What do most people say when they take their company down the path of ITIL or ITSM?  It’s “We’re adopting ITIL” or “We’re adopting IT Service Management.”  Point being, the phrase “adoption” is commonly used.  A few months ago I had a great laugh with my itSMF colleagues over that particular phrase.  Someone even wanted to start saying “We need to get away from adoption.  Let’s call it foster parenting ITSM initiatives.”  The more I thought about the phrasing, the more I actually liked to coin “adoption” as implementing ITIL.  To explain why, I need to give a little bit of background of my own history.

I’ve survived an actual adoption process.  And I say survive in more of the sense that it was tough, but with a very good result.  I won’t go into details since this isn’t a support forum, but I will say that it’s got a lot of similarities like that of working in ITSM.  Work is slow, difficult, taxing, and there are many high points as well as low ones throughout the entire process.  In fact, there are several weeks of work in the beginning, followed by several months of a lull, shortly followed by (sometimes only a few) days of last minute preparations in anticipation of the “big event.”    Even when the go-live day comes, there are always last minute changes, some of which can turn out to be catastrophic in which the go-live date gets pushed back.  Even after changes are implemented into production, there’s a period of post go-live support and minor corrections are put into place to better help the organization adopt the changes.  After another specified amount of time, it’s probably safe to say the adoption has been finalized and now IT is one big happy family.

But this is where there’s a difference between “adoption” and “foster parenting.”  The goal of adoption is to make permanent change, whereas foster parenting is more of a temporary situation.  To move my analogy into parenthood, the changes made within IT now morph into like that of having your own child.  There are happy and exciting times (walking), there are difficult periods (I’m starting the terrible two’s right now), and there are times when things are just simply “OK.”  But the overall theme in this period is that your organization will never stop growing.  Now we’re getting into the idea of using Continual Service Improvement to adjust to that growth, so IT can adapt to changes and prevent the much feared “spiteful teenager/parent” relationship.

Maybe I gave too much information in this post, but I want to make clear that there’s a lot of work involved with ITIL and IT Service Management, and not all of it is pleasant.  On the other hand, if you want to make permanent changes and to make sure those changes really help improve your organization, get ready to go through your own adoption process.  It won’t be easy, but as Vidal Sassoon once said (who is the original Israeli warrior/hairstylist), “The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.