Why the North American Market is adopting FitSM

We had the opportunity to meet with Mart Rovers of INTERPROM, a leading service management coach, consultant, and trainer, about why FitSM is gaining momentum in the North American market.

I have been helping organizations of all sizes and in any industry around the world for almost 30 years with improving their service management practices. In capacities such as a coach, a consultant, a trainer, an assessor, and an auditor. Prior to that, in various line management positions, I implemented solutions and service improvements that, in hindsight, were service management initiatives. Little did we now then that it had this name.

I am a certified ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO/IEC 27001 Internal Auditor, hold ITIL® 4 Managing Professional, FitSM, VeriSM, CBRM, Change Management, Risk Management, COBIT, and NIST CSF certifications, and am accredited to teach, coach, and certify individuals in all these standards and frameworks.

The initiative to launch a lightweight IT service management standard, that is now called FitSM, started in 2013. This was an initiative that was funded by the European Union. The intent was to increase maturity and effectiveness of service management in federated e-infrastructures by applying suitable good practices.

ITEMO, short for IT Education Management Organization, a German non-profit organization, was tasked to publish a series of documents, the ITSM standard is now comprised of.

While ITEMO is responsible for the publication and maintenance of the FitSM standard, all parts are published under Creative Common licenses. This means that the FitSM documents can be shared and used freely without having to worry about copyright infringement.

FitSM practices are now adopted around the globe. Since 2018, organizations in North America have started benefiting from what the standard has to offer.

Before I knew about FitSM, I always referred to ISO/IEC 20000 as the guidance on benefiting from service management practices one should be adopting at the very least. I always said, “This is the bare minimum you should be doing as a service provider.” Not doing this absolute minimum, is in essence asking for unnecessary challenges.

When I learned about FitSM, it became clear to me that this was the skinny version, or an even more scaled-back version, of an ITSM adoption initiative. With its 85 requirements that are captured in the FitSM-1 document, you essentially have 85 to-do’s. And those are very reasonable asks that are quite doable, even for a small organization.

Most certainly! Start small and start with FitSM. And then complement your practices with guidance from these other service management frameworks and standards. Or, complement them with guidance from frameworks and standards for information security management, risk management, business continuity management, change management, IT governance, etc., etc.

It is like building a home. You start with a solid foundation. Think FitSM. And then you build on top of it. Or expand when you outgrow your home.

I am inclined to say that it is for any size organization. For instance, if you are an IT organization and have 100s of team members and you are not even meeting the 85 requirements of FitSM-1, your alarm bells should start ringing. That said, an organization of that size should dare to “take on the ISO/IEC 20000-1 challenge” and meet its 213 requirements.

I need to add that small to mid-size service provider organizations that I introduced FitSM to have expressed sincere gratefulness. Most felt overwhelmed and confused after sending their staff to training courses such as ITIL. Not that there is anything wrong with ITIL. It nicely complements FitSM. It just helps when you simplify what needs to be done in the form of a prescriptive lightweight standard. “Just tell me what to do”, is the response I’ve received many times. And when you add that this is the bare minimum you should be doing, it is the icing on the cake.

Absolutely. I have already referred to FitSM being shareware in essence. Everything is free of charge. And with everything, I mean, every document that the standard comes with. Simply visit fitsm.eu and you will find implementation templates, role guides, terms and definitions, training materials, and even a maturity assessment. That is a lot of guidance for anyone to download and get going with.

Furthermore, just like ISO/IEC 20000, and now also ITIL 4, FitSM is recommending a system approach to service management. In other words, one establishes a service management system when meeting its requirements. The beauty of this is its inherent meshed, interwoven, or intertwined set of requirements. Just like in any organization. Everything has dependencies, interfaces, relationships, and connections. By meeting the requirements, a significant crucial number of these organizations are better off.

While IT organizations make up the larger part of the adopters, I am working with several non-IT service providers. Think of human resources, finance, and facilities management.

It is not that hard to strip the word “IT” every time the standard mentions it. And its minimal approach makes the standard adoptable for any organization provisioning services.

Most certainly! It still amazes me when working with organizations who cherry-pick which service management practices to adopt. Or organizations that are more than a decade into their service management adoption program and who barely made it beyond the operational practices. It is as if they are stuck. As if they do not want to cross the finish line.

A full adoption results in a change of mindset and culture of the service provider organization. Behaviors become much more proactive, and less reactive. There is less heroism, and more of a team spirit. The system approach of the standard, and the use of integrated service management software solutions are contributing factors.

Not to mention, the consumers of the services are experiencing a better service quality, and more resources that become available for new initiatives, and innovative and project work. Their trust levels go up.

I recommend conducting the maturity assessment of FitSM to help;

• determine which practices are already in place
• identify which ones could use some help - particularly operational practices that are lacking, make those a priority
• focus on the tactical practices, followed by the more strategic ones.

Make sure to assign ownership to these practices by appointing process owners, process managers, and service owners. And do not forget to identify an enthusiastic service management program manager who will drive this effort across the finish line. Meaning that all 85 requirements are being met.

I also recommend that along with assigning responsibilities, leadership should give those service management roles the appropriate level of authority. Without it, true ownership will not have a fair chance. The improved service management practices need to become the new normal. And while initial executive support is crucial, this should become less of a deciding factor when the new normal has been fully accepted and experienced as “a good thing”.

No adoption effort is optimal without a continuing awareness effort. FitSM certification training courses are a great start. However, that is not a one-time effort. The new or improved practices require a continuing awareness and education. The roles referenced earlier all play a crucial role in this effort. In essence, they are the new and ongoing culture-carriers.