
David has gleaned invaluable insights from starting and leading a successful IT business. He is also a member of this year’s Pink Think Tank and will bring that experience to the presentation!
Join David as he discusses his thoughts and ideas on how to deliver business value through a process of prioritizing initiatives and leading teams by embracing a culture of Lean and Agile.
Are you being challenged with intense pressure to increase speed to market, enable greater agility while at the same time providing rock solid availability at lower cost? Do these goals seem mutually exclusive and conflicting? Not so if you have the courage to standardize and automate the practices of your continuous delivery pipeline. However, to achieve these ambitious goals, you’ll have to develop a back bone – specifically, you’ll need to create a common ‘Digital Backbone’.
During this strategic session, Gustav will share his personal experiences in leading the digital transformation of several multinational global technology organizations over the past 10 years. Specifically, Gustav will share the practical steps for conceptualizing, defining and implementing what is referred to as the ‘Digital Backbone’.
Join Gustav as he discusses the following:
The complexity and speed of change in today’s business environment is increasing all the time. How can ITIL help you harness the technology and tools available to remain competitive?
Margo Leach and Roman Zhuravlev from AXELOS, along with Troy DuMoulin, Pink Elephant, explain why ITIL remains the best way for organizations to keep up with continual change, how the update will enable organizations to thrive within digital environments and keep their competitive edge.
The team will give details about what you can expect from the next release, product developments and community feedback.
During the session, there will also be an interactive component allowing you to get directly involved with the update! DON’T MISS OUT – and bring your smartphones!
This overview is an ideal way to learn about ITIL’s ITSM framework and Service Lifecycle approach. Designed for those new to ITIL or needing a refresh, the agenda includes an overview of ITIL’s five books – Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, Continual Service Improvement – and their and their main concepts and best practices, together with a high-level look at the 26 processes, four functions and ITSM process model.
To maximize participation, this session is scheduled more than once throughout the conference – it is presented on Sunday afternoon as a Pre-Conference Optimizer, and Monday as an Early Riser session.
In this overview, Beverly will explain Lean’s origins and major guiding principles. You’ll walk away with an understanding of what Lean Management is, and an awareness of its business and IT value.
Simply put, Lean is focused on getting the right things to the right place at the right time in the right quantity to achieve perfect work flow, while minimizing waste and being flexible and able to change. To accomplish this, Lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers. Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Organizations are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.
To maximize participation, this session is scheduled more than once throughout the conference – it is presented on Sunday afternoon as a Pre-Conference Optimizer, and Monday as an Early Riser session.
COBIT® is a management and control framework often described as an “umbrella framework” as it assists organizations in aligning multiple frameworks and methodologies while establishing a true governance entity. COBIT consists of five Principles and encompasses 37 processes organized within five domains. Its Goals Cascade, Implementation Framework, and Process Assessment Model all provide users of this framework with the ability to make inroads with Governance quickly and effectively.
Are your ITSM processes “defined?” Are they fully “optimized?” Do you know what these mean, and why it’s important for you to know?
Attend this session and you’ll learn about the key concepts and guiding principles of “process maturity”. The session includes an overview of the CMM (Capability Maturity Model) and the six different process maturity stages: 0 – Not Performed; 1 – Initial; 2 – Repeatable; 3 – Defined; 4 – Managed; 5 – Optimized. What do each of these mean? And, why should every IT manager need to know? Attend this session for an explanation of each stage and why understanding a maturity level is necessary to overall successful project management, and implementing ITIL and ITSM best practices.
We have all heard it said that “the only constant in life is change”, however most organizations rely on tribal knowledge and ad-hoc strategies to manage the complicated issues triggered by change initiatives. Many of us have been part of failed projects that were flawed due to unforeseen cultural issues or simply lacking the resources to make it to the journey’s end. One thing we can all agree on is that “Change. Is. Hard.” The GOOD NEWS is that Organizational Change Management is a growing discipline. And there is a plethora of research, academic papers, books, methodologies, models and tools that support the profession. So where do you begin?
The answer to this perplexing question is found in the form of the Change Management Body of Knowledge (CMBoK) developed by the Change Management Institute. This emerging body of knowledge provides clear guidance and structure on how to practically apply the best elements of the various organizational change models found in the industry.
In this informative thought leadership session, Robin will provide you with an overview of the CMBoK’s 13 critical knowledge areas and the related professional certification levels.
Join Robin again at a Tuesday Early Riser session to learn how to navigate the people side of change and manage successful projects and transformation initiatives.
No doubt about it – DevOps is a growing movement! But, what exactly does it mean?
Join Graham for this very revealing session as he debunks many myths and misconceptions surrounding DevOps.
Graham will highlight how DevOps has become a very strong cultural and professional movement, which stresses communication, collaboration, integration and automation to improve workflows and efficiencies between Software Development, IT Operations and ITSM professionals.
Graham will also profile a very exciting new DevOps certification program – that’s right! Learn how to instill a culture of collaboration and increased communication across the enterprise.
To maximize participation, this session is scheduled more than once throughout the conference – it is presented on Sunday afternoon as a Pre-Conference Optimizer, and Monday as an Early Riser session.
In today’s business climate it is more critical than ever to remain flexible, keep costs low and shorten delivery cycle times. These growing pressures demand a new approach to development activities, project management methodologies and business in general.
Agile product development practices provide an iterative and adaptive approach to accelerating business value generation through the collaboration of cross-functional teams focused on continuous improvement, scope flexibility and delivering essential product quality. Scrum, the most popular Agile methodology, is a framework for developing and sustaining complex products, while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value.
Matthew will provide an overview of key best practices associated with Agile and Scrum, and profile very exciting details about three new related certifications.
To maximize participation, this session is scheduled more than once throughout the conference – it is presented on Sunday afternoon as a Pre-Conference Optimizer, and Monday as an Early Riser session.
Are you a senior IT manager or aspiring to become one? Then you need to know the answer to: what is a Lean CIO?
A Lean CIO is someone who knows how to model and continually improve the Enterprise IT value system. Lean IT organizations enjoy a culture that celebrates excellence, teamwork, and innovation. Lean CIOs promote a mantra of continuous improvement through Leadership methods that instil within teams and individuals a Kaizen mindset and a shared passion to create value, increased speed and reduced costs.
To achieve these goals, Lean CIOs are able to examine how well work flows through the whole organization, irrespective of boundaries such as functional silos. Using Lean principles, CIOs can look at the IT processes, policies, workflows, and data in order to identify sources of waste and impediments to the overall value flow. This effort requires systems thinking and the holistic ability to review the relationships between people, process and technology factors that contribute to each value stream.
How is this all accomplished? Can it really be done? Yes! Troy, one of the world’s leading Lean IT authorities, will tell you how.
These exclusive sessions are for attendees who purchase a Platinum Pass. Spend quality “Q&A” discussion time with one of the best senior ITSM consultants in the industry – Jack Probst and Gary Case. Ask them anything you want – they will have the answer!
Do you have a good idea but can’t convince your peers of its merit, or have you crafted a ground-breaking strategy but the team trudges on in the same old way? The problem is probably not the quality of what you have to offer, but may be how you connect (or not!) with people to create the results you desire. Jack and Gary, highly-experienced Management Consultants, will also provide tips based on real life examples that will help you communicate your IT plans.
A key theme of ITSM is that technology is a means to an end and that customer value is enabled through services designed, delivered and supported by people. However the quality and effectiveness of your services is dependent on teams and individuals who possess the right mix and level of skills, knowledge and attitude.
Good leaders understand that team effectiveness requires a culture that counteracts the negative consequences of fear, uncertainty, and mistrust and that encourages learning and growth aligned with the organization’s strategic direction.
During this informative session, Jennifer will discuss practical leadership tactics to achieve goals such as:
Leaders who create an environment of trust and take proactive steps to develop their teams in these areas can and will succeed.
