Blog
Published 04 Jun 2015
The new ITIL® Practitioner qualification will be aimed at developing some new skills and capabilities for ITIL professionals. In this blog I’d like to focus on one specific skill that I think needs to be included: ‘How to create an outside-in view and an understanding of cu...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Change Management|Customer experience|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Skills
Blog
Published 18 Oct 2017
What can project managers do to improve their skills and capabilities and – in turn – the performance of project teams? Have a best practice mindset To be truly effective, you need to know your chosen project management method – such as PRINCE2 ® – in ...
Capabilities|Communication|PRINCE2|Project management|Skills|Stakeholder engagement
Blog
Published 30 May 2017
AXELOS’ Future ITSM Professional report predicts a growing need for people working in ITSM to adopt a more strategic role as service management principles spread beyond IT and throughout organizations. Service management consultant, Lisa Hodges, reflects on the findings: ...
Collaboration|DevOps|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Skills
Blog
Published 27 May 2016
One of the vital components of a successful Project and Programme Manager is leadership . Leadership capabilities are a key element of the behavioural competence among such professionals and, indeed, a Project or Programme Manager is someone people should choose to follow....
Behaviour|Capabilities|Leadership|Management|MSP|PRINCE2|Project and Programme Management (PPM)
Blog
Published 21 Dec 2017
The ITIL ® update recently announced by AXELOS will be guided by the Lead Architect Team, comprising highly-respected experts from around the world. In this first blog post from the team, Troy DuMoulin talks IT past and present along with what an updated ITIL will mean f...
Capabilities|Communication|Frameworks|ITIL|Service management|Value
Blog
Published 24 Aug 2018
How do you implement ITIL ® successfully? Hang on a minute – is that even the right question? My answer to the question is this: you can’t. That’s because ITIL is a framework of guidance it isn’t something to be implemented; everything you do with ITIL and ITSM is abou...
Capabilities|Frameworks|Governance|IT service management (ITSM)|ITIL|Value|Vision
Blog
Published 11 Nov 2016
I remember the divide in the industry when we published Service Strategy in the summer of 2007. Whilst a minority said it was inspirational, the majority questioned what right IT had in trying to shape business strategy. Zoom forward almost a decade, where the Fourth In...
Capabilities|Collaboration|IT services|ITIL|Skills|Strategy execution|Value
Blog
Published 29 Feb 2016
Marcel Foederer was among a number of trainers and consultants who undertook the recent ITIL ® Practitioner “Trainer Readiness Session” course. In this first blog post from those trainers, he considers the value of the new ITIL Practitioner certification: Among t...
Capabilities|Certification|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Skills
Blog
Published 16 Aug 2016
ITIL ® and ISO/IEC 20000, the international standard for service management, have enjoyed a long and mutually supportive relationship. ISO/IEC 20000 is currently being revised for the third time, with an increased focus on Service Integration (SIAM), governance and manag...
Governance|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Requirements|Value
Blog
Published 19 May 2017
Sue Taylor examines the importance of the blueprint in programmes and within AXELOS’ Managing Successful Programmes (MSP ® ) best practice guidance. By implementing change through a programme , an organization is trying to achieve a better future. That starts with a pr...
Capabilities|MSP|Programme management|Project and programme delivery|Requirements|Vision
Blog
Published 29 Apr 2016
Incident Managers are crucial to IT service operations in any organization. When something goes wrong, they provide immediate support, commanding and controlling major incidents. A successful Incident Manager needs to be proactive and a real people person. But what other sk...
Capabilities|Communication|ITIL|Processes|Roles|Skills
Blog
Published 09 Dec 2016
Hi everyone, thanks for listening to the second audio discussion we recorded at the DevOps Enterprise Summit 2016 in San Francisco. Listen to the interview One of the topics that repeatedly popped up at the conference – whether it was within presentations, during inform...
Capabilities|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Service Management|Value
Blog
Published 14 Jul 2016
IT Service Management (ITSM) is not about the tools or the technology, but about delivering value to your customer through the use of that technology. The rapid advancements in hardware and software may have shifted the conversation onto what technology makes possible, but th...
Capabilities|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Value
Blog
Published 26 Oct 2018
In this first blog post, Julia Gosse considers organizations and their staff that have already adopted PRINCE2 ® : What challenges do PRINCE2 practitioners and their employers face with the concept of agile project delivery ? The biggest challenge is that the term “agile...
Agile|Capabilities|Knowledge management|PRINCE2|PRINCE2 Agile|Requirements
Blog
Published 19 Mar 2015
I recently witnessed the CIO of a publicly traded company dismissing the results of a successful red team to the Board of Directors by stating that the “the test wasn’t realistic as the red team had insider access.” The “insider” access in this instance was a network connect...
