Getting widespread adoption of a new method or way of working in such a large organization is no mean feat. ‘With over 700 domestic IT cast, we simply can’t adopt large-scale change overnight,’ he explains. ‘Where I talk about best practice and ITIL integration, at the start of the process, the staff only know how we do business. They are unaware of both ITIL and our interest in it. The first step is to make them aware of our interest. This entailed marketing ITIL from the executive level down, and leveraging existing forums, including our “Lunch ‘n’ Learn” sessions and manager meetings, to raise awareness of both the issues we faced and how ITIL could help us address them more effectively. Then we used some bottom-up marketing tactics with internal social networking tools such as “BackLot”, which is a bit like our own MySpace, where we share documents and discussions.’
The next step was to instigate an educational programme from CIO level down. ‘We were aware that time was of great importance so we condensed the ITIL Foundation training from three days to two days. We also combined the training with additional topics that made the training more relevant to Disney and our segment’s specific challenges. We trained 250 people in ITIL Foundation and they elected whether or not they wanted to take the exam. We are pleased that 50% of people opted to get certified.’
But adoption of ITIL doesn’t end with education, Glen says. ‘After education we need to get buy-in and organizational commitment. To do this we selected 20 champions from across TP&R. We have put them on the path to Expert level, working through online training from itSM Solutions. It’s vital that we have a mix of people on the programme, so there are people with differing levels of responsibility.’