When you think of the necessary skillset to operate and excel in the world of IT (and certainly in the world of IT Service Management), chances are your brain automatically defaults to what is known as "hard skills." Easily quantifiable, specific expertise on tools and languages. But of course, that doesn't paint the full picture of what is needed to become a well-rounded IT professional able to effectively communicate with teammates and stakeholders.

Recently, we discussed how change management became change enablement with a new version of ITIL, and what that meant for its application. But did you know that ITIL itself also went through a bit of a change? It's a little more subtle, and if you look at its current usage you might not even realize that a change even happened, but it represents a conceptual shift that might mean big things for its guidelines moving forward.

We all know the story. The "knowledge hero," the one Subject Matter Expert on the team, whose expertise everyone relies on. This sounds good in theory but of course reliance on one single point of authority creates problems. What happens if that person is sick or on annual leave? What you really want is for all team members to share their knowledge and expertise. Enter the knowledge management practice.

Change is the only constant, particularly in a rapidly evolving industry like IT. Software gets constant updates, new hardware gets launched, and frameworks evolve with trends. Staying up-to-date on these changes can help you stay ahead of the competition. But it's not always easy to get people used to these new changes. It’s no surprise that change management has been a key aspect of ITIL.

When something works for a specific part of your company, it makes sense to look for ways to apply it to other sectors. Enterprise Service Management (ESM) is your go-to strategy when attempting to optimize, streamline, and generally improve service throughout your organization.

The role of the IT service desk manager is not an easy job. It takes a lot of knowledge and experience to manage an IT service desk efficiently. With rapidly evolving technology and accelerated product launches, service managers have to be constantly on their feet and with their eyes trained on the horizon to ensure seamless IT delivery to their clients. Modern service desk solutions and frameworks have helped considerably. Many tasks can be automated and delegated more efficiently.

It wasn’t too long ago that a security system would be nothing more than a few walls, some cameras, and an inattentive security guard. That’s no longer the case In today’s digital landscape. Now organizations must invest in securing their assets from a growing number of cyberthreats. To start, they must first draw up the boundaries of their IT security perimeter.

We’ve been pretty enthusiastic about teaching you how to create a solid knowledge base. Yet knowledge base mistakes are still very common despite our best attempts to crush them into oblivion. This article is here to help you avoid those pesky sandtraps. According to an IDC survey, Fortune 500 companies lose a staggering $31.5bn yearly from knowledge base mistakes alone. Or, in other words, companies lose money from their inability to effectively share knowledge.

The change advisory board (CAB) can be one of the most important and useful meetings a service-oriented IT organization holds. It sets out a view of what’s happening to key services over the next week (or longer depending on its frequency and timeframe), confirms the impact to the business, reviews previous change activity, and looks at continual service improvement (CSI).

It's been a crazy couple of years, and things are still changing rapidly all around us. But you don't need me to tell you that; you're probably living it in your organization already. In the IT sector, we've gone through a global chip shortage, the postponement of major tech events, the delay of product launches, and perhaps most importantly, almost all companies shifted almost completely to remote work.