Enterprise Digital - the podcast

Actually, despite the title, this is our Christmas and New Year special episode. To confirm that Ian was dressed as Father Christmas for this (audio) podcast..! James is a well-known member of the global ITSM community, with a variety of industry associations, working as a partner with TCS, as well as being an experienced podcaster, with a history of broadcasting from various weird situations.. We put to right the worlds of service management, discussing how we confuse operations and metrics with governance (yes), the people and human element, the post-agile (yes) world, ISO38500 (yes). Ian also sets out the reality of the war-time ‘bat-bomb’ (yes!?).   The serious point in this discussion gets to the core – what are organisations there to do…are they working on doing this? We also need to include more tolerance, human centricity and focus in our commercial contracts - being human and inherently benevolent.

This session is short and features just hosts Ian and Barclay, doing a review and ‘lessons learned’ session. We note that there is more talk around people and humanity, mental health as major themes – would this have happened even `5 years ago? Its certainly not just about tools. We discuss the ideas espoused in the podcasts so far – some thinking that ESM can be damaging, if not part of a major wave of new ways of working. We’ve talked robots, the universe, Buddhists and bastards, moments that matter, radioactivity, experience.. and of course, the bar. Join us to listen and reflect or join us on the podcast in 2022..!

IT people don’t understand marketing or value – says this week’s guest Ryan Ogilvy in this engaging and practical episode. That’s a strong but generally true statement and we debate the need to get away from just focussing on what we do to why we are doing it… Ryan has worked on a many projects over the years and comes with a great portfolio of experience, working as an external consultant/contractor with many diverse organisations.  The discussion is highly practical and keeps retuning to the core point of the need to do the right thing, and simply, not just follow orders or expect a toolset to deliver ‘value’ without some understanding of the bigger picture. We also discover the 18monte Zoom call and the fact that Ryan has some dubious claim to being a Scottish Lord. Or is this just another excuse for whisky drinking ? you decide.

This episode was recorded and aired as a session at this years itSMF UK annual conference – the 30th Anniversary event. For that we needed a really special guest and of course ‘industry treasure’ Ivor fitted the bill perfectly, as we were discussing past present and future. There are some great nuggets of wisdom here which span the early days to current and future thinking around service management – why wouldn’t we do things in an agile way, why don’t we trust ourselves and our judgement more, and why we should focus on people not just on tech. We also identify that success is about not being visible... We don’t solve the puzzle of the cats that are terrified of cucumbers but really who cares. We end up in the Horseshoe bar in Glasgow for a nice wine…

Matter Beran is our guest on this brilliant episode – Matt is an experienced Product experience specialist who has worked with Service Now and now is with InvGate. He is also great company and this session is peppered with much positive energy and insight. WE discuss the difference between what is basicall ‘workflow and forms@ and the wider Organizational change aspects of SM, plus we also touch on how we shouldn’t just rely on the vendors to define what ESM is. As ever we end up in the bar and he enjoys creating his own cocktails… Great listening!

Our guest is the head of Service Management for Deliotte, Nathan MacDonald – also a director at itSMF UK. We discuss how Service Management outside of IT doesn’t have the same baggage that has developed across IT and IT silos and tribes over the years. There is also a great opportunity to really develop people and how they work in developing (IT) SM – these concepts are also really get more relevant with changes, also ITIL 4 has helped. We also debate whether we should keep the (IT) in service management… We also should stop letting ITSM vendors control the debate over ESM… As ever the bar is a better draw and Nathan’s choice is one for celebration.

Our guest for this fantastic discussion is the ex-sceptic, Rob England, of Teal Unicorn, author of Standard and Case, and much much more. Rob’s current focus is on good/better/open management, with a good sprinkling of agile practise in there, probably best summarised in this conversation as – you can be nice, you don’t have to be a b*st*rd..! We also cover the impact and inputs to Robs’ book - Standard and Case – how it has been appropriated and how its still hugely relevant. This is quite simply a brilliant conversation, and everyone interested in good management as well as good service management should listen in…

Jon is a senior product manager at BMC with a lot of experience and active thought leadership in ITSM and DevOps. The conversation starts with a communal admission that we all had to look up ‘liminal’ when it started being used by Professor Dave Snowden (ref Cynefin). However, the concept of working at the edges and boundaries across frameworks and new ways of working is a key element in the discussion covering DevOps, ITSM, ITIL 4 (Jon contributed to 2 books) Team Topologies (the book) and the notion of working across silos in value streams. Onboarding is about ‘working from day 1’, not ‘get a laptop’. This is an excellent conversation that flows across a number of liminal areas with seamless ease… Eventually we also hit the bar.

Wow, this discussion is a creative caravanserai of ideas and ‘ologies. Our guest is the indomitable Mark Smalley, thinker, writer and builder of bridges across the IT industry. We move ineluctably from potty-training for cows, to service science and Buddhist sagacity – yes that sentence is true…! Mark has been involved in bringing together a whole new set of worlds of thinking as the lead on the High Velocity IT ITIL 4 book – the least ITIL-like ITIL book ever…we debate the taxonomy of services, products goods and the meaning of life, then enjoy a nice cup of tea at the bar…

This week’s guest is an experienced technology consultant and author – with 4 books to his name, Kevin J Smith, who also started his life working on the shuttle programme at NASA…  From working in technology, Kevin is now fossed on the human side of work more than just frameworks and this is reflected in his latest book on the humanity of IT. We discuss a number of aspects of the evolution of how we work and use IT, now with a renewed focus on enjoying work – the happiness factor – both for our customers and of course our people. Kevin’s point about ‘happiness is contagious’ is well made and reflects the need to improve the work experience, as a more broadly diverse workforce. We are also now the ‘hub of the wheel’ for organisations, and we should focus on innovation more than just fixing things and keeping things running. We end up on the opportunity that we have to bring in new types of people to our workplace. As is ever the case our podcast workplace drifts into the bar, Kevin enjoys a bourbon..