Introduction

There are lots of books about IT Service Management (ITSM), but almost none about the organizational issues of implementation projects. Very little has been published on organization structures, roles, responsibilities, skills and competences, in the field of IT (service) management, to support implementation and organization change projects. With this book, that has changed permanently.

Practice

The practice of implementing ITSM has been very hard. During the last two decades, organizations spent millions on ITSM projects, but many of these projects were actually categorized as ‘failed’. Often, this has been due to organizational issues. Now, attention for the ‘people factor’ is growing fast. Everyone seems to understand that focusing on process definitions and tools is not sufficient to create a mature service organization. But practical guidance was not easy to find.

Series of books

This situation has led to the development of a new series of books on organization design and organization change, aimed at supporting IT managers in their daily practice and projects, a project initiated and managed by Inform-IT. This book is the introduction to that series. It adds to and aligns with existing literature, and handles all elementary structures that are involved with organization change.

Experts from all over the world

The book builds on the knowledge of many experts from all over the world, on theory, and on extensive practice of two decades of IT service management and ITIL. It contains clear structures that can be reused and applied in your own practice. It follows straight-forward definitions, and uses examples and cases to illustrate how organization change works in practice. Above all, it provides you with a fundamental understanding of how organizations are designed and developed, and with a set of instruments that you can use in your own practice.