On August 9, 2012, from 2-3 PM ET, the itSMF Higher Education SIG will hold a small group discussion about IT governance. Our facilitator will be John Borwick, Director of IS Portfolio Management at Wake Forest University.  We try to limit the size of the discussion group so that we can include everyone. If you are interested, please sign up via our form: http://snipurl.com/23gv310

Sometimes people are able to see that their processes are at maturity level 0 or 1, but the processes should be at levels 3, 4, or 5.  The process owner for these new processes has to "surf the maturity model," if you will, as the organization grows from level 0 to 1 to 2 to 3.  The key component of this "surfing," for me, is that the "surfer" knows the organization needs to move up 2, 3 or more maturity levels, but others don't necessarily see even  the next maturity level.

The itSMF USA Higher Ed SIG will be facilitating a presentation on ITSM Governance from John Custy, DPSM, ITIL Expert & Accredited Trainer, and HDI Faculty & Certified Instructor. This 1-hour event will target ITSM Governance models at Higher Ed institutions, the obstacles ITSM practioners in Higher Ed face in Higher Ed while working with process managers, and methods on how to overcome some of those obstacles. 

ITIL Release, Control, and Validation (RCV) Study Group

If you are interested in participating in an ITIL Intermediate RCV study group in mid-March, please send email to hillaryr@bu.edu. We are looking for 5-7 participants in the process of preparing for the exam to share questions, thoughts, and ideas around the RCV concepts. This will be a 1.5 hour web meeting. Participants are be expected have read the related material and will be asked to prepare 5 relevant discussion questions.

The itSMF Higher Education SIG will be hosting a webinar January 25, Lessons Learned from an ITIL Process Maturity Assessment in Higher Education.  Jim Haustein from Cornell and Reg Lo from Third Sky will be presenting.  Here's a copy of the write-up from the SIG "upcoming events" page:

Over the last year to eighteen months I've been thinking about reality, and how we perceive reality.  Each of us has a slightly different idea of what's "really happening," and in my mind part of the Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle is anchoring us to reality through checking--go and see what's really happening!  In IT, we have an especially hard time (literally) seeing reality.  To that end, we should investigate visual indicators.

Thursday November 17, Janelle Heineke facilitated an itSMF Higher Education Special Interest Group small group discussion about Lean IT in Higher Education.  Here are my notes:

My team, the "Portfolio Management" team, is responsible for our department's services and projects.  We facilitate the selection of new projects, we manage the selected projects, and we negotiate, agree on, and monitor service level agreements and our business service catalog on behalf of the department.  One way of thinking about it is, our team's job is really all about other people's jobs: other people that don't report to us, but who we are recommending/pushing/responding to changing what they do for a living.

Hey, everybody!  I was interviewed for an article in Campus Technology about service catalogs!

Are you interested in learning about Lean IT and how it applies to higher education? If so please sign up for this small group discussion!