When an organization begins the journey of applying ITSM principles and practices to their support processes, they quickly learn it is less about defining processes and implementing new tools and actually a fundamental exercise in organizational change. The organizational change necessary to agreeing on standard and shared processes that cross-organizational silos brought about by the ITSM journey, will directly impact your IT and business cultures. It will most definitely change your IT organization’s personality if it is done correctly. When a large organization travels the ITSM journey there are usually committees and budgets, project plans and supporting consultants. How does a small technology support organization do ITIL? In many cases, it is done without a budget, without dedicated project staff, and no committee to be found anywhere. In this case study session Andy will share his hands-on experience of implementing ITIL in a small organization and share lessons learned to help guide those who lead small organizations through this journey.
Join Andy as he helps small organization IT Leaders understand:
In keeping with the saying “the proof is in the pudding”, true and lasting business achievements are most often seen as the product of highly engaged teams, enabled by effective leadership. However, how would you define effective leadership? Is the recipe for effective leadership about style, personality, communication techniques, empathy, collaboration, and cooperation? Is one set of leadership characteristics more important than another?
In this revealing case study, Andrew will share his personal leadership experience with a major ERP implementation in Kenya. He’ll discuss how the financial project team was initially lacking motivation and the ability to execute, and how switching from a directive to a team-driven (“local” and “imported,”) leadership approach drove the timely, on budget execution of a major systems integration project.
David’s session will cover two main perspectives. He’ll discuss what true “leadership” is – meaning that leadership is “influencing others to do the right things”, and you need to get the best out of everyone, regardless of whether they report to you, or someone else; and secondly, David will explain the need to understand if individuals you lead in projects are “T-shaped” or “I-shaped”, and how understanding this concept helps leaders more effectively roll out Lean Service Management implementation projects. David’s session includes:
The session ends with a check-list of practical steps you can take to evaluate the level of collaboration and mutual support between your teams, and how to identify and action improvement opportunities.
Over the decades, the IT industry has evolved from being technology-centric to process-centric (e.g. the blossoming of ITIL), to lately being people-centric (culture, leadership, teaming, roles, skills, empowerment, etc.). Methodologies like Lean and DevOps point us to the emerging next (final?) level: systems thinking. Rob explains what this latest thinking means to IT leadership.
Newton’s first law teaches us that an object in motion moves in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force. The reality for any IT organization is that it is constantly under pressure from various forces conspiring to pull it in multiple directions at the same time. Faced with this fact, a critical leadership success factor is the ability to build team alignment and culture through shared vision, values and outcome-focused priorities. In this engaging case study session, Ray will share how the Bridgewater State University senior leadership team led the organization through a journey of discovery to establish a clear set of shared values and a culture of accountability, innovation and excellence. This has allowed them to make an impact to both the school and their community through innovation initiatives and volunteerism – a story you have to hear about!
Behind every successful organization there is one or more successful teams. Groups of people who trust each other hold themselves accountable and produce collective results that help the business win. How does this happen? Great teams do not materialize on their own but are the deliberate result of hard work and good leadership. The good news is YOU can be that leader.
Join Jonathan, Pink Elephant’s 2017 Case Study Of The Year award winner, as he uses his personal experiences to take you on the journey of inheriting ‘hard luck’ groups and how those groups turned into high-performing dream teams. He will discuss the key techniques and approaches you can use to take your team to the next level.
During this session, Jonathan will elaborate on the following;
Understanding and managing relationships has always been important when working with individuals and groups across an organization. But in the context of ITSM there’s even more to relationships than person to person. And as we hear that our business partners view communications with IT as bordering on a state of crisis – it’s important we re-evaluate the concept of relationships across the 4Ps – People, Process, Product and Partner. Jack will explore basic principles about relationships that provide a guide to understanding, developing, improving and managing relationships between ITSM, its partners and the business.
IT strategy, in many cases, seems to be an afterthought in an organization. In other words, the business establishes the forecast for the future and IT discerns how they might fit into the larger picture. But is there an approach and a model that IT leadership can apply in understanding the factors that are influential today and in the future, that when considered as a collective, provides direction for the future direction of IT? Jack will lead you through a 6-step process to developing your strategy and explore a model that provides guidance on what needs to be considered and how. The presentation will culminate in how the IT strategy can influence the IT operating model that will be critical in your transformation from today to tomorrow.
Does your IT organization have a strategic and trusted relationship with your business partners? Does your leadership team have the right capabilities, competencies and skills to deliver on what the business needs? Fermilab is America’s premier particle physics and accelerator laboratory and with this distinction comes the requirement to be efficient and effective in every facet of the business.
In this case study, Tammy will describe how her organization uses best practice frameworks and standards such as ITSM, Enterprise Architecture and ISO to enable a strategic approach to IT management. Tammy will share details about Fermilab’s Service Strategy and Service Design roadmap and how they achieved success in their strategic alignment with the business of science.
Transforming from an IT organization to a services organization is not an easy task. It takes time, patience, courage and strategic leadership. Cisco IT developed and successfully executed a three-year plan to do just that. The transformation required changes in the IT mindset, operations and organizational structure; all while these components were being impacted by the global economy and the many different emerging business models. It was a critical step in Cisco’s evolution to being “architecturally led”.
During this session, Tim will share the key components of Cisco IT’s successful transformation and the approaches taken to address their challenges and key pain points. He will walk you through the journey by providing examples of Cisco’s successes that demonstrate the relevance of IT in business today.
Can a strong Business Relationship Management (BRM) function benefit your organization? Is it possible for an IT department to transform from an order-taking function to become a trusted advisor and strategic partner? Absolutely!
Join Joe, Pink Elephant’s 2014 Case Study Of The Year winner, in this informative session where he will describe his team’s journey to deploy a strategic BRM function to enable their business partners to enter a growth strategy and to deepen market penetration. During this practical session, Joe will demonstrate several techniques and examples of BRM-led collaboration, such as ‘discovery-sessions’, demystifying architecture and demand shaping that continue to result in successful business outcomes. Joe will elaborate on how IT leaders are facing the need to satisfy the insatiable demand for technology innovation and speed to market facing the industry today.
Are you a senior IT manager or aspiring to become one? Then, you need to know: What is a Lean CIO?
A Lean CIO is someone who knows how to model and continually improve the Enterprise IT value system. Lean IT organizations enjoy a culture that celebrates excellence, teamwork, and innovation. Lean CIOs promote a mantra of continuous improvement through Leadership methods that instill within teams and individuals a Kaizen mindset and a shared passion to create value, increased speed and reduced costs.
To achieve these goals Lean CIOs are able to examine how well work flows through the whole organization, irrespective of boundaries such as functional silos. Using Lean principles CIOs can look at the IT processes, policies, workflows, and data in order to identify sources of waste and impediments to the overall value flow. This effort requires systems thinking and the holistic ability to review the relationships between people, process and technology factors contributing to each value stream.
How is this all accomplished? Can it really be done? Yes! Troy, one of the world’s leading Lean IT authorities, will tell you how.
Sounds almost subversive, doesn’t it? And in a way, it is. In early 2001, seventeen creative and forward thinking developers got together at a ski resort in Utah and created what we now know as the Agile Manifesto. Comprised of four basic tenets and 12 guiding principles, it clearly describes the concept of Agile Development and Project Management in just a few pages. Using a number of Lean principles, concepts and tools, Agile flew directly in the face of the generally accepted development and project management methodologies. It was, indeed, subversive. Challenged the status quo. Made lots of people very uncomfortable. And it made a lot of sense. It was truly a paradigm shift in terms of delivering value. It still is. No more one and done. No more waterfall. Agile is an iterative and flexible approach that embraces last-minute changes, downplays detailed documentation, encourages customer involvement and shrinks the project release cycle to a matter of weeks. Time for you to learn what all the fuss is about.
The IT Service Owner has for many years been understood as a critical role to support the Service Management lifecycle and continual improvement. However, how does this role connect to, contrast with or contradict the role of an Agile Product Owner representing the business requirements to a Scrum Team? Are they different people, alter egos or two sides of the same coin?
