Two more CAB-related documents are now available at the bottom of the change management page.

We have probably all heard the Lord Kelvin quote, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. So why not place more emphasis on measuring performance of our IT infrastructure? ITIL gives us key performance indicators, KPIs, as guidance, but I wonder what percentage of university IT departments track where they perform relative to defined indicators. My guess is that nearly all departments do some, but few departments are doing this on a large scale department wide. But why not? Especially since this feedback would foster improvement efforts.

Lately I have been thinking about topic of how best practice frameworks fit together. Whether you follow the PMBOK, ITIL CMMI, COBIT, and the list goes on, a good chance exists that you will find times when the schools of thought overlap as well as contradict one another. It is fair to say that all models inevitably have both evangelists and critics, but it is my belief that all the proclaimed “best practice” models have at least some good takeaways. So, to dismiss any one model altogether is a bit close-minded.

Information technology service management is the practice of managing an IT infrastructure by employing a service-oriented perspective. A best practice framework known as ITIL offers guidelines on how to manage an IT portfolio by viewing it as a collection of services that provide value to customers. ITIL orients its guidance around the lifecycle of a service beginning with conceiving a strategy, followed by designing the service, and subsequently transitioning the service into an operational mode.

Three presentations submitted by Wake Forest University IS staff have been selected for the 2009 EDUCAUSE SE Conference in Atlanta, GA on June 1-3:

“Sustainable Governance: Transforming IT from an oral to a written culture” will be presented by John Borwick and Jim Love discussing the value of establishing a formalized management process for departmental governing documents.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009, the ITSMf USA Higher Education Special Interest Group held its first event on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. We attended the event online. Although we were not physically in attendance, I thought it was noteworthy that we attended the very first meeting of this SIG. Many of groups representing best practices have been around for decades. It is exciting to say that we took part in the initial event of a SIG that has the potential to transform the use of information technology in higher education.

A new “point/counter point” session format was added to the mix of presentation types this year at EDUCAUSE. It turned out to be my favorite format of all sessions this year. Mostly, this is due to the presenters involved. My favorite session of EDUCAUSE 2008 was titled “The Community Source Model: Promise or Peril for Higher Ed?”. In the one-hour session, Dr. Brad Wheeler and Adrian Sannier discuss the issues facing higher education’s software sourcing options – community sourcing model vs. proprietary sourcing model.

Kelley Anderson of Carnegie Mellon University presented a session titled “Development of a Project Management Office. The presentation gave insight into the current status of project management at Carnegie Mellon by discussing the critical decisions that were made over the past year. For example, should you take a “top down” (portfolio management) approach or a “bottom up” (project management) approach when you have limited FTEs dedicated full time to project management? CMU opted for the top down approach.

EDUCAUSE 2008 was hosted in Orlando, FL from Tuesday, October 28 to Friday, October 31. On Tuesday, four members of Yale’s ITS department held a preconference seminar titled “Understanding ITIL and Applying It to Your Organization”. According to the presenters, this was the first pre-conference seminar to fill up! Tuesday’s preconference seminar was split into morning and afternoon sessions. In the morning session, presenters discussed the general overview of ITIL and talked about the different phases of an ITIL implementation.

Carlyn Chatfield, Manager – IT Technical communications at Rice University, has been using Confluence for their enterprise-wide wiki for a couple of years and presented a really nice poster display of their success with the tool. Their wiki is rooted in sharing IS-related information, but future expansions will include content from all departments.

Check out Rice University’s wiki implementation: https://docs.rice.edu/confluence/dashboard.action

Also, check out their wiki-related podcasts: http://itpodcasts.rice.edu/