IT Service Management Trends 2015 and 2016

In the final 2015 episode of the ITSM Crowd, Simone Moore, Randy Steinberg and Steve Morgan joined me to discuss the IT service management trends and news for 2015.  We looked ahead to 2016 and had so much to discuss we ran out of time.

Here’s a summary of what we talked about, plus a few topics we didn’t have time to address.

DevOps

DevOps has been growing for a few years now, but 2015 is the year it really took off and started to spread into the IT service management community.  As Randy Steinberg noted in the ITSM Crowd, the DevOps focus has leant more towards development teams and tooling, but not organisations are taking notice and operations are getting more involved and asking “what does this mean for us”.  The DevOps community can learn a lot from IT service management and how some organisations have expected it to be a silver bullet, but the IT service management community can learn a lot from DevOps too.

A notable event this year was the creation of the DevOps Institute, who aim to bring some structure to the DevOps training market.  The DevOps Foundation is proving popular with organisations large and small who want to start their DevOps journey.

DevOps conferences like the DevOps Enterprise summit are getting more and more popular, and it’s worth checking out your local DevOps Days.

Cyber Security

Barely a week goes by without another cyber security incident hitting the news.  Well-known companies like Target and Talk Talk are learning the hard way about the impact of a cyber breach.

This year, companies have started to accept that cyber security isn’t just an ‘IT thing’ and can’t be fixed by technology alone.  With a large percentage of incidents caused by human action, cyber security needs to cover people, processes and technology.

Global best practice leaders AXELOS launched the RESILIA guidance and training to help organisations address the people side of cyber security.  ITSM Zone is proud to be one of only 4 global courseware providers for the RESILIA product.

Service Integration and Management (SIAM)

SIAM is another area that’s been discussed for a few years and has exploded in 2015.  SIAM helps organisations manage complex supply chains and deliver customer value.  You can learn more about SIAM by reading the recent Van Haren publication, or by getting involved with groups like Back2ITSM on Facebook.  itSFMUK have also created a SIAM special interest group to start to codify best practices.  SIAM (like ITIL) has an impressive pedigree, created by the UK government and adopted in the private sector too.

IT4IT

The Open Group, supported by large companies like HPE, Shell and BP are working on IT4IT.  Described as “The IT4IT Reference Architecture prescribes holistic management of the business of IT with continuous insight and control, enabling Boundaryless Information Flow™ across the entire IT Value Chain”, IT4IT helps organisations manage their IT value chain by focusing on:

• Strategy to Portfolio
• Request to Fulfil
• Requirement to Deploy
• Detect to Correct

Lean IT

As interest in areas like Lean, Agile and Scrum grows, the Lean IT Association was set up to manage Lean IT Education and Certification.

Continuing Professional Development for IT service management and project management

AXELOS launched their CPD scheme this year to help IT service management and project management professionals track their ongoing education and development.  Join before the end of the year and save £100 on your first year’s membership.

Coming up in 2016

In 2016, I’m expecting to see DevOps, IT4IT, cyber security and SIAM all continue to grow and evolve. The demands on IT continue to grow, and IT needs to be able to respond to demands with a range of different tools, methodologies and frameworks.

2015 has been an exciting year and 2016 looks set to be the same.

Also look out for these topics:

ITIL Practitioner

The ITIL Practitioner publication and exam launches in 2016.  Training isn’t mandatory for this certification, but many training organisations will be adding this to their ITIL portfolios.  The certification is worth 3 credits towards ITIL Expert.

ISO/IEC20000 updates

Watch out for news about updates to ISO/IEC20000 in 2016.  The international standard for service management is currently undergoing a refresh.