Join Troy in this informative session as he compares and contrasts the duties of each role and provides practical guidance on how IT organizations can integrate both perspectives to maximize business value.
Every organization, for-profit, non-profit, public, is in a constant state of change due to both internal and external pressures. Increased competition and constant influx of disruptive technologies all increase the need to quickly develop new business product and service capabilities. IT organizations feel the pressure of developing software and technology to meet the business demands for speed and innovation and yet need to continue to be the gatekeepers for maintaining a secure and stable production environment. Service Management processes are crucial to these seemingly conflicting goals: speed and stability. Therefore, the question is not, “Do we need Service Management processes?”, it is “How robust do our processes really need to be to meet our compliance and effectiveness needs?”. Let’s look at our existing processes and see if we can use some of the concepts from Lean IT to get to “Good Enough”.
What does Release Management mean in the Agile world? Is there even a need for Release Management anymore? Feature teams are now autonomous and don’t need to be governed, right?
During this session, Michelle will take you on the Release Management journey within Standard Bank of South Africa. In 2015, the bank started moving from a waterfall delivery methodology to a more agile one, and adopted the Scaled Agile Framework early in 2016. As they embarked on this journey, there was heavy criticism of the Release & Change Management approach and how it was perceived as over-governance of delivery teams. The Service Management team used the concept of ‘guilds’ to involve the IT community in crafting the Release Management practice and exploring the difference between Release Management and Release Engineering. Separate release teams evolved to one team that services the whole enterprise across 17 countries and three large lines of business.
Join Michelle as she shares the lessons they learned along the way, including:
As the newly appointed IT Process & Quality Manager for ReAssure, Alyson was given the objective to establish an effective and sustainable continual improvement practice. Building on her past success within the business and retail sectors she was all too familiar with the challenges that IT leaders face in delivering customer value with more simplicity, greater speed, agility, and accuracy in a constantly changing environment.
However, what she did not expect was the tribal/silo nature of the IT culture that spoke their own language primarily focused on their own specific technology areas. Initially attempting to drive change based on her own expertise, she quickly realized that success would only come from creating a culture of collaboration, with involvement focused on customer value.
Join Alyson in this engaging case study session where she describes how they used Lean principles and tools to gain agreement between teams on common objectives. Drawing from her own experiences, she will share lessons learned in turning Lean best practices from book learning to genuine value-add.
During this session Alyson will discuss;
Some organizations go through the motions of developing strategic goals simply because common sense says every good organization must have a plan. Just like everything else in life, you get out of a plan exactly what you put in it. If an organization is going to take the time to create strategic goals, it should be done right. Listening to your customers should be first and foremost on your list of strategic plans. A well-informed customer survey will provide the data needed to see how well the IT department is serving its customers.
During this session, Christine will show how AmerisourceBergen used Voice Of The Customer (VOC) to build effective surveys. She will discuss how they applied Lean Six Sigma tools to their customer survey data to reveal the highly-dependent relationships that align IT goals to the customer goals thus creating Strategic Goals that cascaded through the IT organization, helping “move the needle” for the customers. Strategic goals need to be effective – doing the right things to take the company to the next level.
Developing a design thinking capability within IT can help your business partners solve complex problems and find desirable solutions for clients by building better products, services, and business processes quickly. Design thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning to explore possibilities of what could be and to create desired outcomes that create a superior experience for customers.
During this session, Duane will highlight how AmerisourceBergen has used common Lean and Agile techniques and combined them to create an end-to-end design-thinking lifecycle. These techniques were used to quickly understand, explore and materialize innovative solutions so that IT was seen as a truly innovative partner to their business.
For many organizations finding the time and space to adopt to Lean and Agile practices in response to business pressures for increased speed feels like additional effort over and above the current execution of Service Management. Yet, we still need to find a way to increase our velocity and deliver more value faster and faster.
The question is, how can we take our existing Service Management teams and move them to Lean and Agile without adding more resources, without costly training and without funding? Where do you start? How do you start?
During this practical session, Roseann will discuss how the start at Prudential Annuities was like the Phoenix project. The team started with one Service Management function that was vital to operations and needed to be significantly improved. Under new leadership they began the Lean journey with a large wall and a lot of sticky notes. They evaluated the value of the function and worked to achieve velocity, improve capacity and automate key processes using Agile, to, in turn, have a well-managed Service Management function.
Join Roseann as she demonstrates the importance of the Gemba Walk and Lean Opportunity board and how to use Lean IT practices to streamline Service Management functions and expand team capacity.
How do you learn from past mistakes? A “lessons learned” exercise is often a task to be completed at the end of a project and then forgotten about. This is a tremendous lost opportunity; learning from past mistakes can be the source of inspiration, creativity and innovation. During this session Jennifer will provide her view on the top three mistakes made during a Service Management Program or Project along with key strategies to avoid making similar mistakes in the future.
ITIL processes are in place for one reason only – to enable IT to provide the levels of service the customer requires. Your customer is frustrated that levels of service are not what is needed. Too many outages, too long to get them fixed, new product roll-outs that don’t work as advertised, lengthy project delays. Sound familiar? Process managers are busy just keeping up to the demands of day -to-day business requirements, they don’t have time to carefully analyze the data to determine how best to resolve issues with service quality and performance. Enter the CSI Manager, the one person who can gather all the information, find the clues and through exhaustive analysis uncover the real crimes that are occurring that are robbing your customers of the service levels they need. Join Graham to see how some companies have addressed the need to constantly improve service levels by focusing on the underlying process improvements needed to succeed.
Do you want to improve availability, reliability, stability, increase customer satisfaction and reduce the cost to delivering services? Of course the answer for every organization is YES! Great – then please explain why Problem Management which is one of the most value added processes that any organization can have in place, seems to be one of the most challenging and difficult to implement within organizations. This session will look at the value of Problem Management and an approach to implementing the process as part of ITIL and/or Lean philosophy.
Charlie, one of Pink’s most experienced consultants, says he is often reminded of this old Steve Martin punch line when he reads white papers and even some best practice guidance around Service Management. He believes many IT Leaders look at Service Management as a set of processes to be achieved quickly and then move on to the next project. Charlie admits that he is even guilty at times of talking about the importance and value of existing in some future-world where everything that glitters is gold without much thought to actually getting there. Becoming a millionaire takes a lot of hard work, years of effort and sweat-equity, trial and error and even some flat-out failure; you become a millionaire one penny at a time. Service Management is a long and often painful journey of setbacks and accomplishments; it is not, nor can be, a 6-month project for some manager to check off his or her to-do list.
This session explores and celebrates the journey and the failures that can lead to service management success.
Change Management is often viewed as being too archaic to support today’s speed of change where release cycles are measured in terms of days, or even hours if not minutes. Is it possible that Change Management is no longer needed? The easy answer to this is ‘yes, now let’s move on’. But before you answer that question consider that IT management and staff as well as business customers complained that Change Management was not responsive enough when releases moved as slow as glaciers. So is it possible that Change Management was never really needed, or as Charlie believes, Change Management is misunderstood, not applied appropriately and mismanaged? The increasing rate of speed of change screams for Change Management; speed is of no use if you consistently introduce poor service changes and negatively impact operations that increase over-reliance on support.
This session explores ways in which Change Management can become more efficient and agile, yet still deliver on its core mission to enable beneficial changes with minimal disruption to service.
What happened when Darden, a Fortune 500 company and parent company of Olive Garden, tried to implement Change Management? It failed! The program took a hiatus for a year to allow the management team to regroup. To serve its restaurants and guests better, Darden invested heavily in its IT system. With innovative systems came downtime and incidents that needed to be managed, hence the birth of ITSM at Darden. During this session, Jeff will discuss how the whole IT department had to come together to create a new recipe for success in the ITSM project. Everyone from restaurant managers, to Service Desk employees joined forces to turn this banquet into a finely-tuned dish that has enabled Darden to grow faster and service its restaurants better.
