Mission Director Log: 10.03.21
‘The world is in a state of disruption’ thought the Mission Director of Space-Y.”
Digital disruption caused by rapid emerging technologies is suddenly creating new business models and IT is becoming a differentiator.
Then COVID disrupted everything and accelerated the digital disruption, and this, in turn, disrupted the way in which IT needs to be managed.
IT organizations are being disrupted with ‘agile transformations’ – a mushrooming of the latest ‘things’ that IT organizations promised would make everything better, faster, safer, cheaper – ‘agile’ , ‘lean’, ‘DevOps’ and now ‘ITIL®4’.
The Mission director sighed.
It seems that IT is obsessed with ‘things’ and technology and has left the ‘people’, the ‘behaviours’ and the ‘value’ out of the equation thought the Mission director, taking a sip of coffee.
Space-Y is also being disrupted. Space-X, NASA, Russia, China, India and now Abu Dhabi. Space is suddenly filled with growing competition. Increasing customer demands for new features, the need for agility and at the same time demands for reliability, availability, integrity. The need to balance these growing demands & opportunities AND at the same time adopt these new ways of working.
The Mission Director sighed more deeply.
We don’t have the time or the luxury for large improvement programs to transform the way we work. We must somehow apply a continual approach to learning and improving. But how? Hopefully this new Mission control team would be able to demonstrate how – with this latest ‘ITIL®4 thing’ they keep trying to get him to invest in’ thought the Mission Director. After all ‘failure is NOT an option’!
End of Mission Director log.
Is YOUR business as concerned as the Mission Director? Are you faced with these challenges and a NEED to demonstrate that you can deliver business value with all these latest IT ‘Things’.
Welcome to the MarsLander business simulation. An interactive experiential learning workshop in which end-to-end stakeholders can be brought together to explore and experiment with new agile ways of working.
In the simulation, a team plays the business and IT roles of the Mission control team for the MarsLander mission.
They are challenged with growing business demands, the need to manage business as usual and adopt new agile ways of working. The simulation is played in a number of game rounds allowing teams to experiment with designing, executing, reflecting and improving – together – the way they work. Between rounds, the team is given a new theory – such as ITIL4 – to apply. To translate theory into practice.
At the start of the simulation, the team is given time to collaborate and agree HOW they will work together. During design there were many questions, some were simply ignored, there were many decisions and verbal agreements – these were not captured, it was ‘assumed’ that people knew what was decided and what that meant in terms of who does what. The team recognized after this exercise that it was difficult to design and agree on ways of working when you don’t know each other (e.g from different SILOs suddenly having to collaborate end-to-end), not knowing each other’s styles and preferences on how to communicate. This confusion and these assumptions made it difficult to give feedback and correct behaviours, as a result when the Mission launched and opportunities and demands were given to the team there was a lot of waiting, assuming it was somebody else’s role. There was no coaching, no feedback, no supporting or helping with the adoption of new ways of working. Frustration, stress, irritation, anger. Symptoms of these ways of ineffective collaboration.
After the first game round, we stopped and applied ’collaborate and promote visibility’ and ‘progress iteratively with feedback’. The end-to-end team got together and visualized post-its with their feedback ‘What worked well? What needs improving? Are there any unanswered questions? What ideas can we try (To progress iteratively)? We also captured how does it feel and identified frustration, confusion, irritation, anger at the way new working practices was being imposed on the team with little time, little coaching, little support.
It was clear that managers have an important role to play in capturing these types of feedback, and for ensuring appropriate coaching and that teams are empowered to make their own improvements.
The team applied some ITIL theory, using the Service Value System, Identifying what ‘Focus on value’ really looked like. Translating the guiding principles into repeatable, sustainable behaviours – with feedback and support.
The next round was smoother. It felt better. The team trusted each other, there was a focus on value. Visualization enabled them to make effective decisions and identify bottlenecks and areas to improve.
More importantly, value was being delivered!
The Mission Director sighed. This time it was a sigh of relief!
At the end of the session, we captured ‘What did I learn?’ ‘What can I take away and apply?’ ‘What do we (as an organization) need to take away and apply?’ These were the captured finding.
What did I learn?
What can I take away and use?
What do we need to take away and apply?
The simulation experience had allowed the team to experiment and explore with ITIL theory and experiment and apply the behaviours that underpin the guiding principles. As an end-to-end team, they had practised and applied ‘progress iteratively with feedback’ and captured concrete individual and organizations improvement actions to take away to accelerate their adoption of ITIL4.
Do you want YOUR Mission Director to sigh in frustration or to sigh in relief, as people demonstrate they can translate theory into practice and knowledge into results?
Sign up for your MarsLander mission experience today. Remember. Failure is NOT an option.
You can also arrange your own simulation day here
Our Head of Education, Nektaria Kriketou, was lucky enough to jet to Las Vegas for…
Pink Elephant EMEA is pleased to confirm its team is returning to exhibit at SITS…
The benefits of studying ITIL 4 Foundation First, let's talk about the benefits ITIL 4…
On National Chocolate Cake day, we discover the connection between the sweet treat and ITSM.…
By Shaz Akhtar, Pink Elephant Associate In the evolving world of IT Service Management (ITSM),…
Integrating AI into ITSM with Pink Elephant and Freshworks Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to redefine…
Inventory tracker software and how to optimise its use What is inventory tracker software? Inventory…
ITIL® 4 can seem daunting at first. In order to facilitate your journey, we have…
We have a number of exciting opportunities to join our growing team. If you are looking for a company where career-minded professionals can achieve success while bringing their best self and qualities to work each day, Pink Elephant may be the company for you!
Find your role.