Getting the quick wins!

How often is it that companies talk about quick wins, and then the project schedule shows 3-4 months before the first quick win can be realized in a production environment?   When it comes to ITSM projects – this is certainly not uncommon.  Defining your ITIL processes that align it to the capability of the underlying ITSM technology and business so often involves a significant amount of over-engineering and analysis paralysis – sometimes with good outcome, but mostly, just wasted time and effort that could’ve been spent doing something more productive.

As much as I’d like to attribute the ability to shorten project life-cycles and getting the quick wins to a technology choice (which certainly can assist), it really all boils down to a company’s culture, processes, the type of leaders, managers and the commitment to getting things done (GTD) within an organization.  Don’t forget that the same culture, leadership style, etc should also be reflected in the supplier organization culture so that gains made by one aren’t lost by the other. So how can using an efficient, simple and easy to use solution such as ServiceNow make a difference if your organization is prone to over-analyzing and procrastinating on everything?  Well the good news is, when you start the actual implementation, you won’t waste any more time.  The bad news is, the rest of the process is still going to be long and painful, and hopefully you’re not stuck in having to deal with this type of organization daily. But what if you are…

How do you change this type of culture? The answer is simple – but a lot of patience and persistence is required….   It happens one step at a time!   Start by demonstrating your own commitment to the culture change and how that change will benefit the organization if everyone adopts the same attitude.   In other words – focus on the quick wins, and do everything in your power to make them QUICK WINS – and then market the success of those quick wins, the benefits, and what’s needed to repeat the process on the next project.

I wish you the best of luck.

Bruce

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