Join Jeff as he talks about the following:
Change Management is one of the most critical ITSM processes for any organization, but it's worryingly easy to get it wrong! All too many organizations try to deploy or improve in this key area and struggle to gain adoption from those it's designed to support.
ITIL is a great starting point but where is a poor Change Manager to turn when confronted with these questions that aren’t covered in the books: “Do Incidents really require changes to resolve them?”; “How do I make sure a CAB does not turn into a technical torture chamber?”; “What happens when Change Management goes home in the evening?”; “How do I stop people abusing my emergency change process?”; and of course “Just what is a change anyway?!”
Join Peter as he shares practical solutions and tips gathered in his almost 20 years’ experience working within ITSM across all industry sectors.
The cloud offers an exciting and potentially game-changing trend in how IT services are supported. Even though the players may change from internal IT support teams working directly for a business to external services being offered by third parties through the cloud, the requirement to manage those services remains. How do you approach changing from working in a manner designed to control internal operations (such as ITIL), to influencing and managing defined services offered by third parties?
Join Peter as he discusses the importance of having a strategic approach to cloud services and how ITSM can help ensure that you control the cloud, not the other way around!
Problem Management is nobody's favorite process. In fact, few people really understand what it is. Many IT workers see this as extra work; taking time and resources they simply don't have. When it’s done right, it will completely transform an IT organization.
The State of Colorado had the rare opportunity to glimpse at the before and after of a successful Problem Management initiative. Developing the process and working with stakeholders throughout 2016, the process saw its first major wins within only three months of application, making a major recognizable difference for the citizens of Colorado. With experience in doing it right and very wrong, the State of Colorado’s Service Management team was able to create a process that was accepted and successful across multiple state agencies.
Join Robert as he walks through the process of implementing Problem Management, and answers a variety of questions including:
At the very core of Service Management and Continual Service Improvement lies the Iron Triangle of Change, Incident, and Problem Management. The State of Colorado had the unique opportunity of co-creating processes for all three of these principles. The ITSM team resolved to navigate the muddy waters of changing “the way we have always done it” to “the way we could be doing it”, to vastly improve service management customer satisfaction across 17 state agencies. Join Keith as he provides insight into how the State of Colorado changed the way the organization’s world turned through crisis management and the introduction of proactive problem management under well documented and regulated controls.
Supporting IT Services has become more complex due to reasons such as multi-vendors supporting underpinning elements of a Service, customers’ increasing expectations and an organization’s requirement to provide services competitively. Developing an effective way to construct Service Level Agreements that ensures suppliers are providing tangible value to organizations can be challenging. With Qantas Airways flying in excess of 1000 routes domestically and internationally daily, they needed a flawless system that allowed them to provide an exceptional passenger experience.
The session will include unique service degradations and will demonstrate how an incident can have devastating and potentially huge impacts for organizations. Katrina will demonstrate how proactively preventing IT incidents (through enabling suppliers to have a deep understanding of critical business functions) justifies the utilization of innovative Outcome-Based Service Agreements. Join Katrina and learn:
ITSM leaders today must deal with many hurdles to successfully implement an ITSM plan. The Service Management team at Michigan State University was no different. For years, they struggled with starting and stalling ITSM implementations due to very little senior leadership support until they got a major boost from a new ITSM-believing CIO, which led to big changes.
During this session, Ahmed will discuss how the culture changed from using pen and paper to using Request, Incident and Problem Management, while at the same time breaking the barriers of resistance with second-level support teams who want more of the same and less responsibility. Join Ahmed as he elaborates the following:
Is DevOps new or is this Release Management returning to its roots? DevOps is all about moving from requirements to value quickly through culture, process and automation. Major DevOps themes include good practice related to code management, process standardization and the use of virtualized environments to supercharge release orchestration, provisioning and deployment! However, this is starting to sound a lot like the Release Practices IT organizations used on a daily basis with mainframe environments! What is old is new again?
Is Release Management an old process with a new name, and how well do you remember Release Management 10+ years ago leveraging centralized computing? Take a walk down memory lane with Cathy during this session as she discusses how Allstate, more than 10 years ago, laid the foundation for DevOps when they started Release Management. She will recap Release Management 10 years ago and where they are with DevOps today. Join Cathy as she talks about how Allstate is continuing with a magical 10-plus year journey of improvement.
In 2007, the IT department of AutoTrader was at the lowest of the low, untrusted and not seen as a true partner to the business. As the organization transitioned from a brick and mortar printing organization to an online digital organization, they needed their IT department to step up and deliver more reliable and better-aligned IT services, while the rate of change would double and then double again. During this session, Dave will translate theory into practice and show how the IT department moved from a traditional ITSM implementation based on traditional ITIL to one that blends DevOps, Lean IT and ITIL together. He will discuss the bumps encountered along the way and how they were overcome. The IT department is now seen as a trusted business partner and has been invited to assist in major business improvement initiatives as the organization hopes to replicate their internal successes for the business as a whole.
Join Dave as he discusses:
Nationwide began its ITSM journey in 2001 with an effort to implement consistent Change and Incident Management processes. This initiated a multi-year journey down the Yellow-Brick Road to achieve higher and higher ITSM process Maturity. Since then, we have seen significant change in our organization, our business goals, and in the industry. Our dependence upon ITSM has never been greater – keeping an ITSM function running for over 15 years is no easy task.
During this session, Jeff will explore how Nationwide has grown its ITSM Enterprise Governance from 2 to 11 active ITIL processes, exceeding their vision of what would lie at the end of that Yellow-Brick Road. He will also discuss what it takes to maintain such a focus for so long, the benefits Nationwide has obtained as a result of ITSM, and the challenges they have encountered and solved along the way.
Join Jeff to get an insight on the following:
ITSM is more than just training or fancy names for processes – it must be a lifestyle. It also has to be about a mindset of change and understanding – it’s a journey! Starting out on this “journey” can be overwhelming and scary to say the least – especially if you have to rework decades of “this is how it has always been done”. The good news? Ohio State has done it and are still doing it and they want to share their story! During this session, Tracey will share Ohio State’s story from the beginning and elaborate on the following:
With innovations such as virtual environments, Agile and DevOps, managing changes has become increasingly more challenging. Ensuring that changes are assessed thoroughly, that risks are managed, that stakeholder needs are met and that it is all done in a timely manner with no surprises has never been more difficult. And being a Change Manager has never been more complicated or more stressful. Approving changes, participating in CAB meetings, ensuring that the process is being executed successfully and meeting the needs of all stakeholders as well as making sure the day-to-day chores get done can be overwhelming. Join Graham to see how some organizations have successfully tackled this challenge and made their Change Management process work effectively and efficiently.
Initially you may think that leading a DevOps transformation in a traditional ITIL process-based government agency would be like mixing oil and water. However, the reality may surprise you! In this unusual case study session, Stephen will share with you the approach a Dutch government agency has taken to adopt the best aspects of both DevOps and ITIL to support and accelerate their service delivery practices. He will discuss:
Stephen will share the steps taken and the lessons learned. He will also share the changes that occurred within the agency to organizational structure, culture and behavior and, like many relationships, how the changes required to work out the inevitable differences are not always an easy road to take.
Whew! We finally have Dev and Ops on the same team. Literally, on the same team. Quite an achievement. Not without pain but definitely worth it. We are ready for frequent releases and rapid deployments. No more roadblocks from Ops. Yay! Mission accomplished, right? Well, that is until we discover that our juggernaut is stopped in its tracks by our friends from Security. The old hoops are still there and they don’t seem to be moving anytime soon. The only way to get back on track is to add some new players to our team. Enter DevSecOps. Security will have to learn to play a whole new ball game!
ITIL has been around for nearly 30 years and many of us have grown up speaking its familiar lingo. We take comfort in knowing an Incident is not a Problem. The world is changing – the conversation has turned to Agile, DevOps and Digital Transformation. We are being challenged – are the lessons of ITSM still relevant in today’s world? Of course! Technology may have changed but the mission has always remained the same – deliver business value. As a practitioner, you need to be able to translate valuable ITSM knowledge and experience into 21st century terms.
