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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Iceland Volcano: The Sky is Falling...Actually, the Earth's Inner Core is Falling

Just thought I'd take the opportunity to be a Chicken Little and say "...the sky is falling!" and be correct! :-)

I've also lived through St. Helens. No direct ash in my experience, but there were the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen for about 12 to 18 months. (Louisville Ky.)

Volcanic ash impacts aviation most directly. Everything else can go on but in many cases planes don't fly.

Thank goodness it doesn’t happen often.

But what if it did? What if the Earth decided to have a extended spell of flatulence? What would our world look like then?

During the course of this discussion, someone else commented that while passenger aviation is greatly affected by this, so is commercial cargo. Commercial cargo definately helps grease the skids of the global economy.

Something to ponder.

More to follow...

Braun Tacon

1:29 pm pdt

Thursday, April 8, 2010

What I've been doing these last few months...

Howdy. I've been largely absent for the past month or three. Not completely absent though definitely truant. Let me bring you up to speed.

If you look at my previous post:

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Incident, Problem, Change, and Knowledge Version 2.0

Should have been this way from the start.

Incident, Problem, Change, and Knowledge Management Version 2.0

Evolution, not revolution...right?

you will notice that once again Incident, Problem, Change, and Knowledge Management (IPCK) is a topic of discussion. I am already firmly convinced that IPCK is a critical success factor for overall IT Service Management excellence. I am even more convinced that while these processes can (and often do) stand alone, it is by ensuring and leveraging their effective integration that you are able achieve maximum benefit.

Incident Management is important because when Incidents occur there is more than one cost incurred. There is a cost when a Service or CI fails or is degraded, and there is as cost to Restoring that Service or CI.. Reducing Incidents has an immediate payoff.

Problem Management is equally as important because its function is to put an Incident to bed one and for all. Repeated Incidents have repeated costs. The value of Problem Management is that by discovering the root cause of Incidents you can effectively and efficiently reduce future occurrences. Problem Management helps prevent Incidents and therefore helps avoid the costs associated with Service failures.

Change Management serves to aid transformation but with transformation comes increased risk. Poorly executed Changes are often the root cause of Incidents or Problems. Getting Change Management right goes a long way to make that risk manageable

But in my view Knowledge Management has the biggest opportunity for long term payoff . Knowledge learned and then reused multiple times has real value. Knowledge learned, lost and then relearned has little value. A good Knowledge Management Process makes the right Knowledge available to the right person at the right time. It ensures that Resolutions and Known Errors are captured to aid with Incident Management and that your Problem Management efforts are not lost, but instead applied. Changes are captured and communicated by the Knowledge Management process to all stakeholders and makes impacted parties aware of Changes and their scope. This helps ensure that resource efforts or time is not spent trying to resolve an Incident that really is not an Incident, i.e. a Known Outage. Finally a good Knowledge Management Process insures that lessons learned are captured and shared thereby reducing the frequency of avoidable errors and that time is not wasted recreating existing Knowledge.

Knowledge Management can be summed up simply...if you learn something and you write it down...you probably will never have to learn it again. If you learn something and you don't write it down...you probably haven't learned a thing.

And speaking about about Knowledge Management, MediaWiki comes to mind. The Wikipedia is an extremely versatile tool. We are actively exploring and exploiting MediaWiki as a Knowledge Management tool in our enterprise. The jury is still out, but results so far are quite encouraging.

Next topic, using a Wiki as a Service Catalog.

More to follow...

Braun Tacon

8:10 pm pdt

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BraunsBlog...Random musings on specific topics. The central themes will be ITIL V.3, Information Security, and other sundry ITSM topics. That said, there are many more things in this world on which to opine, so don't be surprised if I do now and then.

About me...Braun Tacon, Portland Oregon. Husband, father, aviator and former Air Traffic Controller with over 20 years experience in the Information Technology and IT Service Management field, the last thirteen years of which having been spent at a Fortune 500 in the Pacific Northwest.

Professional background and certifications include Aviation Management, Education, Systems Management, Information Security and Process, Standards and Quality Management. Always delivered with a strong focus on ITIL and similar Process Improvement Frameworks such as LEAN, SixSigma and TQM (Thank you Mr. Deming!).

Hobbies include reading, writing, and even the occasional Karaoke contest!

All opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone.

Contact me...

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? You may contact me at btacon@BraunsBlog.com.