Best Practice|Confidentiality|Cyber Resilience|Data protection|Frameworks|Risk management
Blog
Published 06 Oct 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your professional sk...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 09 Mar 2016
Do you have what it takes to be a Business Relationship Manager (BRM) ? What does a BRM do? The role is responsible for building relationships between the IT organization and the business units to ensure IT services meet the needs of business customers. BRMs collaborate...
Business information management|Capabilities|Collaboration|IT services|Requirements|Skills
Blog
Published 22 Feb 2017
In the past year to 18 months, we’ve witnessed a real shift in IT Service Management (ITSM). For a long time, there’s been an emphasis on the importance of processes, technology and certifications but now, there’s a much greater awareness of the need to have new skills. S...
Agile|Communication|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Leadership|Skills
Blog
Published 18 Apr 2016
In IT and ITSM, we’re living in the age of change – and that change is accelerating. If the birth of the internet was the start of this new age, we’ve now entered the next evolutionary stage: that includes a combination of cloud computing, mobility, big data analytics, ro...
Behaviour|Capabilities|Change management|Cloud services|Communication|IT Service Management (ITSM)
Blog
Published 16 Jun 2017
AXELOS’ research project – The Future Project Management Professional – found that project managers’ roles will evolve to become more strategic within their organizations. In fact, 90% recognized the need for a much stronger strategic vision that aligns with the overa...
Capabilities|CPD|MSP|PRINCE2|PRINCE2 Agile|Project management|Strategy execution|Value
Blog
Published 25 Sep 2018
IT Infrastructure management and support domain are experiencing a new makeover when it comes to tools, technologies, and methods that are being introduced on top of the service layer. Support and service are an integral part of every business. Every organization is an IT org...
Capabilities|Dashboards|IT service management (ITSM)|IT services|Processes|Service management
Blog
Published 02 Jun 2015
Over the past 30 years numerous methods, practices, and certifications gained prominence across the global IT community. As the numbers grew, so too did the tendency to promote specific practices and methodologies at the expense of other legitimate and relevant ones as all of...
Agile|Capabilities|Methodologies|PRINCE2|PRINCE2 Agile|Processes|Project Management
Blog
Published 07 Oct 2016
If you’ve recently completed your ITIL Foundation certification, first of all, congratulations! Anytime you achieve something it’s important to take a moment to reflect on your accomplishment. You’re now part of an elite group of ITIL certification holders so welcome to the...
Capabilities|Certification|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL
Blog
Published 04 Dec 2017
Everyone’s favourite IT service management (ITSM) puppet blogger, Joe The IT Guy, published an article a couple of months ago on the alignment of ITIL ® and DevOps. It had some great insights, and Joe suggested that I pen a follow-up … so, here it is. Before I start, I’d...
Capabilities|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|DevOps|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Service Management
Blog
Published 21 Jun 2017
According to AXELOS’ Future Project Management Professional research, the project managers of tomorrow will need to embrace a wider range of skills and become even more multi-faceted. Project manager, Ana Bertacchini considers the implications for the profession. How wil...
Agile|Capabilities|Change management|PRINCE2|Project management|Risk management
Blog
Published 07 Nov 2017
What are the myths and realities about digital disruption? AXELOS attended the recent British Quality Foundation event, Digital Disruption – is it business as usual , and this is a summary of London Business School professor, Julian Birkinshaw’s analysis of current digi...
Agile|Collaboration|IT transformation|Leadership|Processes|Value
Blog
Published 04 Jan 2018
Three trends in 2018 will combine to challenge the most expert and experienced of the UK’s transformational change leaders . 1. Being clinical about the core We have heard plenty about “doing more with the same” or “doing the same with less”. Given global economic uncertai...
Behaviour|Big data|Capabilities|Change management|Leadership|Portfolio management
Blog
Published 05 May 2015
IT Service Management (ITSM) practitioners often forget that service management was not something they invented but rather a concept taken and adapted to create their own view of the world. They borrowed the principles of good customer service used by businesses, put “IT” in...
Business Solutions|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT Services|ITIL|Requirements|Service Management
Blog
Published 16 Oct 2015
Continual service improvement (CSI) is integral to the ITIL® framework and should be fundamental for any IT Service management (ITSM) strategy. After all many of us are constantly looking to innovate, improve our business model, reduce costs, risks and improve the overall v...
Best Practice|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Service Desk|Service Management
Blog
Published 06 Jan 2016
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and kno...
Adopt and adapt|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 05 Aug 2016
Why is robust governance and deploying a best practice framework so important when organizations want to introduce change? If you want changes from a business transformation programme which stick - i.e. things delivered that are embraced and used by the business operationa...
Best Practice|Change management|Frameworks|Governance|MSP|Programme management
Blog
Published 17 Oct 2016
What is currently a typical starting point when organizations are thinking about protection against cyber threat and how often is that the right place to start? Organizations can start from one of three places when thinking about protection against cyber threat: Strategic...
