Fit, Lightweight and Lean - FitSM

I was delighted, recently, to gain a new qualification in service management, the Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management according to FitSM. I say “new” but actually FitSM has been something of a hidden gem for a number of years (since about 2013). It describes itself as a lightweight standards family aimed at facilitating service management in IT service management. The term “lightweight” is often used with derogatory connotations in English, but in fact the lightweight nature of the approach is one of FitSM’s unique selling points – but more of that later.

FitSM (Federated IT Service Management) came out of a European Commission funded project (2012-2015) designed to encourage EU research organisations to work more collaboratively and professionalise their service delivery. One of the areas of opportunity identified was to promote the widespread adoption of best practice approaches to IT Service Management. The project team looked at ITIL® but felt that its wide scope and non-prescriptive nature actually worked against the likelihood of achieving a fast and consistent implementation across a range of different research organisations.

On the other hand, ISO/IEC 20000 was considered but was felt to be too narrow and constricting. Also, as with ITIL, the start-up cost involved in achieving accreditation (including time and cost involved in getting staff trained and accredited) was felt to be prohibitive.

The project team realised that they needed an approach that fell somewhere between ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000. In order to achieve the project objectives, it needed to address process areas beyond the scope of ISO/IEC 20000 but, also, to encourage adoption amongst the target organisations, it had to be seen as realistically “do-able” in its entirety. So, the scope had to focus only on the areas that would be recognised as delivering maximum value. Also, in order to ensure a consistency of implementation, the framework needed to be developed as a set of clearly detail requirements (as a standard) rather than high-level guidelines.

The project team also realised, that what they were looking for did not currently exist and therefore it would have to be created. And so FitSM was born. Leaning closely on ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000, FitSM comprises a simple process model of fourteen core processes. While it has been developed as a free standard, the emphasis is on keeping things simple. Each process definition contains between 3 and 8 requirements which must be achieved to demonstrate “proof of effectiveness”. In total, the process requirements, across the framework, number sixty-nine.

Although initially targeted to the project organisations, in much the same way as actually happened with ITIL in the late eighties / early nineties, the authors of the framework soon realised they had a product that actually had a much broader appeal and applicability.  At the end of the project in 2015, the IT Education Management Organization (ITEMO) stepped in and took over ownership of the scheme since when, hundreds of IT professionals (including myself) have become FitSM qualified. Given that this has been achieved largely through word of mouth within a limited geographic area (almost exclusively Germany, Austria and Switzerland), the recent appointment of APMG International, with its long history of accrediting organizations worldwide, as a governing exam institute has generated significant interest and excitement.

As I said earlier that the lightweight nature of the framework is one of its attractive characteristics. It was certainly one of the authoring team’s key objectives to provide guidance that could be easily absorbed, understood and implemented.  Think of the “Lite” apps for products such as Photoshop, Fitness, Weather. These were designed for those users who put off by the resource hungry nature of the full applications but still wanted the key features and function.

Created as a family of standards in 6 parts, Part 1 describes, in just 11 pages, the 69 process requirements plus 16 general requirements for a service management system. In some ways, FitSM was ahead of its time moving away from providing detailed process models and toward focusing on the key activities which need to take place. The process models in ITIL, for example, were always only given as examples but people tended to view them as the standard to be adopted rather than adapted.

In writing the standard, the authors have taken a laser view in identifying the core process areas and specifying the minimum critical requirements. So, for example, for effective Problem Management, the key requirements are:

• Problems shall be identified and registered based on analysing trends on incidents.
• Problems shall be investigated to identify actions to resolve them or reduce their impact on the services.
• If a problem is not permanently resolved, a known error shall be registered together with actions such as effective workarounds and temporary fixes.
• Up-to-date information on known errors and effective workarounds shall be maintained.

And that is enough to get started.

If you want more detail on the actual contents and scope of the various components of FitSM, it’s available on the ITEMO website. Oh, and if you want the actual standards themselves, why not download them while you are there? They are freely available. In addition to the process requirements (part 1 described above) the other resources, provided free of charge, currently include:

FitSM-0 : this provides an overview of the FitSM family and a common vocabulary

FitSM-2 : provides a set of goals and recommended activities that may assist in fulfilling the requirements that are established in FitSM-1

FitSM-3 : provides a model of roles and responsibilities in a service management system

FitSM-4 : a collection of useful templates and samples (eg. SLA, Service Management Policy)

FitSM-5 :Selected implementation guides (eg. Identifying Services, achieving compliance with ISO/IEC 20000-1)

FitSM-6 : provides a capability / maturity assessment model to allow organisations and service providers to check and demonstrate their current capabilities in the FitSM processes and their overall IT service management maturity (with a note that more material will be coming soon).

When you consider the unit price of other best practice volumes, this generosity is not an insignificant benefit of adopting a FitSM approach.

It appears to be universally accepted that the biggest challenge facing any would-be implementer of any improvement initiative, but particularly the implementation of new, process based practices, is people. Specifically, the challenge of getting people to adopt to new ways of working. The solution (communication, education, training) is simple in principle, challenging in execution. Structured training, particularly when it leads to a personal qualification in a subject, can have a huge impact on getting stakeholder buy-in. It is why organisations set such store by certification programmes, even though they can be expensive – both in course fee and time lost to training.

The project team recognised the motivational effect of qualifications and were keen to develop a FitSM qualification scheme. As with the framework itself, the emphasis was to keep the scheme simple, streamlined and “do-able”.

There are only 4 FitSM qualifications. The entry point is the foundation qualification for which training and certification can be delivered in just one day.

At the next level, there are two advanced courses (2 days each) leading to advanced FitSM qualifications (one covering the service planning and delivery processes, the other covering the service operation and control processes).

The top qualification is the Expert certificate in FitSM (for which, again, another 2 day course is specified).

So, students of FitSM can go from entry to expert in a total of 7 training days, although an expert bridging qualification is also available for those holding higher ITIL and ISO / IEC 20000 qualifications. This significantly reduces the investment of time and money required to establish a network of champions for change and an organisational culture which will be receptive to the implementation of the new approaches – maximising chances of success.

Also, by the way, if the price tag of 2 to 7 days external training is difficult to justify and/or you want a more flexible, tailored approach, why not train a trainer and do it yourself. In addition to the resources above, a full set of vanilla training materials for each qualification is also freely available on the ITEMO website.

For those organisations looking to adopt a best practice approach and considering, say ITIL or ISO/IEC 20000, another compelling argument for looking at FitSM is that is not a choice between FitSM and ITIL or between FitSM and ISO/IEC 20000. FitSM is designed to be compatible with both. FitSM establishes a sound platform of ITSM practices with the option to expand the approach into other best practice models if, and when this is required.