Case Study 1: Disney’s ITIL® Journey.
Disney adopted ITIL to keep a breath with the current trends and offer their visitor best experience whenever they visit the park. Their aim was to be the best in the park business, and that move was only a stateside thing though globally in their parks, cruise and resorts already existed ITIL. Disney also wanted to make sure that they remain affordable without breaking the banks.
The results attained by Disney as an effect of the adoption of ITIL the Theme Parks and Resort (TP&R) as the largest division generated $10.7 billion in 2009 approximated to about 30% of the TWDC’s revenue (Lavine, 2011). Currently, the department manages a total of 11 parks, 42 resorts, two water parks and two cruise ships. Besides, they receive over 118 million visitors at their parks annually. During peak seasons, some parks get fully occupied by guests 18 hours a day. The Theme Parks and Resorts are capable of interacting with their customers face-to-face every day, 365 days a year. Each park itself resembles a city and about 45%of the entire application of the company are Theme Park and Resort dedicated. These applications are over 800 in numbers running on 1,800 servers as a result of the high demand on the availability and reliability of service.
There are many challenges that a large organization such as Disney encounters during the implementation of ITIL. These include; senior management commitment as a key component to the success of both ITIL implementation and organizational change in their visions and initiative. Managers may be expensive for their dedication and vision rendering employees less esteemed rendering the whole organization on a groundless idea. The solution to this challenge is a logical idea and resource allocations for both planning and implementation. The second challenge is the management of organizational changes where the organization changes to be service oriented culture thus affecting both IT and non-IT staff (Yamakawa et al., 2012). Effective communication of the changes and the final interpretation into a sensible course of action for the team is the solution to this kind of challenge. The third problem is the determination of fit ITIL implementation scope where organizations implement process which is not equal to organizational value and importance. To overcome this kind of challenge, the consultant must understand the main pain points facing the organization and decide the right ITIL starting point and the required detail in each process. The fourth challenge is the project methodology, and governance where applying wrong project management and methods would disable employee in realizing of the new system hence the failure. Using proper project management methodology, including techniques and tools would ensure a successful ITIL implementation. Lastly, the consideration of all project stakeholder is a challenge, although some project stakeholders do not consider themselves part of IT management, they must participate in service design for efficient service usage.
The following indicators justifies that Disney was successful in their ITIL adoption. First is the realization of their objective of 100% availability, maintainability and reliability as they deployed are over 800 applications running on 1,800 servers as a result of the high demand on the availability and reliability of service. The second success was the high level of visitor received as some parks recorded up to 18 hours a day full guest occupancy as a result of perfect visitor experience provided by the TP&R. The last indicator is the level of income recorded in TP&R in 2009 which was $10.7, approximated to about 30% of the TWDC’s revenue.
Despite the close relationship between ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL, some fundamental differences exist (Dugmore & Holt, 2005). Regarding organization structure and size ISO/IEC 20000 requirements are entirely independent while ITIL includes advice and alternatives for certain aspect of organizational structure, as such Disney would not achieve some results using ISO/IEC 20000 or Val IT considering its complex structure. Regarding management system requirements, management responsibilities are essential to ISO/IEC 20000 for standard alignment with other systems of control whereas ITIL advice targets at an individual process to Help organizations in a best practice journey. Thus making ITIL best in realizing the achievements in Disney’s case compared to ISO/IEC 20000 or Val IT.
References
Yamakawa, P., Obregón Noriega, C., Novoa Linares, A., & Vega Ramírez, W. (2012). Improving ITIL compliance using change management practices: a finance sector case study. Business Process Management Journal, 18(6), 1020-1035.
Dugmore, J., & Holt, A. (2005). ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL–The Difference Explained.
Lavine Sr, D. A. (2011). Leveraging ITIL/ITSM into Network Operations (No. AFIT/ICW/ENG/11-07). AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB OH GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT.
