Beyond ‘fire mock drills’ to ‘terrorist attack mock drills’!

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to witness (quite accidentally) some thing interesting - I landed in the organization for a visit and was stuck in the security gate’s visitor’s room for more than an hour:
One of the renowned IT companies here, was conducting a mock drill – on ‘terrorist attack’.
I have been reading about terrorist mock drills conducted by government agencies, large financial institutions etc. But it was a pleasant surprise (for me) to see IT organizations taking such drills so seriously.

It was really heartening to see active involvement from all authorities like Police and other forces, fire force, medical institutions (actual ones who will be involved in a real situation) with their tools and equipments. Only the terrorists, hostages, casualties and the fireworks/explosions were mock!

The objectives of the drill (as I understood from the way it was conducted and what I could capture from the commentary that was going on for the employees):

• To create awareness among the employees about:
  •  the Do’s and Don’ts during such an unfortunate incident
  • different activities that go through during such an event
  • different agencies who get involved in such an emergency situation
• Create confidence in the employee community on the preparedness of the authorities and the relevant agencies involved
• To provide an opportunity for the ERT members and other stake holders to ‘test and trial-run’ their roles, procedures and communication framework – that will definitely prepare them much better for an emergency situation.

It was a well planned and executed drill and am sure it met most of the objectives (if not all).

While appreciating  all the positives in the planning and execution there, I could not help notice some minor observations which could be of some concern to such organizations who are taking the employee safety and awareness seriously:

 

Defining ‘Service’

Recently I was giving a class on ISO/IEC 20000 for a group of internal quality auditors.

Half -way into explaining the Service management, ITSM-  its need, benefits etc etc, a student raised the hand and said: “Can you give a simple definition of ‘Service’?”

My first reaction was to go back to the slide which had the definition of Service (from my ITIL training mind-set). And I realized there, my slides didn’t have that – and a little later,  that ISO/IEC 20000 conveniently omitted a definition of the important word – ‘Service’.

(And what is the definition of ‘Service provider’ as per the standard? ‘the organization aiming to achieve ISO/IEC 20000′!  Uh oh.. so if I am not looking at ISO/IEC 20000, are you saying I am not a Service provider??   I do understand the context of that definition within the standard itself – but a better definition with a clarification of the context within the standard would have been more useful.)

Frankly, I like the latest definition of Service from ITIL V3:  ““A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific cost and risks.”

After all these years, finally ITIL has given a more than decent definition for service – and I am sure a great deal of experience, analysis and effort has gone into such a definition.

Agreed, the sentence is not that simple – but a careful inspection of the statement gives you a real meaning and image of what is a services.

More importantly, it help differentiating ‘Service’ from ‘product’ through the phrase : ‘without the ownership of specific cost and risks’

I also like the phrase ‘facilitating outcomes customer want to achieve’ – which underlines the fact that the value is delivered to customer only when the service helps (or facilitates) his achievement of desired outcomes.

The whole definition gives a feel of ’customer being in the center point or the driving factor for the service’ - bingo!

Compare this with the definition in ITIL V2 which had multiple statements like :  ” One or more IT systems which enable a business process. “  “Deliverables of IT Service provider as perceived by the customer”  ” The service doesn’t merely consisting of just making computer resources available to customer“  Hmm – fair, but not quite clear. This definition had clear overlap to products (if you miss the last statement) .

 

“Take another look” from EXIN

Here is a new initiative from EXIN to promote the knowledge, adoption and acceptance of ITSM with a special focus on ISO/IEC 20000: www.takeanotherlook.it

In addition to the promotion of EXINs programs in ISO/IEC 20000 and ITSM, it provides some useful information and link to some good resources those are available out there (Including the blog of yours truly!)

The site provides :

- Details on The exams and accreditation (EXIN)

- Useful downloads, information sources

- Latest ITSM and ISO/IEC 20000 news and updates

- A community based approach through a community in LinkedIn.

Go and have a look…