Anti-virus software|Certification|Cyber-attack|Examinations|RESILIA|Threats
Blog
Published 01 Feb 2017
An organization working on a major programme often needs a programme office. Major programmes are concerned with implementing complex transformational change, and this can bring with it a range of challenges. The size and impact of the change, an organization’s experience in...
Business solutions|MSP|Programme management|Project and programme delivery|Project management|Value
Blog
Published 21 Sep 2018
Technical competence is no longer enough to be a great project manager. In today’s new world of work, technical knowledge and ability need to be aligned with the right essential life skills and professional behaviours in order to be truly successful, according to Kara Flanag...
Behaviour|Capabilities|Learning|Professional development|Project management|Skills
Blog
Published 16 Dec 2015
Just how cyber risk savvy are today’s young people, the so-called “Millennials”? You might expect the generation probably most accustomed to mobile and digital technologies would also have the nous to stay safe online. However, this wasn’t the finding of a recent survey ...
Behaviour|Capabilities|Cyber Resilience|Cyber-attack|RESILIA|Risk management|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 27 Jan 2017
At an IT Service Management (ITSM) conference in 2016, the following equation caught my eye: “DevOps = Agile + Lean + ITSM”. In other words, DevOps is about good development practices continually delivering product features (Agile), effectively and with minimal wasted effort...
Agile|Frameworks|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Training
Blog
Published 10 Mar 2017
In early December 2016, Kaimar Karu and I found ourselves in Portland, Oregon running a workshop with Jon Terry, Shane Carlson, and Kevin Behr. Over dinner one night, we started talking about Enterprise Service Management (ESM). Differences in opinion started to surface, and ...
Best Practice|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT services|Processes|Service management|Value
Blog
Published 19 May 2015
As we begin these next few blog posts on “Implementation”, it is important to look at the ground we have already covered. To begin this series, we discussed Service Monitoring as a Strategic Opportunity . We followed that discussion with four posts on Building Service Monit...
Capabilities|Cloud Services|Customer Engagement|Customer Experience|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Key performance indicators (KPIs)|Processes
Blog
Published 25 Aug 2016
Recently, we investigated the misconceptions around ITIL in order to better understand and address the common challenges when adopting ITIL. We asked our community members to share their stories. To our delight, our members did not stop at listing the challenges, but f...
Frameworks|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Requirements|Roles|Training
Blog
Published 18 Jul 2017
The value of programme and project assurance can be described as the process of checking that a programme or project makes the right commitments to the business and then delivers on those commitments. Assurance provides an independent, confidential, objective view of progra...
Capabilities|Processes|Programme and project delivery|Risk management|Strategic objectives|Value
Blog
Published 08 Dec 2017
ITIL ® has always been dynamic. It has evolved over time to reflect changes to the way organizations work, different service management concepts and priorities and our understanding of the different capabilities required to deliver value. Now it’s time to update ITIL ...
Agile|Customer experience|Governance|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Service management
Blog
Published 13 Mar 2015
Over the last year and a bit, our team has been lucky to have had the opportunity to meet with and speak to the wonderful ITSM community worldwide to understand how ITIL is being used to deliver value with IT Service Management (ITSM). A lot of this is captured in the AXELOS ...
Certification|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Qualifications
Blog
Published 14 May 2015
Developing materials for PRINCE2 Agile is a true milestone in the evolution of PRINCE2®. It’s the first extension to the PRINCE2 core qualification and is based on end user feedback; we’ve listened to practitioners and organizations to understand what they need, which is ulti...
Agile|Examinations|PRINCE2|PRINCE2 Agile|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project management|Qualifications
Blog
Published 29 Oct 2015
When Dido Harding, the CEO of TalkTalk, recently announced there was a chance that all their four million customers’ personal data might have been compromised, she could not have imagined the tsunami of press and media coverage that resulted. It all happened so quickly – 48 ...
Confidentiality|Cyber Resilience|Cyber-attack|Data Protection|Risk management|Sensitive data|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 13 Nov 2015
Looking behind, the Building Service Monitoring as a Service with an Eye on the Cloud series of blogs has covered a lot of ground - from why, to what, to how. Now it is time to look ahead to how we pump water through the pipes we have built. It is time to discuss how we be...
Business solutions|Cloud services|Communication|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT services|Service desk|Service management
Blog
Published 15 Apr 2016
As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit Bjorn presented a session on ITIL Practitioner and Strategic Roles . Watch the video and read his new blog post also discussing how ITIL Practitioner can be applied to a number of key IT Service Management (ITSM) roles. ...
Capabilities|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Qualifications|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 30 Jan 2017
The use of managed service providers is relatively common across all sorts of organizations. Unfortunately, what’s also common is ineffective relationships and ways of working between businesses and their provider. Most organizations work with a managed service provider in ...
