The 80/20 on ITIL

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The IT Service Blog Presents
The 80 / 20 on ITIL
TM
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Or Something to think about when youre in
your next meeting
The 80 / 20 on ITIL
TM
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Introduction In the 1800s an Italian
economist, Vilfredo Pareto, identified that 80
of the wealth of the country was owned by 20
of the people. In the 1950s two of the early
"quality gurus" Deming and Juran, noticed in
their work that 80 of the defects came from 20
of the products, or 20 of the causes result in
80 of the defects.
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• Strangely,
• this law seems to apply to lots of
  things in life
• 20 of your stored phone numbers you call 80
  of the time
• You see 20 of your family and friends 80 of
  the time
• 80 of your monthly pay check vanishes in 20 of
  the month!!

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The 80 / 20 Rule
is best summed up by remembering this image
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The 80 / 20 Rule
20
Vital Few
80
Do 20 of Your Users Cause 80 of recurring
Incidents ? Does 20 of Your Infrastructure Cau
se 80 of your Outages? Do 20 of your Staff
Cause 80 of Your Migranes?
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The 80 / 20 Rule
The value of the Pareto Principle for an
IT Service Manager is that it reminds you to
focus on the 20 percent that matters!
Do you focus 80 of your time on the vital 20
of things that really matter?
Useful Many
80
20
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What it means for IT Service Managers

• The 80 / 20 Rule means that in anything a few
  (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are
  trivial.
• In Pareto's case it meant 20 percent of the
  people owned 80 percent of the wealth.
• In Juran's initial work he identified 20 percent
  of the defects causing 80 percent of the
  problems.
• IT Service Managers know that 20 percent of the
  work (the first 10 percent and the last 10
  percent?) consume 80 percent of your time and
  resources.
• You can apply the 80 / 20 Rule (with caution!)
  to almost anything, from the science of
  management to the physical world.

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What it means for ITIL Processes
Incident Management 80 of Incidents are Caused
by 20 of users / components / systems /
services 80 of Incidents are resolved by 20 of
the Overall Support function (Service Desk / 1st
Line Support) 80 of Service Penalties are caused
by 20 of Major Incidents Problem
Management 80 of Problems are generated by 20
of all Incidents 80 of Root Causes relate back
to 20 of Changes Change Management 80 of
failed Change is generated by 20 of the IT
department 80 of late changes are generated by
20 of the IT department 80 of lead time
exceptions are generated by 20 of the projects
underway Configuration Management 80 of CIs
are created / changed by 20 of the
Infrastructure 80 of CI updates are generated by
20 of the changes implemented
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Use Paretos Law to help you Understand
- Those few items that affect the many-
Where your time is best spent- Where your pain
points are - What to focus on in any given
process - How best to display graphs / charts to
reveal the few Vs the many - How your user
base is behaving - How your team are performing
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Warning!
- Use the law as a guide only!- In real-life
actual data is rarely 80 / 20 more like 73 / 27
or 68 / 32- Use it as another tool in your
kitbag
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Further (Essential) Reading
IT Service Blog http//www.ITServiceBlog.com
IT Projects Today http//www.ITProjectsToday.com
IT Service Today http//www.ITServiceToday.com