1. Lack of constancy of purpose
2. Emphasis on short-term profits
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
4. Mobility of management
5. Running a company on visible figures alone
6. Excessive medical costs
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees

“A Lesser Category of Obstacles” includes

1. Neglecting long-range planning
2. Relying on technology to solve problems
3. Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
4. Excuses, such as “Our problems are different”

Deming’s advocacy of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, his 14 Points, and Seven Deadly Sins have had a huge influence outside of just manufacturing.

Today in the West, we see huge corporations bankrupt and crumbling. We believe the Fourteen Points of Dr. W. Edwards Deming are a way out of the crisis. Deming’s 14 points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of “Out of the Crisis”). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”)
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia,” abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (See Ch. 3 of “Out of the Crisis”).
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

“Massive training is required to instill the courage to break with tradition. Every activity and every job is a part of the process.”

Guess what? Organizational change is hard, and, as is the case with the process and technology pieces of ITIL implementations, it will vary greatly based on your size, structure, and culture. Are there then some common threads that will enable you to get the necessary buy-in to succeed with organizational change?  We find the organizations most effective in their efforts to have a multi-pronged approach:

• Training for your IT staff and IT management. Give yourselves a common vocabulary and a common understanding of IT service management best practices. If you don’t have the time and budget to put everyone through Foundations-level ITIL training, consider bringing in a trainer to conduct half- or full-day seminars about the service delivery and support processes.
• Simulations for you customers and management (both IT and non-IT). There are a number of simulations available that help illustrate the challenges faced by the IT department and the value of process improvement in enhancing service delivery. These simulations typically increase the willingness and commitment of non-IT staff in improving your processes, and show IT participants that improvement is possible.
• Workshops with stakeholders to facilitate planning efforts. Involve your staff, customers, and other stakeholders in your process development. This will require a degree of time commitment in terms of scheduling the workshops, and it is highly advised to bring in an outside consultant to facilitate the workshop and keep things moving forward.

Not for the first time a lack of understanding of the organisational change aspects of the solution represent a significant risk of failure.

The Business environment is moving rapidly – and more significantly changing – and as a result the degree to which third party contracts are aligned to meet business needs, will reduce over time-The Business and the IT Services will become “decoupled”.

What can Businesses do to ensure that third party contracts are aligned to The Business, resulting in more efficient delivery of the Business Vision?

• Review current contracts in order to identify where the services being delivered are no longer in line with the overall Business Vision.
• Review SLA’s and KPI’s to ensure that they are aligned to Business Vision and do not conflict with the delivery of an effective service.
• Review the extent to which the “informed customer function” is working with present outsourcing suppliers to drive partnership approach.
• Define service delivery solution that is aligned to the business and its projected rate of change – acceleration/deceleration – prior to renewing existing contracts.
• Renegotiate current contracts to strip out non value added elements of service.

RedMule works with organisations to implement the above measures.

The business outcomes are that Business will realise a more flexible service which is more closely aligned  to their clients’ needs.

However, there is a train of thought that says that this can not be all bad.  Lets not blame the Bankers for getting high on large bonuses for moderate performance.

My take on this is that it is a product of our time, more of a social evolution albeit a rather unfortunate little experiment.

The focus on the relationship between IT/technology investment and business performance will be increased.  That will lead to some interesting challenges for the “fad surfers” and will create opportunities for those with the vision to put technology to work for business.

Outsourcing vendors by definition are driven to take cost out of IT Operations. Cutting costs and innovation are often pulling in opposite directions therefore the relationship is antagonistic.

Companies that wish to get innovation from any outsourcing agreement/contract need to build systems that support innovation and put in place people with a real interest in driving innovation.

The challenge is that in fat times we can always lose the reality in the accounting.  What will increasingly be the challenge over the coming months will be a harsher reality.

That’s not to say that offshoring will not be the right solution, however it is to say that it may not always be the case.

Putting together a fully understood operational solution will be the key to making this work. That includes a fully integrated front and back office function.

When TFL awarded the Oyster card managed services contract to Transys they appear to have failed to write into the contract the following:

• Details of termination and handover
• Brand ownership

Consequently on 2010 they face some pretty hefty costs associated with re-branding there offering, issuing new cards and infrastructure.

Moral of the story it might seem a long time off when signing a 10+ year contract and you may not be around, however if you are calling yourself professionals the contract should cover this future event.