Capabilities|Incident management|ITIL|Processes|Risk management|Service desk
Blog
Published 26 Apr 2018
ITIL ® Practitioner was launched two years ago, expanding IT service management (ITSM) practitioners’ capability to deploy and derive value from the ITIL framework . Since then, how has the guidance helped people on the frontline of delivering IT services? AXELOS sp...
Best practice|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|Customer needs|Frameworks|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Service Management
Blog
Published 30 Apr 2018
What does a good PMO (project/programme management office) look like? The standard response is often to describe a best practice model and list some core services, but I want to challenge this perspective. In my view, it doesn’t really matter what activities your PMO provid...
Communication|Project management|Project management office|Roles|Stakeholder management|Strategy execution
Blog
Published 19 Nov 2015
What is Service Health? Now that we understand the service, we must ask ourselves what service health really is. For each service capability we must ask 1) is the capability working? and 2) is the capability performing well? What types of monitoring might we consider? We ...
Best Practice|Business Solutions|Capabilities|Cloud Services|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Service Management
Blog
Published 26 Nov 2015
Throughout the "Building Service Monitoring as a Service with an Eye on the Cloud" blog series, we have focused on the need for a Service Monitoring Service - a “monitoring hub” of sorts. This approach is different from the legacy centralized monitoring approach whereby t...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Cloud services|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT Services|Service Management
Blog
Published 06 Mar 2017
What are the different approaches and benefits of programmes and projects in organizations? Rajiv Khanna assesses the differences and how the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP ® ) and PRINCE2 ® project management best practice principles and certifications can help. ...
Best practice|Governance|MSP|PRINCE2|Programme management|Project management
Blog
Published 01 Oct 2015
At a time in the global job economy when employers report receiving upwards of 30 applications for every job posted, it is more essential than ever to put in the work of earning - and maintaining - professional certifications and skills that will set you apart. Equally import...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|Certification|CPD|Qualifications|Skills
Blog
Published 14 Oct 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your professional sk...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Project management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 28 Oct 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and know...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Portfolio management|Project management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 06 Nov 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and kno...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Risk management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 26 Nov 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme , experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and kno...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Project management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 25 Jul 2016
Project Office Managers, or P3Os and PMOs for short, are the crux of a project, programme or portfolio support office. Giving strategic guidance, support and coaching, PMOs lead the team to deliver best practice and standardize their approaches to project execution. In this...
Best Practice|Communication|P3O|Processes|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project management office
Blog
Published 19 Aug 2016
Programme Managers or directors play a critical role in an organization, often acting as the conduit between strategy and execution. Speaking in a blog post for AXELOS, The risks of promoting Project Managers to Programme Managers , Lindsay Scott, Director at Arras People, d...
Best Practice|Communication|Leadership|Programme Management|Project and programme management (PPM)
Blog
Published 25 Jan 2017
What does the future hold for IT service management (ITSM) and project management professionals? Since we launched AXELOS Membership it’s something that we’ve been wanting to explore, especially from a skills perspective, which is why we embarked on this project. The r...
Best Practice|Capabilities|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Project management|Skills
Blog
Published 06 Jun 2018
PRINCE2 Agile ® arguably offers the best of both worlds, so why aren’t more Agile practitioners embracing this collaborative approach? In the past five years or so, I’ve seen a growing recognition within the Agile community that controls, governance and oversight are...
Adopt and Adapt|Collaboration|Governance|Methodologies|PRINCE2 Agile|Processes|Programme management
Blog
Published 15 Feb 2016
To my mind, one of the most useful additions to ITIL ® Practitioner is the Guiding Principles (GP). The Guiding Principles help focus on the essential aspects for a successful ITIL adoption. They provide a powerful checklist to those responsible for ensuring an ITIL deploy...
Adopt and adapt|Behaviour|Customer experience|IT transformation|ITIL|Value
Blog
Published 11 Oct 2017
At AXELOS, we like to explore new ways of working, as well as new ways of learning. One such way is experiential learning (or ‘learning by doing’ as it’s more colloquially known). Earlier this year, Paul Wilkinson from GamingWorks proposed running the Grab@Pizza simulation...
Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Learning|Roles|Value
Blog
Published 07 Apr 2015
Simplifying things for our application team consumers: Inputs Application teams know their applications. We know our Service Monitoring Service. We need to quantify very simple inputs that will enable our application/service teams to easily consume our service. The great new...
Best Practice|Cloud Computing|IT Services|Service Management
Blog
Published 10 Nov 2017
As more and more people turn to Agile frameworks over traditional project management methodologies to help enhance project capabilities and deliver outputs, it’s important to highlight that Agile is not a panacea for poor project management. At this point, let's distinguish b...