Join David as he powers-up the universal translator and provides you with practical advice on breaking down the language barrier between today’s leading best practice frameworks.
A lot of organizations are attracted to the idea of DevOps and Continuous Deployment but have concerns about proliferation of micro services and auditors. There are also worries about downtime and change restrictions. These are all valid concerns, but should not be obstacles. During this session, Matt will define Continuous Deployment, explain why it’s a good thing and why it’s right for your organization. He will discuss how AutoTrader has increased their Release rate more than 200% in a 3-year period, while at the same time delivering a success rate of more than 99%, with a steady achievement of 99.9% availability. Join Matt as he discusses:
DevOps and Agile practices change the basic operating model for IT in several ways. Some examples include the move toward product-oriented, self-managed cross-functional teams and the increased use of automated controls with respect to testing and deployment. As a result of these changes, many organizations have identified the need to shift current leadership styles, culture and the way IT participates in organizational processes.
In this informative session, Rob explains how these emerging trends impact traditional IT practices and capabilities such as Portfolio Management, Funding Models, Project Management, Service (Design, Delivery, and Support), compliance and audit. Come to this session to understand why the IT organization of the near future will use a completely different approach to governance and controls.
Rob’s presentation looks at how DevOps turns some fundamental principles of IT and ITSM on their heads, with new concepts such as high velocity change, fail fast, infrastructure as code, people over process, servers as cattle, and empowered developers. Rob’s vies is that DevOps is a strong leading indicator of our IT future ̶ sooner or later we will all need to make the lateral shift in mindset required by these challenging concepts. Your IT fundamental axioms will be challenged!
Rob believes that as DevOps becomes business as usual over the coming years, the function of IT Operations moves from building and managing Prod to building and managing the automation tools so that others (Build teams) can build and manage Prod. Rob explains that the operating model moves from project-based to product-based, and how this creates several career directions for IT whether you are Business Analysts, Developers, Testers, Project Managers, or Systems Engineers.
One of the principles of DevOps is "get out of the way": if you are a supporting function ("necessary non-value work") then make sure you are not a constraint to flow of value. Controls are a particular issue; we have to have them in order to minimize risk and ensure compliance. But, they often accrete unnecessary ceremony over time, and optimize to the governor not the value worker. Rob presents a dozen tactics for minimizing the impact on flow of value from Require to Deploy.
We have all heard it said that “the only constant in life is change”. In today’s complex environment, waves of change come fast and crash down on people in all aspects of their lives. So, how will you help people navigate through your specific change initiatives, make sure they don’t lose their way to the Emerald City, get carried off by the flying monkeys of unforeseen cultural issues and make it to the journey’s end?
The key is to understand the requirement to plan beyond the change to the unique transition every individual needs to make. As Dorothy found out, everyone is different: the Scarecrow needed a brain, the Lion needed courage and the Tin Man, a heart. Every one of your change stakeholders will have a different perception of your change initiative, what it means to them personally and what will motivate them to want to make the transition.
In this informative thought leadership session, Robin will walk you through the people side of change and give you techniques and tips that can help you manage your successful projects and transformation initiatives.
Too often organizations make CSI too difficult and time consuming instead of looking at it from an incremental approach. CSI doesn’t have to be complex or drawn out. It’s not about a process, it’s about identifying improvements and having a desire to do something about it. This session will address a common sense and practical approach to improving the capability of delivering continual and increasing value to your customers.
IT organizations have historically been organized by the shape and manner of our technologies. This structural alignment creates silos within the organization that make it difficult to deliver service value to our customers. There is an emerging approach, typically witnessed through the DevOps culture, to reshaping the IT organization. In this session, Jack will provide guidance about what is new and different about IT organizational structures and how leaders can leverage a new way of thinking about structuring IT roles, capabilities and processes that will deliver higher levels of business value, performance and competitive advantage. Be prepared to analyze your own organization and begin to think differently about what makes sense for your IT shop.
In 2014 a young utility technology services organization, Tacoma Public Utilities, decided to embark on the path of implementing ITSM with a focus on the ITIL framework. ITSM and ITIL were fairly new concepts for the organization with the team having little to no experience.
During this session, Johnny will walk you through their journey, beginning with their initial assessment and attempt to drive ITSM as a project, through their mistakes over the past two years to the progress that has been made. Learn how the ITSM team at Tacoma Public Utilities leveraged the voice of external and internal expertise to change the mindset of senior management and establish a new direction. This new direction led to the development of a dedicated Service Management Office that has been able to drive ITSM along with IT Asset Management to create a new organizational strategic initiative and a change from a project mindset to lifestyle mindset.
Taken from the ITIL Practitioner certification course, Beverly will provide details of the important 9 Guiding Principles needed to achieve successful outcomes. The journey to adopt a service-oriented approach to IT involves a major cultural shift from focusing on technology to focusing on services and must also include a full understanding of business value.
Join Beverly for this very educational look at how and why to consider the following as part of your overall approach to continual improvement: Focus On Value, Design For Experience, Start Where You Are, Work Holistically, Progress Iteratively, Observe Directly, Be Transparent, Collaborate, Keep It Simple.
A conference main-stay, and favorite from Harvard Business School. Every IT leader should know about Kotter’s 8-step model for implementing change!
Leading Change is recognized as one of the all-time best business books and the definitive work on the subject. Harvard Business School Professor, John P. Kotter, methodically and carefully explains his 8-step process for leading and managing major organizational change in an easy to understand fashion. Leading Change captures his wealth of knowledge and experience working with major companies all over the world. Professor Kotter takes concepts like leadership, urgency, vision, strategy, quick wins, and communication and puts them in well-explained, practical terms that anyone can follow.
If you're a manager at any level of your IT organization who is currently leading any aspect of a change (and today, it’s an ongoing occurrence!), understanding Kotter’s 8-step change process is a must-know, and this is a not-to-be-missed session. Plus, learn how to apply the best practices from this book from one of the world's leading ITSM consultants – Gary Case. You'll gain huge benefits from Gary's extensive ITIL implementation and IT project management experience as he walks you through several real-world examples for each of the 8 steps.
Understanding ITIL and knowing that you need a governing body to support the processes are known facts. The challenge is creating a tiered and scaled governance framework to get the ‘right fit’ for an organization. One common struggle is having the right amount of governance without creating over-engineered Enterprise-wide processes. The key is to pair the ITIL best practice and ITSM methodology with a Lean approach, to develop these four pillars:
During this session, Heather will discuss how she set up the four pillars at AmerisourceBergen, including lessons learned along the way, best practices and process tools that were used and can be utilized within your organization. By building a stable but Lean foundation, you can ensure consistent and repeatable results while achieving the organizational adoption that most organizations struggle to realize.
If you think it’s a challenge today to manage server inventories and software licenses and subscription audits, including a multitude of cloud services and cloud service providers, just wait until that chair you’re sitting in becomes an IT Asset. The Internet of Things (IoT) is not new, but it is only recently that IT leaders and managers have begun to understand the impact and implications that IoT will have on managing assets and services within their organization, from a risk and compliance perspective.
Charlie will provide you with this completely serious tongue-in-cheek session that explores the real-world of IoT, to drive the conversation and raise the alarm for IT managers to begin taking this seriously and to explore some practical approaches, in order to be prepared.
A CMDB implementation is one of the trickiest undertakings any ITSM program can undertake. The difficulties in creating a toolset capable of linking literally hundreds of thousands of interconnected bits of data together in a meaningful manner, while supporting a highly fluid environment with dozens of changes each week, are formidable indeed.
Join Peter as he discusses the approach Pink Elephant has mapped out to create a CMDB in the real world. He will show the critical importance of the scoping session, knowing what you want the CMDB to achieve and how to turn that into concrete actions to map and create your CMDB.
