On Location: Executive Strategy and Planning Retreat – Nowy Swiak, Warsaw, Poland
Case Topic: ITIL 4 Foundations: Value Stream – Strategic Service Planning
Headquarters – Warsaw, Poland.
“Global Growth” is the theme for this year’s executive meeting retreat; 2 days of strategic analysis, discussions and planning. Last year there was no representation in the meeting from IT. The most senior IT role in the company was the Director of IT Operations. Now, the new CIO is key to the company’s digital transformation initiatives. What difference a year makes! Let’s follow the CIO and see how she operates.
Six countries now but growing to 16, all with multiple lines of existing business. Fresh and Frozen Packaged Cook-and-Serve products for grocery stores, branded and unbranded product for restaurant supply, company branded kiosks and food trucks with franchising and now talk of new lines of business for seasoning packs and pierogi cooking classes. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the opening presentation from the company Executive Vice President.
The changes within the organization over the last year have been subtle yet monumental. It has truly been a cultural change in acceptance that has allowed IT to make progress with ITSM projects and initiatives. Teams regularly work closely with the business to ensure that efforts and activities in IT, are targeted on the services and issues that match the business priorities. They have also fully embraced IT’s focus on continual improvement.
Let’s take a look at how the CIO uses ITIL 4 to apply to the planning session meeting, particularly the section on the presentation of opportunities.
In ITIL 4, we describe how activities are integrated across the service value chain activity stages to create and support a product or service. Individuals involved in IT service management activities can define interactions, ensuring that all activities are tied to the co-creation of value with the stakeholders.
The Demand to Value diagram illustrates the stages of the whole service value chain and the ITIL practices that tend to make major contributions in the identified stages but please note that each and every practice can be involved in every stage of the service value chain.
Activities that are conducted to create products and services will be documented and described as value streams. An organization will have multiple value streams since each value stream is a series of actions taken to create and deliver a service component.
The value stream for the Strategic Service Planning activity taking place in this meeting would be directed at describing how to go from ideas presented in a meeting to the initiation of service design activities. The first output is illustrated as a meeting request for the purpose of beginning the process of defining service requirements. The value for the Executive VP and any other identified stakeholders is that the organization as a whole is working towards achieving the plans that they have communicated.
The Value Stream diagram shows an example of the activities that could take place in the Plan, Engage and Design and Transition service value chain stages. Key practices would be utilized and areas for improvement would also be identified.
Value: The meeting request and resulting meeting provides value. The stakeholders will have the opportunity to participate in a relationship of value co-creation.
About the Author
Jim Jackson is the Managing Director of Blue Sky AFC Associates LLC. Jim holds the ITIL Expert Certificate (V3) and has also completed ITIL 4 Foundations certification. Jim is a service management professional and has been an accredited instructor of ITIL Foundations since 2005. He has shared his open, non-restricted view of the ITIL framework as he has trained and assisted hundreds of candidates to prepare for and pass the ITIL Foundations examinations. Jim has also written accredited courseware for earlier versions of ITIL Foundations and he contributed to ITIL 4 accredited course materials for Thought Rock in 2019.
About the Series – IT Service Management Around the World
These are fictional stories of service management and any similarity, you may find, to your own organization is purely coincidental. The purpose of these service management musings is to introduce service management and ITIL concepts as well as postulate on how ITIL and its components could be at play in any size business located anywhere in the world. The opinion stories are written to motivate customer centric, service oriented thinking and discussions. The content is not intended to constitute advice of any sort. While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information no liability is accepted for any loss resulting from the use of or reliance on this content.
Acknowledgements
ITIL is a registered trademark of Peoplecert.
Diagrams and images contained in this article have been created by Jim Jackson and remain the property of Blue Sky AFC Associates LLC, Copyright 2019.