Agile|Customer engagement|Methodologies|Processes|Project management|Value
Blog
Published 10 Mar 2015
“It won’t work if organizations expect IT people to pick up an ITIL ® book or go on a training course and then implement successful service management solutions. “Organizations and people need to ‘adopt and adapt’ ITIL to the specific and unique requirements of their b...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Change management|IT service management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Service Management
Blog
Published 02 Jul 2015
The new P3M3 v3.0 best practice guidance solves a number of issues present in its previous incarnations. Most importantly, it greatly enhances the quality of advice organizations can obtain to help them improve their project, programme and portfolio maturity. As co-author o...
Best practice|Change management|Frameworks|Management|Maturity models|P3M3|Project and programme management (PPM)
Blog
Published 21 Oct 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme, experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and knowled...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Project management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 11 Nov 2015
What's the point of ongoing professional development? In "My CPD Life", a short series of blog posts to coincide with the launch of the AXELOS Professional Development Programme, experienced practitioners share their views on the value of keeping your skills and knowle...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Career planning|CPD|Project management|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 03 Dec 2015
How much can companies rely on their people to not be a source of vulnerability in the face of increasing attacks on corporate information? Consider the recent “social experiment” conducted by US-based computer trade association CompTIA , involving apparently discarded US...
Behaviour|Best Practice|Business Solutions|Cyber Resilience|Cyber-Attack|Processes|Risk Management|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 10 Feb 2016
Does your organization have a problem with delivering projects and are you wrestling with the question: “how do we start to improve our projects?” It might seem like a simple question but the answer is more complex. This is because there is no universal right answer, as dif...
Maturity models|P3M3|Programme management|Project and programme delivery|Project management|Stakeholder management
Blog
Published 24 Feb 2016
Good information security and cyber resilience begins with creating a solid security strategy. So, how do organizations and their CISOs or Heads of IT and security create such a strategy? There are a number of critical questions, driving factors and strategic considerations ...
Cyber resilience|Cyber-attack|Information management|Processes|RESILIA|Risk management
Blog
Published 02 Mar 2016
When thinking about cyber resilience, just how important do you believe the people in your organization are? All your people, from top to bottom? You have heard the expression, ‘ People, Process, and Technology’ a thousand times. But which is the most critical of the three...
Cyber resilience|Cyber-attack|Information management|Processes|RESILIA|Risk management|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 22 Mar 2016
As part of our ITIL Practitioner Global Summit , Simone presented a session on Creative Solutions and Energetic Contributions . Watch the video below and read her new blog post which also discusses the importance of collaboration and stakeholder management and how ITIL P...
Collaboration|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT transformation|ITIL|Stakeholder engagement
Blog
Published 25 Apr 2016
Dr Guy Brown is an academic in business, management and leadership with a background in designing and developing contemporary and vocational learning for companies and work-based learners. He leads Northumbria University London campus and works with organizations and profes...
CPD|Learning|MSP|PRINCE2|Programme management|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project management|Skills
Blog
Published 12 May 2016
CIOs have overall responsibility for IT strategy within a business and are accountable for the governance and management of IT resources. In most organizations, the CIO is someone with a broad knowledge of IT and is able to provide vision and leadership in all aspects of IT...
Communication|IT services|Leadership|Resource management|Skills
Blog
Published 08 Aug 2016
The IT architect title is used to describe a range of jobs varying in scope and responsibility but, in summary, the architect team is responsible for developing, maintaining and governing the ICT solutions across an organization. They are also tasked with making sure technol...
Communication|Customer experience|IT services|Leadership|Project management|Stakeholder management
Blog
Published 09 Aug 2016
The issue with Delta Air Lines’ computer system on 8 August 2016 created chaos for travellers around the world. The official reason for the systems crash was a power outage, initially described as something outside of Delta’s control, a claim that has not been backed up by t...
Information systems|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT Services|Processes|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 03 Mar 2017
Developing new applications with a combination of ITIL ® , DevOps and agile methods is transforming results for customers. While DevOps and agile are enabling better communication, improved analysis of customer needs and delivering a quality solution, ITIL adds incide...
Agile|Communication|DevOps|ITIL|Problem management|Skills
Blog
Published 13 Mar 2017
It’s a natural response for many IT organizations to think about how implementing tools can be the solution to IT problems. But it’s a big problem, as there’s no magic pixie dust sprinkled over a tool and it can affect people negatively as much as positively. This issue ...
Adopt and adapt|Governance|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Processes|Requirements
Blog
Published 27 Mar 2017
I was first introduced to ITIL ® in 2009 when we pitched the best practice for a government IT contract and as part of the proposal process, I completed ITIL ® Foundation certification. But my journey didn’t really start until 2012. Prior to this, I had the pleasu...
Capabilities|Career progression|ITIL|Learning from experience
Blog
Published 12 May 2017
PRINCE2 ® 2017 Update co-author, Robert Buttrick, looks at how the latest update of PRINCE2 helps organizations to design their own corporate project management and change approaches. While PRINCE2 can be used to run a single project, it can also be tailored by or...
