5 steps to initiate your ITSCM practice

I am one of the people who try to find a positive aspect in any situation. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn something, and we sure do learn a great deal during these weeks. One of the things that you have learned, although you might not have noticed it, is to implement one IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) practice. Perhaps is it a little bit basic and rudimentary, being based on only its reactive component without focusing on the proactive part, but at least this is something, isn’t it? Now let’s see what to do with everything that you know (and that you might not even be aware that you know).

Without a doubt, the pandemic that we are currently suffering has been devastating for people, but it has also had an enormous impact on IT (whether it be positive or negative). There has never been a human virus with such a great capacity for “infecting” IT networks.

If we look for the positive side (as we always should), and focus only on technology, I think that the pandemic has helped many organizations become aware of their shortcomings and get busy with finding a solution. They learned the hard way, in a big rush, but they have had to wake up and get going (if there were only a better way!!).

And one of the lessons learned/improvements that I think many organizations have taken away from this is related with IT Business Continuity and Service Continuity processes (which are the first thing that many companies forget about). People who did their homework on time and had more or less mature practices would have implemented them (with more or less effort, as the case may be), and the services would have been ready and operational so that the business could continue to operate (“the show must go on!”). But for people who did not make an effort in a timely manner, there was twice as much work:

1. Considering what has to be done
2. And doing it

And usually, when there is a lot of pressure and your back is against the wall, stopping to think is not always easy 🙁

Laying the foundations for your ITSCM practice

Whatever your own situation, I hope you have been able to overcome the deluge, and before you forget everything that you had to do to overcome it, my advice is that you stop for a few hours to put it all in order. If you do, then you will have laid the cornerstone of your ITSCM practice. You need only gather information, put your ideas in order, document this, and you are all set!!

1. Understand and document what happened.
2. Make a list of the services that you are providing to your organization.
3. Guarantee that you know and control your entire infrastructure.
4. Define who is who in the preparation of the services.
5. Organize what to do when something (or everything) goes wrong.

This is a very short summary, but with not much more you will have your new IT Service Continuity Management practice in the making.

If you want to read a little bit more about the topic, don’t miss this article in LinkedIn, where I go into a little bit more depth on this topic:

Objective: business continuity (thanks to IT)

I hope that you enjoy it, and farewell

Alejandro Castro, Proactivanet’s Technical Director