What role are you playing in implementing or enhancing your IT Service Management Capabilities?Are you a Visionary? - Someone who finds it easy to walk in and start pulling together potential solutions based on specific needs? Or are you a Doer? Someone who enjoys getting their hands dirty by 'rolling up their sleeves' and getting on with the activities that will turn the vision into a capability?
As human beings each of us will naturally default to being more dominant in one of these areas more than the other, and therefore will find it easier to be a visionary or a do-er. The point here is its fine to play in both these spaces, and many consultants do - however the important part here is to know what role you're playing at each stage of an implementation. It's important for you to know what hat you are wearing and for what specific reason.
Typically within the life-cycle of an IT Service Management implementation, it starts out with a vision and understanding of where you are trying to get to, as this is defined and you start to devise a consolidated plan for your specific requirements, you may soon find yourself transitioning into delivery mode and before you know it you are organising the team (and/or yourself) to start chipping away at activities to achieve the vision, and in many cases that vision is not quite clearly understood.
To gain complete clarity my recommendation is to formalise and separate design and planning activities from delivery and have a clear demarcation between transitioning these activities. The reason for this is formalising a clear transition point enables easier progression through the implementation life-cycle. Another way to do this is to have a formal agreement on the solution prior to moving to delivery, now this may sound like standard project life-cycle stuff, however often when you're juggling a combination of People, Process and Tools deliverable due to the nature of Service Management, priorities can often get cloudy, very quickly.
I'm not saying that your end vision or solution needs to be 100% locked down, before it can transition through to the delivery cycle. What I am saying is by adding some formality to the life-cycle process and being conscious of what phase you are at, and understanding what role you are playing at each stage will certainly help you to manage the overall implementation more effectively and provide you much more chance of success.