At the end of the session you should know the importance of being able to ask your ITSM organization, “For our CMDB, do we need a battle tank or body armor?”
A "perfect storm" is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically. This is typically used to describe meteorological events that are "worst-case scenario", though it flawlessly describes the situations many companies face in trying to forecast their path with the Cloud, DevOps, ITIL, Agile and Organizational Change Management. During this session, Miechelle will take you through DTCC’s “perfect storm”! She will identify what to watch out for and how to improve your chances of survival with the Cloud.
During this session Miechelle will also discuss the following:
Creating a CMDB can be a daunting task and is often seen as a failure as companies try to encompass too much at the same time, rather than taking one step at a time and reflecting on success and then building on that success. It can also be hard to decide the ‘best’ way that a CMDB should be maintained and updated to ensure that it is used and that you are getting value from the investment. Phrases such as “CMDB Unicorn” or “All Encompassing” are regularly used, but it’s important to understand that the CMDB is only valuable when it provides information that your organization needs.
Michael will share real life experiences of the problems regularly faced when implementing a CMDB. He will discuss how he gained the support of his colleagues and peers and convinced them to get rid of their spreadsheets!
Join Michael as he discusses:
"You can’t manage what you can't measure" is a well-known quote from Peter Drucker. Many organizations measure something, but what do you do with the data? Where do you even start? ITIL provides many examples of Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and metrics, but how do we know what works for our organization? How do we show that IT is providing value to the organization? And, also very important – what are the best measurement tools? These are all important questions J.C. and his colleagues asked.
In this session, J.C. will discuss how Minnesota State University, Mankato has begun to tackle these challenges to clearly show the value and make data driven decisions. J.C. also addresses how they have begun to use business intelligence and data science practices to learn from their past and perform predictive analysis on the future through the use of tools like the Balanced Scorecard and management reports. Specifically, his presentation includes:
There is no doubt that big changes are coming to IT. Since its inception, we’ve taken on the fundamental mission to protect and secure the IT estate and deliver services to the organization. However, in most cases, these efforts are done with a singular focus and with few synergies between both functions. As we look to the future of IT and to the evolution of both Security and ITSM, we find a quantum leap possible in the most unlikely place; bringing Security and Service Management together with new proactive business processes, metrics, and automation. During this session, Kevin will explore the new synergies of these IT stalwarts, discuss what to expect in the future, and how you can begin to prepare now for the transformation that lies ahead.
We are all inundated with stories of new trends and technology that will forever change either our personal or professional lives. But it’s the ones you don’t hear about that could be the real killer. One already exists and is growing rapidly in your organization today, the Disruption Gap between the Business and IT. It is Matt’s view that the Disruption Gap is quickly expanding and every day it marginalizes your role more and more. It’s challenging IT’s ability to effectively deliver secure and reliable computing platforms. It’s also creating huge risks that IT cannot mitigate but will ultimately be held accountable for.
During this session, Matt will define and break down the Disruption Gap, discuss the dynamics that are driving it as well as the risks it represents. He will elaborate on how leading organizations are closing the gap through disciplined Software Asset Management tools and practices. If your idea of Software Asset Management is nothing more than how to mitigate audits, the Disruption Gap will swallow you!
Anyone can implement an ITSM tool but it takes leadership to do it right!
The biggest single fallacy when it comes to implementing ITSM tools is the current trend towards out-of-the-box. It sounds great on the surface – no fuss, no muss – but it seldom works in practice. It's like buying a suit off the rack – one size DOES NOT fit all. There is an opportunity cost to a failed implementation: missed deadlines, application rework, increased costs, reduced customer satisfaction and not to mention the hit to your department's reputation.
During this session, David will share his experience from a 37-year career spanning ITSM practitioner to Executive Management, providing you with practical advice for a successful ITSM tool implementation.
In today’s world, a majority of support center organizations still rely on spreadsheets and spray-and-pray emails to entire teams to communicate major incidents. During this session, Vincent will share the eye-opening results from various surveys on the state of incident management and how the lack of response automation hurts business and negatively impacts employees’ work-life balance.
Join Vincent, and:
Every session attendee will receive a free copy of Everbridge’s State of Incident Management eBook highlighting all the results.
Over the years, we’ve seen how the CIO has made it from the back room to the boardroom. While IT’s influence on business practices has significantly increased, there are still quite a few areas in business that don’t relate to IT. Every business has tools for office productivity, business collaboration and process management, the question is whether these tools and, consequently, the business stakeholders that use them contribute to and benefit from an effective IT service delivery function or are they left behind, adding to silos.
During this session, Rajesh will use real time case studies to show how business practices within an organization can actively integrate with the ITSM process and potentially benefit from the relationship. More importantly, Rajesh will discuss how to bring business partners into certainty, offer your CIO a seat in the boardroom and provide answers for the business issues.
We are being inundated with news articles and industry buzz that tell us we should be thinking about Artificial Intelligence. Bots and Virtual Agents sound great but many of us are still wondering how to best take advantage of them. What is the level of effort required by ITSM practitioners to implement them? Now, more than ever, practitioners are being charged with doing more with less and are feeling the pressure from end users to modernize their user experience.
During this session, Justin will use real-time case studies to show how Artificial Intelligence, Bots and Virtual Agents fit into the new ITSM paradigm.
Many organizations have a Self-Service portal in place but struggle with adoption and proving ROI. In today’s world, you need a modern user experience, responsive design and more advanced capabilities to get the interest of users that are more accustomed to attainable service in their daily lives.
During this session, Justin will cover five foundational building blocks for an exceptional Self-Service experience and will discuss how to prioritize these blocks. He will elaborate the quickest way to address a new Self-Service project or refresh your current one.
What happens in the real world rarely matches what you read about in a book or manual. The same holds true for ITIL – what the books say about implementation isn’t necessarily what will happen. Organizations have different needs based on several factors, and one important factor is employee needs. While ITIL provides a deep and extensive set of best practices, it doesn’t necessarily provide businesses with one approach to implementation.
During this session, Arvind will discuss how three different organizations right-sized their ITSM implementation to best address their employees’ needs. He will provide examples of how each organization used an ITIL approach and focused on maximizing the user experience while minimizing the disruption to their work environment, at the same time keeping this main objective in mind – get things done quickly and effectively with as little friction as possible.
The practices of Service Management apply to any department or organization that delivers value in the form of products and services. So, it is not surprising that many organizations such as the City of Ottawa are extending ITSM processes and tools to other departments within the business organization.
Join John as he discusses how ITSM has played a major role in many facets of the city’s internal and externally-focused service delivery model. He will elaborate on how to date – by following the IT department’s lead – 15 different departments including HR, Corporate Security and Finance have incorporated the ITSM framework to simplify their own request management processes to make it an enterprise-wide solution.
Need a flexible service management model that embraces organization capabilities, emerging technologies and a combination of management practices to deliver value? During this session, Doug will discuss how to create a flexible operating model to meet desired business outcomes using the VeriSM™ model.
Doug defines and demonstrates how to fit the service organization, service culture, people and organization structure, progressive practices and innovative technologies into your current service management situation.
For many companies, implementing ITIL is a transformative process that improves the way the company performs in many aspects. Accurately measuring that value quantitatively as opposed to qualitatively, can be a daunting task.
During this session, Matthew will explore just how the elusive quantitative proof of the value of ITIL can be accurately measured, reported and improved upon. He will also explain how to definitively prove and improve the value of your ITIL Event and Incident Management implementation.
Service Desk teams are being tasked to handle requests faster, be more responsive to their business or organization and provide a consumer-like user experience. One of the most promising technologies in this quest is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Natural Language Processing will change the way IT organizations handle incidents, changes and requests. Machine Learning will take knowledge management to a new level and Virtual Support Agents will support you and your end users. Regardless of your maturity and your approach to technology adoption, AI is weaving its way into everyday life, IT and the service desk.
Join Chuck and learn how your service desk team can build a foundation today that will enable the fruition of the AI realities to come.
