IT in the Park: IT Service Management Into 2018, What Does The Future Hold?

Edinburgh, a historic city of great beauty and atmosphere was the venue for the much anticipated IT in the Park conference this week, the last event of the year for the ITSM zone team.

We were excited not only to attend but also to provide sponsorship to a service management event which is striving to be something different. Its success is a huge credit to the organiser Martin McKenna, who had a vision to bring together a wide cross section of attendees and speakers working within organisations who benefit from technology and digital services.

IT in the Park in full flow

As an education focused organisation IT in the Park is a great opportunity to engage with like minded individuals who are on the front line of addressing issues like attracting new blood into the IT industry and how we up-skill for the digital age.

The task for us all was to ensure that none of the presentations, thought leadership and ideas should end up being confined in the walls of the ITSM world, the subject matter is too important for that.

There is after all a whole world out there that can benefit from the standards and influences that have been built up over the last 2 decades as a foundation for the huge technology shift we now find ourselves in.  

There is a marked change evident in the language, actions, atmosphere and appetite to learn and discuss the future and the journey that we are all on together. With communication and collaboration we can move forward with a common goal to really make a difference to the end user and add value.  

Digital transformation in business

We got the opportunity to speak to many attendees about the new VeriSM project which has been put together with the help of over 70 business organisations and IT service management & education experts to utilise many different aspects of best practice to get successful business outcomes. The draft eBook for this new approach is available from Van Haren publishing. 

It was clear from the sessions that took place that there is an appetite for working smarter through technology and more communicatively through better practices.

Perhaps that's partly down to how traditional business models are changing with work routinely outsourced and organisations looking to this and automation to improve their overall business experience for their end user.

This trend has been evident in the huge take up of SIAM training and certification we have seen in the last 2 quarters.

Here’s just a few of our favourite snippets from the huge range of sessions covering digital transformation to DevOps and SIAM to swarming, with everything in between!

“The fact is you can no longer work in ITSM if you don’t have a passion for providing great customer service.”  Brian Crichton, RBS.

“Effective communication keeps people in the know and out of meetings.” Gerry Sweeney. Hornbill.

“Employees are a neutral in your organisation, they just want to get their stuff done.” Pasi Nikkanen, Happy Signals.

“We need a blended approach of practices to succeed. There is no “one size fits all.” Claire Agutter on VeriSM.

“It’s great to see the value of UX being recognised in digital transformation of service management.” Dr Laura Muir, Edinburgh Napier university. 

“We are very good at fixing problems in IT. What we are bad at is knowing what problems we need to fix.”  Chris Pope, ServiceNow.

“We must ask better questions to move forward with change management.” Scott McGarvey, Clydesdale bank.

Panel session at IT in the Park

These are such interesting times in IT but with great innovation comes great responsibility.

We must strive to create the kind of environment we aspired to build in Edinburgh, for us, all stakeholders and for the future.

That will be from a mix of knowledge sharing and collaboration, structured training and courses, events and talks.

The end goal remains the same whichever the path, service management as the firm foundation for successful organisations looking to the future.  
That’s a vision we believe in.  It’s one that we believe that the introduction of VeriSM may be able to help with.

You can sign up now to receive details of the launch offer when we introduce the first VeriSM qualification in January 2018.