Drinking from the Fire Hose!! - ITSMAP Ep 16

Month in review

Tristan, Simone, Andrew and Karen discuss the past months highlights and lowlights.

Tristan turns 40! Tristan and Andrew are frustrated with the RFI/RFP process and it should definitely be a subject of a future podcast. Good things happening with itSMF NZ.

‘Enjoying Your Working Life’ seminars a great success for HDAA. Simone sad to miss out on Aprill Allen’s presentation at the NSW itSMF seminar but Andrew was there and it was a great success. Follow April on Twitter @aprillallen.

Andrew getting great feedback from an organisation implementing his recommendations.

itSMF NZ and AU will offer assistance to anyone who wants to present. There is coaching and mentoring available.

Karen’s top ten tips on giving presentations available here.

Karen reflects on the Pink12 Conference and the recent itSMF Sweden Conference in Stockholm.

The team discusses ‘Hot Sources of Information’ and ‘How to Drink from the Fire Hose’.

Andrew’s highly recommended book is ‘Eight Things We Hate About IT’.

Tristan doing his ICT research and networking with his peers at the pub – “A Few Quiet Yarns”.

Back2ITSM is the place to be but not as a lurker! http://www.facebook.com/groups/back2itsm/

Can we avoid Back2ITSM going the same way as the Linkedin forums?

Other sources include HBR, itSMFA Bulletins, itSMFNZ newsletters, At Your Service, CIO Magazine.

Use Twitter to see what others are reading. Follow people when you really want to know what they are saying. Everything else should be put in ‘lists’. This helps ‘drink from the fire hose’.

Evernote and Instapaper are good tools for filtering and saving to read later and recording ideas. Social bookmarking can be done with Delicious.

Integrate your online tools with ‘If This Then That’ and SMAK.

Team discuss hash tag usage and social media etiquette. Follow the team on Twitter @karen_ferris / @TristanNZ / @simonejomoore / @ajfriar.

Conference Details

Australia http://www.itsmf.org.au/leadit/2012/

New Zealand http://itsmfconference.org.nz/

Booby(s) of the Month

Be careful when you download from the internet that you get what you intended! Kazakhstan’s glorious anthem mishap.

Close

The team will record Episode 17 on 26 April 2012.

Suggestions for guests and podcast content to info@macanta.com.au

Book Review: Balanced Diversity - A Portfolio Approach to Organisational Change

The following book review was recently written for and published in the Australian ITSMF Bulletin.  As we produced this review for the bulletin we thought we'd put it here for our readers benefit.

Author:

Karen Ferris

Audience:

This book is clearly targeted at people leading a Service Management initiative that requires the organisation to change the way they do I.T.

Interestingly though project and change managers alike would benefit from this book as it provides some valuable insights for these professions.

Coverage:

This book introduces a framework for Organisational change that is not broadly known or understood and applies it to the world of I.T. Service management.

Level:

Intermediate to advanced

The below book review was written for and recently appeared in the ITSMF Australia Bulletin.  As it was something produced by Endurance IT we thought it would be worthwhile including here for our readers.

Review:

The title of this book "Balanced Diversity" gets you thinking straight away.  Is it an oxymoron, or is there something subtle here that you are missing? 

As it turns out it is the latter, it takes some time, and a lot of thinking whilst reading the book to really recognise the subtlety of the framework described.  Truth be told, you would only come to fully appreciate this book if you use it in practice.  Luckily for us this is the purpose for which the book has been written. 

Balanced Diversity is in no way your standard service management book.  It is a reference book from the start.  Note the first few chapters are a must read to understand the organisational change dilemma and the framework being introduced.  From this point on you enter into a wealth of information spanning the 59 practices grouped into 20 categories across the four quadrants that make up the framework.

Diving into these pages you will find a wealth of information that has been garnered from across the globe, from Demming, Kotter, Power to Covey you'll find everything from gamification through to the STAR model for recruitment, a template for a communications plan; role descriptions for champions and guiding coalitions alike.  Each element in isolation is helpful, however it is when you use it within the 'Balanced Diversity' framework that you really come to appreciate the true affect they could have.

All of this information spread across the 59 practices is accompanied by case studies and examples of how to apply the practice to ITSM.  Something you will find invaluable when applying it to your organisation.  The challenge though, is how you identify which practices to apply to your situation. With forethought the author has included two valuable chapters.  Chapter 11 - Applying the framework and Chapter 12 - Practical examples for IT service management. 

The one challenge I had in reviewing this book was a lack of guidance on how to use it.  My conclusion on this has been described above, that is read the first few chapters to get the sense of the book, have a look at a few practices and then go to chapters 11 and 12. This aside, and now that I have reviewed the book I believe it will be a worthwhile addition to my library.

The framework itself is a tremendous supplement to all three philosophies of service, project and change management.  Balanced Diversity is most definitely not a book for the novice, having a strong understanding or experience of change in an organisation is critical when applying the material contained within this book. 

I see quite a future for the framework within the Balanced Diversity, everything from supporting case studies, practice selection and assessment tools and more, all of which I look forward to either discovering or creating as I apply what is a good idea to the change initiatives I lead and consult upon into the future.