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Visible Ops Gets IT Operations Started with ITIL

What is Visible Ops?
Visible OpsTM is a methodology designed to jumpstart implementation of IT change management controls and process improvement in IT organizations needing to increase service levels, security and auditability while managing costs. Visible Ops is comprised of four prescriptive and self-fueling steps that take an organization from any starting point to a continually improving process.

What Benefit Does Visible Ops Provide?
The Visible Ops methodology was developed because there was not a satisfactory answer to the question: "I believe in the need for IT process improvement, but where do I start?" Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a wealth of best practices, it lacks prescriptive guidance - what do you implement first, and how do you do it? Moreover, the ITIL books remain relatively expensive to acquire. Other information, publicly available from a variety of sources, is too general and vague to effectively aid organizations that need to start or enhance process improvement efforts. The Visible Ops booklet provides a prescriptive roadmap for organizations beginning or continuing their IT process improvement journey.

Synopsis of Visible Ops
Visible Ops is the result of more than three years of studying high-performing IT operations and security organizations by the IT Process Initiative (ITPI). Visible Ops illustrates how interested organizations might replicate key processes of these high-performing organizations in just four steps.

Each of these steps has the following characteristics:

Definitive Projects - Each step is a project, with a clearly defined objective and exit criteria.
Ordered - Each step is specifically designed to build upon the previous step.
Catalytic - Each step returns more resources to the organization than it consumed, thus fueling the next step.
Sustaining - Each step creates enough value to the organization that the processes developed remain in place, even if the initial driving forces behind its implementation disappear.
Auditable - Each step provides auditable evidence that preventive and detective controls are working and are effective.

The Four Visible Ops Steps

Each of the four ordered Visible Ops steps are described below.

Stabilize Patient, Modify First Response - Almost 80% of outages are self-inflicted. The first step is to control risky changes and reduce MTTR by addressing how changes are managed and how problems are resolved.
Catch and Release, Find Fragile Artifacts - Often, infrastructure exists that cannot be repeatedly replicated. In this step, we inventory assets, configurations and services, to identify those with the lowest change success rates, highest MTTR and highest business downtime costs.
Establish Repeatable Build Library - The highest return on investment is implementing effective release management processes. This step creates repeatable builds for the most critical assets and services to make it "cheaper to rebuild than to repair."
Enable Continuous Improvement - The previous steps have progressively built a closed-loop between the Release, Control and Resolution processes. This step implements metrics to allow continuous improvement of all of these process areas to best ensure that business objectives are met.

For more information, please download the Visible Ops Datasheet.