Behaviour|Best practice|PRINCE2|Processes|Project management|Training
Blog
Published 04 Aug 2017
There are several reasons why you might need to tell the story of ITIL . Maybe you’re trying to get your current employer to adopt a process, pitching to get some additional training budget or explaining how your organization uses ITIL as part of a new business bid or te...
Customer needs|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Learning|Training|Value
Blog
Published 17 Aug 2017
When is an incident a major incident? An incident becomes major when the potential impact or urgency is considered significant. This means different things to different organizations, but ultimately it depends on business goals and objectives and is defined by each organiza...
Business solutions|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT services|ITIL|Risk management|Stakeholder engagement
Blog
Published 22 Sep 2017
In the world of best practice frameworks there is a risk that people jump on the latest thing, believing a particular framework is the answer to all their problems. As a species it seems we chase the one, universal quick-fix that doesn’t exist! As an expert who’s been worki...
DevOps|Frameworks|Incident management|ITIL|Value
Blog
Published 15 Nov 2017
When considering your ability to deliver projects, programmes and manage portfolios, you should always consider things from an organizational perspective first. Sounds obvious, right? Though this thinking is not new, it has been gaining a lot more traction in recent yea...
Capabilities|Frameworks|PRINCE2|Project management|Training
Blog
Published 02 Feb 2018
My view is that companies in 2017 really started discovering that one IT service management (ITSM) solution doesn’t fit all and they need a broader perspective, with different tools for different challenges. This means not only getting more frameworks and models to sit tog...
DevOps|Frameworks|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Project management|Value
Blog
Published 08 Jun 2018
The idea that there should be a disconnect between IT and the organization it operates within is, clearly, an insane proposition. Over the past 40 years we’ve recognized that there should be alignment, indeed convergence, between business and IT – and yet we’re still ...
Business Relationship Management|IT services|IT transformation|ITIL|Leadership|Skills|Value
Blog
Published 02 Jun 2014
How can a system like ITIL® - forged in a year of seismic historical change 25 years ago - still be relevant to the world of ITSM today? Leaving aside the shift in information technology since 1989, the global changes in that year alone tell us how different the world was ba...
Adopt And Adapt|Best Practice|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT Services|ITIL|Service Management
Blog
Published 05 Jun 2014
Throughout the 25 years of its existence, ITIL has supported IT organizations in providing business value for their customers in the form of well-designed and supported services. ITIL has become the most widely used and most successful ITSM (IT Service Management) framework i...
Best Practice|IT Services|ITIL|Project Management|Service Management|Value
Blog
Published 19 Jan 2015
In the first post in this series, Service Monitoring as a Strategic Opportunity , one of the topics that we discussed was the need for a "Service Monitoring Service " that would act as the monitoring platform for all of the various application and service teams within the s...
Best Practice|Cloud Computing|IT Services|Project Management
Blog
Published 12 Aug 2015
When organizations send employees for additional training or qualifications they need to have confidence that their money and time have been well spent and that the employees’ new skills will make a difference to their business. If the learning experience was effective, and...
Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|Examinations|ITIL|Qualifications|Skills|Training
Blog
Published 29 Sep 2015
Gregor McPherson, who has worked with AXELOS and contributed to our new Professional Development Programme, is a consultant specialist in business solution design and architecture. He draws on 15 years of insight from senior roles in a wide a range of industries and discipli...
Best practice|Capabilities|CPD|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Methodologies|Project and Programme Management (PPM)|Qualifications|Skills
Blog
Published 25 Jan 2016
As part of our Professional Development Programme , AXELOS has outlined the skills and competencies needed in a wide range of roles across IT service management and project and programme management. In this blog post, Pauline Brown – Service Operations Manager at the Un...
Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|CPD|IT services|ITIL|Qualifications|Service desk|Skills
Blog
Published 18 Mar 2016
In my previous post in this series, I posed a question: “Can perfect monitoring still end in failure?” I hope that you have come to the same two conclusions that I’ve come to: nothing made by humans is perfect, and even if monitoring were perfect, we can most certainly fail...
Best Practice|Capabilities|Cloud services|IT Service Management (ITSM)|IT Services|ITIL|Service Management
Blog
Published 31 Mar 2016
Q: When is an iceberg not just a large block of ice that can sink ships? A: When it’s the hidden iceberg of attitude, behaviour and culture that stops an organization getting the full benefit from implementing ITIL ® . For example, a large European bank had adopted ...
Collaboration|Continual Service Improvement (CSI)|ITIL|Processes|Skills|Training|Value
Blog
Published 13 Nov 2017
Is digital disruption just another organizational issue or a business change that needs managing? Does digital transformation have no firm endpoint and is just ongoing change? These questions and more were addressed by experts at the British Quality Foundation event, Digit...
