In Copley Ohio we have an annual summer community garage sale. Now this is my second time in a lifetime of participating in such an event, and I decided I would do what was easy and still allows me to participate in the event. I bought one of those Garage Sale sticker packages with preprinted prices and put it on all the big stuff. I marveled at my neighbor who was out at 7:30 a.m. with each item displayed neatly, priced clearly, and sorted by size, gender and type. What I learned in this garage sale experience is that what might work perfectly well for me in preparation, might not work for the rules so well. Some of the rules of garage sales are "SOME" indication of unit pricing helps both the buyer and seller to set the ground rules.

So what does the garage sale have to do with IT? Customers might not be looking for a dollars and cents value but they are likely looking for a suggestions of pricing or impact to set the ground rules. Emotion comes into play when preparations have not been made, for example in my garage sale, by 2:00 in the afternoon sun in July, I would have probably let someone buy my whole bounty for a low sticker price to not have to put the stuff away before we took it to charity. That would have created quite the opportunity for a garage sale buyer who I would likely never see again.. However that practice might not work so well for a repeat transaction.

ITIL Financial Management aims to establish value for money. Taking detail from resource reports financial management is the ITIL discipline most connected to how much money, expenditures, priorities are managed. When Financial Management is at it's best, it supports strategic direction,budget, and IT Capabilities to deliver value for money.

One size does not fit all when it comes to how Project and Maintenance Accounting shall be managed, will it be charged back, etc. Clearly an organization ahead of it's curve however will have some basic budgeting and accounting analysis with estimates of cost and productivity. How well IT manages services does depend upon a clear strategy for how IT WILL deliver value for funding they receive.

IT is tasked with Service Level Management of costs or Investments in IT being Infrastructure (Hardware, Software); People ; Facilities; 3rd Party Service Providers. Help Desk Institute Best Practices found that 54% of the Service Centers surveyed did not know the average cost of a service request. While they did not all know the costs, all had developed operational practices to deliver expertise to manage the top three contributors to "incident" volume baselines. IT solves problems with technology, Help Desk Tickets, Technology Projects, Infrastructure Upgrades, etc.

Service management maturity begins with the notion that EVERYTHING costs something. Thinking in terms of the estimated cost, risk, and benefit is a practical start. Change Management works with Financial and Service Management because CHANGE costs money and directly impacts or influence customer experience. EVERY product, EVERY service as a life cycle of inception through maintenance until End of Life Cycle. Change Management is about creating a minimal impact from one state change to the next, and providing the balance of need and impact. So the Financial and Service Management component for Change Management would be how to provide stewardship for the IT Infrastructure with adequate funding, resources, and planning to minimize risk.

o How much would it cost for us to ignore the problem?
o How much would we gain by promoting this early?
o What efficiencies of resource are gained that keeps the time/schedule/budget aligned.
o Change is new, what agreements must be made, traded, taken to align a budgetary change item that might affect IT's Planned Costs?
o What trade offs will be made and approved to support the action?
o What funding is being made with this new agreement to launch? Trade offs from other systems or services?
o What resource reallocations might be made with this new agreement to manage resources?
o What is going to be turned off in order to turn this on, in some cases?

Change saves money when planning averts costs. Some assume a catalog of services with things being added, but overall nothing comes out. There is a cost to doing nothing, especially when "nothing" results in poor capacity utilization.

What is the savings from success?
What is the cost for impact?
What are the facts we use to support our value, or mitigate risk?

CONCLUSION: Keep it simple accounting and regular Configuration Management and Financial Management review of performance to SLA Metrics, costs of IT Services, and excellent service monitoring, metering, and management can go a long way. IT depends upon a solid end to end process, simple enough to produce facts of performance data, configuration items, and costs into a service that is, managed and improved over time. The regular review of performance, financial and service data becomes a process for continuous improvement and staying in touch with delivering value for money.

Reader Feedback/Comments? What is your best techniques for keeping the financial, operational and service aspects in alignment?