The rise of the Internet Of Things (IoT) dramatically increases the number of devices that are connected to the internet and sending and receiving data. As every single device is exposed to common threats of the internet, IoT vendors and service providers are facing a game-changing challenge. How do we handle vulnerabilities and security incidents to minimize risk and identify possible threats?
During this session, Christopher will provide you with practical, proven advice on how ITIL best practices give guidance to such organizations to help ensure a good customer experience. He will define and discuss possible vulnerabilities and security incidents and present best-case scenarios on how to face future threats.
With the advances in technology, are organizations ready for the powerful changes that AI could bring and how will it impact the way they handle IT service and support?
AI is already more common than most people think. It’s in their smartphone applications, business tools, video games and search engines. Most of it is elementary in complexity compared to smart cars and other big ideas you see in the media, but these machines can learn and react just as humans can. IT professionals might use AI to help predict network overloads or staffing shortages. Machine learning tools can interpret data trends to predict when incidents will increase or when outages might occur.
Join Marc as he paints a realistic picture, based on Samanage’s recent research, of the impact automation and AI is having on Service Management.
He will also elaborate on the following:
The world faces a conundrum with information technology rapidly advancing, transforming society and the way human beings interact. The risks invited by such advances have grown massively. Even more disturbing, is the fact that most of the notable cyber incidents afflicting enterprises recently have come about due to internal failures – errors of process and misconfigurations resulting in the exposure of sensitive consumer information, to be potentially found and misused by malicious hackers.
There is a silver lining to this dark cloud. With information security and cyber resilience being the first to be threatened and the threats coming from internal error and not external hackers, the solution is already at hand.
Join Mike, as he discusses how Service Management is in fact, security and how Service Management professionals who are responsible for validating changes and ensuring limited downtime can be security professionals. He will elaborate on how IT professionals can do more to secure the safety of their data by instituting and enforcing Service Management policies like ITIL.
With businesses becoming increasingly digital, the consequences of change failure to an organization’s reputation and brand can be enormous. Traditional approaches to managing these risks are either slow and unreliable or altogether ineffective. During this session, Joe will discuss how a machine-learning driven approach to change can prevent operational disruption, reduce the cost of recovery, and enable organizations to focus on growth and innovation. He will also share his experiences with how IT organizations are leveraging advanced analytics to identify issues before they happen and evolve with the business.
Enterprises are being fueled more and more by smart technologies like sensors, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and automation. These smart technologies enable new capabilities that help drive strategic competitive advantages. As a result, CIOs & IT Help Desk leaders are keen to leverage these technologies to satisfy stringent service level agreements, further reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.
Are you ready for these new smart technologies? How equipped are you to handle the requirements? Join Satyen as he uses his real-life experiences to provide you with advice that you need to get ready and equipped for the changes that you are about to experience.
IT Services and IT Operations are often seen as siloed departments that share little in systems and process. The fact of the matter is, they both share a common goal – to ensure the technology powering the business is running optimally and without interruption to users. Join Gerald as he explores and uses his life experiences to show how to combine IT Operations and Service Management to automate common processes, eliminate outages and increase user productivity.
IT leaders universally recognize the importance of self-service capabilities and are making a significant investment in self-help portals and tools. Yet, they find that employee adoption rates remain low. This remains true even after education campaigns and other similar measures are put into place to drive adoption. As a result, IT continues to be faced with high help desk call rates, escalating costs, and increasingly frustrated employees.
Why is it that we can get dinner delivered or grab a ride anywhere from our mobile device in minutes in our personal lives—but engaging IT, HR, Sales, and Finance at work is anything but simple? During this session, Pat will show that it doesn’t need to be that way. He will walk through practical applications of forward-looking AI, virtual agents, visual workflows, mobile technologies, and consumerized experiences that are enabling companies to achieve employee adoption rates as high as 60%. Pat will also show how this can be accomplished without extensive and costly professional services or overhauling existing IT infrastructure.
This session is sponsored by Pink’s Platinum exhibitor, ServiceNOW.
The deployment of ServiceNow became a catalyst event to reshaping and rebranding Assurance’s internal employee IT Helpdesk. The transformation included a rebuild of the Service Management technology stack, a full rebrand to IT SERVICE DESK, job description updates, employee communication, mission statement, service level creation, and much more. Jim Maza, Vice President, Information Technology at Assurance will describe the roadmap they embarked on for such an evolution with the outcome resulting in a high-quality internal IT service department at Assurance that delivers smart and reliable solutions with a continuously positive technology experience.
ITIL has been helping IT organizations structure and organize the complete range of service management from service strategy to service operation, yet most Agile or DevOps initiatives focus only on a portion of that lifecycle. During this session, Inbar Oren, Methodologist and SAFe Fellow at Scaled Agile will discuss how to build a more scalable continuous delivery with a DevOps approach. He will discuss how this starts at the portfolio level with strategy and connects ITIL to help align the delivery of value across Lean-Agile teams, programs, and portfolios.
Everyone remembers the stories we heard growing up and the lessons we associated with them. Whether it was at the feet of our parents or grandparents, from a teacher or a fable, stories were a means to leverage what was learned or experienced in the past and to use this as a guide for the future. Story telling in the corporate setting can be a valuable communication and influence tool as well as an invaluable skill for organizational change managers, leaders and those wanting to make a difference in the organization. Adults learn through experience and stories that relate situations of the past and provide anecdotal guidance for the future are invaluable. Jack Probst will provide concrete examples and guidance from his consultant toolbox for what makes a good story, what the benefits and uses of corporate stories are and how you can develop into a corporate storyteller. Be prepared to engage and begin developing your skills as a storyteller.
John Kotter's 8 Steps For Leading Change, remains a viable model for senior leaders to guide a change effort. It has not lost its value with time and is still considered the most popular change model in the world today.
In this session, Robin focuses on Kotter's fourth step – Communicate The Change Vision. In his book, Kotter states, "communicate to the power of 10!"
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make during major transformations is that they do not do enough to communicate all key aspects of the change – in fact, Kotter’s research shows that most leaders under-communicate. But, what does it take to communicate the change vision effectively? Robin will discuss the need to: communicate the change vision frequently and in many different ways, present details of the change simply without jargon and buzz words, make it easy to understand; deliver the message in person and not just through email, make communication two-way, use many stories, metaphors, analogies, visuals and examples to paint a compelling picture of the future, use both large meetings and smaller group meetings; walk the talk, and keep it ongoing. What have other IT leaders done to effectively communicate? Robin will dig into her many consultant case stories and present real world examples based on her many ITSM consulting engagements with IT organizations.
One of Pink17's most popular sessions! Attend this presentation to learn about the communication styles of the world's best chocolate makers and determine your own style too. You can use this insight to better relate to others – and hey, all that and chocolate too!
This session not only features chocolate, there is also focus on communication and motivation. Denise reviews nine key concepts to help participants get more out of work and life. They'll learn about persistence, passion, effective allocation of resources, the law of diminishing returns, and much more. And, here’s the best part – the session includes a chocolate tasting to demonstrate not only how to appreciate chocolate, but also life itself. Give them chocolate and bring down the house!
Each of us has our own personality type and preferred communication style which impacts how we relay and respond to information. Effective communication begins with the realization that our messages are always colored by individual bias, experience and context in both the sender and receiver.
With this degree of variability, the question then becomes how do you ensure that you are connecting with all personalities and perspectives that you are conversing with? Any time you want to expand your reach beyond your personal inner circle and connect with people who think and feel differently than you do, your communication skills will be the key factor that determine your results.
During this interactive session, Joe will use his real-world experiences from Sempra Energy combined with a neuroscience based approach to demonstrate how to improve the effectiveness of your meetings and conversations on both a personal and professional level. He will use his own personal stories combined with audience participation to show you how to approach all conversations with confidence and to ensure that your message is received and understood.