Customer engagement|Cyber security|Digital badges|Learning|RESILIA
Blog
Published 01 Feb 2018
In the international bestseller The 7 habits of highly effective people (Free Press, 1988), Steven R. Covey describes an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself to what he calls the ‘true north’ principles of a character ethic that are universal...
Behaviour|Project management|Stakeholder engagement|Strategy Execution|Vision
Blog
Published 22 Jun 2018
Recruitment in the project management market in mid-2018 finds itself in between times: the recessionary economy of post-2008 and an emerging state of recovery. The relatively high availability of people during recessionary periods means employers don’t have to try too har...
Agile|Certification|MSP|PRINCE2|Qualifications|Roles|Skills|Value
Blog
Published 05 Jul 2018
While organizations might choose to flatten the hierarchy and decentralize decision making, everyone in the organization needs to step up and lead – especially in organizational change management (OCM) . Think for a moment about the Total Football concept pioneered by the ...
Change management|Communication|IT Service Management (ITSM)|Roles|Strategy execution|Training
Blog
Published 26 Aug 2016
When embarking on any project, the hardest part is knowing where to begin. But as the Guiding Principles of ITIL Practitioner recommend, my view is that you should start where you are. I recently put these principles into practice when completing a strategic review of our I...
Frameworks|Information Management|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL|Maturity Models
Blog
Published 11 Aug 2017
Projects and project management are about delivering change that your organization values. Doing that needs task orientation: you focus on what needs to be done, by when and to what quality – the founding pillars of project management . That same task orientation can le...
Capabilities|Leadership|PRINCE2|Project management|Roles|Value
Blog
Published 26 Jan 2018
In today’s world of digital transformation and disruption, organizations are in a constant state of change. Those that respond well will flourish, but building this capability effectively requires much more than a generic understanding. Tech giants Google, Apple and Micro...
Capabilities|Change management|Project management office|Strategic objectives
Blog
Published 06 Mar 2018
How can the higher education sector protect itself from and respond to a cyber-attack in the era of increased digital connectivity? AXELOS’ latest RESILIA ® discussion paper, Protecting the reputation of UK Higher Education with your most valuable defence: your peop...
Cyber resilience|Cyber-attack|Digital transformation|GDPR|RESILIA|Threats
Blog
Published 07 Aug 2018
Ulf Livoff, project manager and PRINCE2 ® trainer, has always had an interest in simulations and mathematical modelling. Having founded Inference Labs to develop learning simulators, he is now applying this interest to creating online PRINCE2 project environments which hel...
Behaviour|Capabilities|End-User Experience|Learning|Learning from experience|PRINCE2|Project management|Project planning
Blog
Published 08 Aug 2018
With Day 2 of Agile 2018 come and gone, as promised here are my top thoughts from the day. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’d highly recommend my recap of the first day . Today has had a common theme running throughout (bar one exception) of how to scale agi...
Agile|Capabilities|Communication|Project and programme delivery|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project management|Skills
Blog
Published 10 Aug 2017
Let’s begin by defining the senior responsible owner`(SRO) role. The publication Managing Successful Programmes ® (2011 edition) describes the SRO as the individual responsible for ensuring that a project or programme of change meets its objectives and delivers the projec...
Leadership|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project progress|Roles|Stakeholder management
Blog
Published 12 Mar 2015
With the launch of AXELOS’ Professional Development Programme , we have updated one of our previous blogs on our Career Paths tool, which we designed to help you identify the professional skills needed to progress in some of the main job areas in today’s marketplace. You ...
Best Practice|Career Planning|CPD|IT service management (ITSM)|Learning|Project and programme management (PPM)|Recruitment|Skills
Blog
Published 27 Jan 2016
The Project Sponsor is accountable for the project; or, put another way, the Project Sponsor is the “owner” of the project and the business case that supports it. A sponsor needs to be actively involved and committed to the project in order for it to be successful and shoul...
Capabilities|Leadership|PRINCE2|Project management|Project sponsorship|Roles|Skills
Blog
Published 20 Apr 2016
Abid Ismail was named the new CEO of AXELOS in December 2015, having been Chief Financial Officer since the company was formed in 2013. In a series of blog posts by Abid that will focus on the different stages of learning, development of knowledge and learning validati...
Capabilities|CPD|ITIL|Learning|PRINCE2|Skills
Blog
Published 17 Aug 2016
Why is there an obsession with where a cyber-attack originates? In recent reports about attacks on SWIFT (the global financial messaging service) at various banks, there was speculation that it may have been the work of well-skilled and motivated groups creating malware. T...
