The very bad experience with a Customer Service Rep. They had no idea what I was talking about and then tried to make it my problem! 47 Minutes of my life wasted. Good thing I am an IT Service Management Professional and know how this should be done.... guess what? This isn't the way.
I would probably not be employed if I didn't learn to interact and maneuver around the politics and personalities at all levels, in getting anything done in IT. So to say there is a back-lash or that I am a weenie for possessing soft-skills is somewhat an oversight as to how Technology needs to function in the modern business environment regardless of industry.
the gap between business and technology is filled with individuals who not only understand and support technology when it fails, but also understand the impact to the business when it does.
most who are in positions that carry the title of Manager like to think they are leaders, but very few understand the difference.
March 1st, 2007 issued in a new chapter in my Technology career, I moved over into the newly formed ITIL Program Management team. My role is as the Project Manager for the global effort. Partly because I am a Project Management freak as well as the fact that I KNOW this service organization since I crawled upwards through it.
Also, I am finished with 2 days of the 3 day ITIL Foundation course. And to be honest, I can't say that there have been any real OMG moments in the course. Well, other than the concept of the generation of a Problem Record only occurs with more than one incident unless it is a Major incident. That is new to me and a very interesting spin on things.Our organization operates in a more flat ticketing structure where you can create either a Problem or Request ticket. From the Request ticket you can create task tickets, but they must belong to a parent Request. I must say that I do appreciate the ITIL way of doing much more.For other reasons today is a day off from the course and we will head back in tomorrow to wrap up some key chapters as well as a review with the Exam in the afternoon. I should do better than average, hell I would expect to do alot better than average considering that my background started in Frontline Support on a Trading Floor and progressed up through management of purchasing, data center and Service Desk operations, finalizing with Technology Account Management (basically the Service Manager) for a Trading division and last year as a Business Analyst for an Audit group.As I said, I have always been a proponent for running my Technology teams in a way that seemed to align nicely with the ITIL framework. The fact that we are deploying this through out the global organization finally adds some validation to what I have always believed. The days of Cowboy Technology have to end when an organization reaches a certain size or volume of business. Time to pen up the stallions and build some fences around them.
I am now transitioning out of my role as a Business Analyst within a development team, back into the Service/Infrastructure world to join a new team that will attempt to go where no technologist in the organization dared go before... towards implementing an industry aligned IT Service Management model using the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Of course, ITIL is central to that effort which is to say that this year will be an exercise in rapid knowledge absorption for the organization as a whole. It is also the year that will see the industry move from ITIL v2 to ITIL v3 so from a career standpoint, it is indeed a great time to begin this journey.*much of this topic can be followed on my "Pro" blog http://itsm-uncovered.com