Do YOU feel overworked and overwhelmed? It’s no secret that most employees feel this way as they run on empty trying to keep up with the constant demands placed upon them. 70% of people in the US say they never receive recognition in the workplace and more than 50% of managers are missing the mark when it comes to showing appreciation. Showing and receiving genuine appreciation can help one handle and manage the stress of constant change.
During this session, Karen, a certified facilitator for The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, will help you understand the languages and how she has used her certification to apply them at Corning. She will use her hands-on experience to help you gain a deeper understanding of your own appreciation needs and the needs of others. You will also learn:
Learn the language, hit the mark, and change your workplace!
Not sure about whether you want to invest in the full three-day certification course? Here’s an excellent opportunity to get a “taste” of Pink’s Business Relationship Management program! Graham provides you with a few major elements of the full certification course including the “house of BRM”. You’ll walk away with a high level overview of some of the key principles and increased knowledge of why BRM skills are must-haves for today’s successful IT professional.
In today’s ever-changing and highly competitive business world, organizations need to be agile – to move quickly and easily; to be able to adapt and quickly respond to change. Robin explains what Agile, Scrum and DevOps really are; how they are linked and how to apply key concepts in your IT organization.
Easy in theory, but not always easy to implement! Join Jennifer as she digs deep into her vast implementation experience and takes you beyond the theory in the ITIL certification courses. It’s like getting free consulting!
Jennifer will start by identifying the biggest issues that most organizations have applying the theory of ITIL for these three key and interrelated processes, then provide you with practical how-tos for how to overcome the most common barriers to success. This is a not to be missed session if you want to learn not just “what to do” but “how to” get it right!
In this half day workshop, Troy will present excerpts from Pink’s Lean IT Leadership Certification Course – quickly becoming one of the highest rated education programs. Troy’s overview includes:
Beverly will provide you with an overview of Pink's 2-day course by the same name, which is a highly rated and very practical program based on Harvard Business School's Professor Kotter's 8-Step Model for implementing change. Kotter’s world famous book, Leading Change is recognized as one of the all-time best business books and the definitive work on the subject. Harvard Business School Professor, John P. Kotter, methodically and carefully explains his 8-step process for leading and managing major organizational change in an easy to understand fashion. If you're a manager at any level of your IT organization, who is currently leading any aspect of a major change (and today, it's an ongoing occurrence!), understanding Kotter's 8-step change process is a must-know, and this is a not-to-be-missed session. Beverly will also provide several real-world examples for each of the 8 steps.
The interconnectivity of several new and long standing methodologies and best practices supporting ITSM is the key to driving real value for your internal business partners. But what are these practices and how do they work together to help IT deliver services better, faster and cheaper?
This half-day workshop (a shortened version of Pink’s 1-day Agile Service Management Primer) shows how proven ITSM capabilities and Lean, Agile and DevOps practices can work together to enable digital transformation, accelerate IT processes, remove waste, lower cost and increase value to your customers.
You will learn the essential knowledge needed to adopt new practices and adapt service management processes to deliver business value throughout the organization.
The complexity and dynamics of today's global business environment continually drives organizations to re-evaluate, reflect upon and potentially change who and what they are. These dynamics will require organizations, teams and individuals to adapt or learn new ways of thinking and working. In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge proposes the concept of a "learning organization" that promotes organizations to develop a capacity to constantly learn and apply those learnings to adapt in order to meet new challenges. In this half-day day workshop, Jack will guide you through the nuances of what it means to be a learning organization including Senge's five disciplines and 10 archetypes, the impact on leadership and the influence of teams. Learn the steps to becoming a learning organization, why this is important, and also what to avoid.
To help in your selection process, each session has been described as General, Beginner, and Beyond Beginner. Use the following chart as your guide to choose the session that best fits your individual situation.
| CODE | DESCRIPTION |
| General | These sessions are of general interest to everyone regardless of level of knowledge, experience or industry certification. |
| Beginner | These sessions are aimed at those who are new to the subjects presented, and who likely do not possess industry certification or have just started project implementation. |
| Beyond Beginner | These sessions are for those with practical implementation experience, and have attained knowledge of the subject beyond the foundation level. |
The world is filled with truly courageous and inspirational people who make a difference, and each year we bring you the best!
Take a look at this line-up of heavy duty hitters! The Power Hour includes an awesome line-up of high profile speakers, who we are featuring in a very special way. Instead of scheduling only one keynote general session in this time slot, there are four very powerful sessions to choose from! Choose the one that’s right for you and your areas of interest.
Maximize your learning! Start your Pink18 conference experience on Sunday afternoon with one of these value-add breakout sessions.
Seasoned IT leaders and business experts will provide best practices, and proven and practical how-tos for effectively managing and leading people through the process of organizational and cultural change. Learn how to effectively plan for and manage through the many communication processes needed to achieve success. Many speakers are on hand to show you how to get it right.
Find out how to apply a strong IT business strategic perspective from pioneering and innovative CIOs, senior IT leaders and leading industry experts.
Fast becoming “must-have” tools, senior IT leaders are embracing the principles of Lean and Agile to gain improved efficiency and productivity.
The Service Desk, and closely related operational processes, continue to be major focus areas for many of today’s IT organizations. What do IT support managers need to know to achieve operational excellence? Find out from leading support industry experts and case study practitioners featured in this track.
The ITIL framework was introduced in England over two decades ago, and today it is the most universally adopted IT management approach of all time. In North America, there are many organizations who have been successfully using ITIL principles for over ten years – we’re bringing them to you! Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear what they have to say about the right way, versus the wrong way to adopt, adapt and apply ITIL best practices.
There are many misconceptions today about what DevOps is and what it is not! Speakers in this track discuss the ins and outs and profile how to gain real business benefits from DevOps. Learn why it is essential for any business aspiring to be lean, agile and able to respond rapidly to changing customer and marketplace demands.
Organizational Change Management is the approach for transitioning individuals and teams to a desired future state. It involves managing the effect of new business processes, changes in organizational structure or cultural changes within an enterprise. Simply put, Organizational Change Management addresses the people side of change.
Each year we gather the brightest minds to explore today's most pressing issues and trends. The Pink Think Tank (PTT) team gathers for a full day during the weekend before the conference to debate and discuss a specific topic. During the conference, their findings are presented and white papers are also made available.
Topic: Leadership, Structure & Cultural Transformation For The Digital Age
The mainstream adoption of Cloud Services, Consumer Technology and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence are having a major disruptive effect on traditional business models. Many have called the impact of these emerging technologies, "The Third Industrial Revolution", and with any period of major change, companies need to learn new skills and ways of doing business to remain competitive.
This new reality and competitive environment is without a doubt driving major changes in leadership, organizational structures, culture, process and automation. To address these challenges, this year’s PTT will focus on what IT leaders need to understand and do in the short and medium term to support the necessary transformative actions required to remain viable and competitive in the new digital age.
Key areas that require consideration and discussion include:
Join us to hear what this year's PTT team of senior leaders have to share based on their personal and collective experience.
Joe Hayes,
VP & CIO, Prudential Group Insurance
Gustav Toppenberg,
Vice President Enterprise Architecture
& Chief Architect,
Catalina USA
Niel Nickolaisen,
Chief Technology Officer,
OC Tanner
Cary Westmark,
VP Of IT, Cable One
Troy DuMoulin,
VP, Research & Development,
Pink Elephant
Jack Probst,
Principal Consultant,
Pink Elephant
Robert Medearis,
SVP, Bank Of America
David Mainville,
CEO & Co-Founder, Navvia
Case studies, suppliers, and industry experts show you what it really takes for successful process implementation and integration, for enabling better decision-making, and for monitoring service performance to identify continual improvement opportunities.
Knowing how to communicate effectively is a must-have competency for managers at all levels – in fact, it is a building block of successful organizations. Speakers in this track will profile best practices and techniques to build and promote strong team spirit, and effectively lead and inspire others, especially during change initiatives.
Only at Pink’s conference! No one else provides a half-day free educational session. Choose from one of many workshops ranging from operational to strategic in focus.