Cyber resilience|Cyber-attack|RESILIA|Threats|Training|Vulnerability
Blog
Published 12 Sep 2016
Would you lie on your CV to secure your dream job? Well, you might not. But before you dismiss the idea that this practice goes on, the latest facts tell a different story about job applicants and, even more alarmingly, about employers: Data gathered by the UK’s Office f...
Capabilities|Certification|CPD|Qualifications|Skills
Blog
Published 23 Nov 2016
I started life in IT as a technical support assistant about eight years ago and I have worked in a number of different organizations. In that time, I’ve often been the only woman in the IT department. There are few IT women in Kenya due to a mix of cultural and practical rea...
Capabilities|Certification|IT services|ITIL|Requirements|Service desk|Skills
Blog
Published 14 Mar 2017
Periodically we can all start to feel under-valued for what we do. Whether it be getting the credit and recognition we want for our work or just a few more pounds and pennies a month in our pay packages, it is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to want. That said, aski...
Capabilities|Professional development|Roles|Skills|Value
Blog
Published 15 May 2018
As an organization are you interested in attracting top talent? In growing your business? Providing your employees, the tools they need to be successful? If you are than you need to create a learning-centred work culture. Our re cent ITSM and PPM benchmarking surveys sho...
Capabilities|CPD|Learning|Learning from experience|Professional development|Skills
Blog
Published 18 Aug 2014
IT Service Management (ITSM) is often portrayed as being founded on a process-driven approach, and while processes are useful to organize activities the core of ITSM lies elsewhere. Soft skills are and will always remain relevant regardless of how many processes are defined. ...
Best Practice|IT Services|ITIL|Service Management|Skills
Blog
Published 01 Jul 2015
This year AXELOS launched the AXELOS Consulting Partner Programme . The programme allows consulting organizations to enter into an official partnership with AXELOS for the first time. The programme is part of our continuing commitment to ensure all organizations that use our...
Best Practice|Maturity models
Blog
Published 01 Aug 2014
When quantifying the scale of corporate cyber threat, the figures alone tell a sobering story. As reported in The Economist's recent special report on cyber security, 800m data records were lost last year as a result of cyber-attack, despite estimated worldwide spending of £...
Best Practice|Cyber Resilience|IT Services|Service Management|Threats
Blog
Published 14 Aug 2014
The two worlds of PRINCE2 project management and agile have just become a lot more interesting: AXELOS is developing new guidance to bring the best of PRINCE2 and agile together for the benefit of practitioners everywhere irrespective of which side of the fence they come fro...
AGILE|Best Practice|Frameworks|PRINCE2|PRINCE2 Agile|Project Management
Blog
Published 22 Oct 2014
The space in between people managing and operating IT services and those that build and deliver IT products could be called the great divide. Among developers, the thinking can - sometimes - be based on the principles of "build it and hand it over". The big issue is that the...
Best Practice|IT service management (ITSM)|Programme Management|Project and programme management (PPM)|Project Management|Service Management
Blog
Published 09 Sep 2014
Project management in North America has a long way to go to fulfil its potential. This is partly because there are many notions about what project management is and partly because a proportion of people involved in project management are giving their abilities more credit th...
Best Practice|Cyber Resilience|PRINCE2|Project Management
Blog
Published 26 Feb 2015
The first aspect of Service Design is to define the functional requirements, capabilities, and so on. No matter what we are doing and no matter the industry, we should always start with the customer in mind. In the case of our Service Monitoring Service, our customers are th...
Best Practice|Cloud Computing|Cloud services|Frameworks|Service Management
Blog
Published 07 Jul 2015
What are the ITIL training questions that a tutor hears from trainees time and again? As a useful resource for all practitioners, I felt it was worth bringing the “usual suspects” of topics together in one place: What is an accreditor, an ATO and EI? AXELOS is the accredi...
Career Planning|Certification|Examinations|IT service management (ITSM)|ITIL|Learning|Qualifications|Service Management
Blog
Published 06 Feb 2017
Programme managers juggle a wide range of challenges and many will get a buzz from bringing order to chaos and under-performance. All will want to avoid the pitfalls of change. Here are five change mistakes that a good programme manager will avoid in situations the really e...
Capabilities|Change management|MSP|PRINCE2|Programme management|Project and programme delivery
Blog
Published 17 Feb 2017
I recently read a blog post titled something like "the death of ITIL ® ". The essence of the post was the suggestion that DevOps would essentially supplant the role of ITIL in high-functioning organizations. Reading the blog post made me realize that the state of confusi...
Change management|DevOps|Frameworks|Incident management|IT Service Management (ITSM)|ITIL
Blog
Published 14 Feb 2017
Oh, it’s THAT time again! Perhaps the contract you’ve been working on is coming to an end or you’ve been stuck in a role for a few years now and it's definitely time to move on. But who would have thought that just ‘updating your CV’ could be so arduous? “Did I really fi...
Capabilities|Career progression|Certification|CPD|Digital badges|Skills