Today was one of the most exciting days that I have experienced thus far during my time at I.S.; ThinkPad distribution day, or the freshman’s first day on campus. While today was slightly exhausting, it was exponentially more exhilarating, exciting and inspiring.
 

The following includes some highlights from my first week at Information Systems.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Day One
 
Today was my first day of work as the Wake Forest Information Systems Fellow. So far things have been running smoothly, with only a few very small hiccups in the process. John Borwick has been extremely helpful in getting me acquainted with everything around I.S, as well as introducing me to everyone in the building. So far today we have made it through a majority of the new hire check list, including going over paperwork, visiting H.R and getting my laptop set up. Today was mainly just an introduction to I.S in general and some of the things that are done here, but I can already tell that this is going to be a highly intellectually stimulating environment in which I will be constantly learning!

One of my takeaways from the Lean Enterprise Institute's book "the Gold Mine" was the concept of a "gemba attitude."  Lean uses a lot of Japanese, and in Japanese "gemba" means "the real place."  Basically, a "gemba attitude" means that you go down to "the place" and actually observe work, rather than relying on second- or third-hand reports of how work is going.

We recently purchased "The Gold Mine/The Lean Manager Set" from the Lean Enterprise Institute. I just started reading "The Gold Mine."

One of Lean's metaphors is to think about a process in terms of rocks and lakes. Let's say that have a lake with a lot of rocks in it, just underneath the surface. As you remove water from the lake, the rocks start to show up. For lean, inventory is a type of "water" that is hiding "rocks" aka variation and waste. Inventory backlogs let you compensate for small issues e.g. if someone can perform a task quickly sometimes and slowly other times. As you remove inventory backlogs you start to uncover other issues in your process.

I'm happy to say I will be attending itSMFusion 2009 in Dallas, TX. If you have never attended an itSMFusion conference, I highly recommend it. It's one of the only times you can wear your ITIL pins and people will know what they are! :-)

Here are the sessions I hope to attend, in order of when they occur. You can see links to all these sessions at the itSMFusion 2009 agenda page.

• Academic Forum (Saturday and Sunday)
  

One neat thing about working with Continual Service Improvement is that I get to explore and research new areas of IT. This is how I found the eSCM-CL body of knowledge from Carnegie Mellon University, which is a framework for IT supplier management capabilities.

Well, I was looking into another area via Gartner, for IT "skills assessments." Skills assessments can be used to help identify who knows what in your department, and they can also help with building job descriptions. Lo and behold, there is a whole framework for IT skills assessment--and it's even partly written by the itSMF! It's called SFIA--Skills Framework for the Information Age.

In the second edition of "Programming Perl," Larry Wall the creator of Perl said programmers should have three virtues:

• Laziness: write labor-saving programs and document, so you don't have to do more work later
• Impatience: anticipate future needs so you don't have to re-tool your programs
• Hubris: wanting to boast about your programming, which means you have to write really good, maintainable code

I think it's fun to extrapolate these "virtues" to IT Service Management:

If services have a certain amount of waste, or "slack," in their implementation and operation, who exactly "pulls the slack out" of services? What groups are the natural champions for improved service management?

Wake Forest University is hiring for an IT Process Analyst. For complete details and to apply, go to www.wfu.edu/hr/careers or call (336) 758-4700. The completion of an online Wake Forest University application is required for this position. Drug screen required. EOE/AA

The essential functions:

ITIL v3's "Service Operation" text describes several Service Operation functions: the Service Desk, Technical Management, IT Operations Management, and Application Management. So what is "application management"?

Application management is a function that takes care of applications through the entire application life cycle. "Function" here means a group of people and the tools that group uses. Application management is not a process: it is a function. Application management understands the application: why it was chosen, how it was built, and how it functions.