The Enterprise Digital Podcast

This week Ian Aitchison and Barclay Rae discuss the recent SITs show and the current themes that can be identified for the industry. Of course there is some trivial discussion about mice being given life enhancing substances… There is also some discussion around how new shiny things become mature and embedded, and that’s a good thing. ‘Agentic’ seems to be the current word of the moment although A...

This episode is a quick SITS and MSP show preview – the show runs on 14th and 15th May at Excel London – it’s free to attend.  Our trivial intro this week includes AI Equestrianism (yes) and some grammar-police ranting. Ian Aitchison and Barclay Rae run through some of the key points and expectations for this year’s show. The MSP part of the show is definitely evolving, and the show looks to be a...

This week Ian Aitchison and Barclay Rae discuss fungi, taxonomy and what we really mean by ‘Metadata’. The discussion also looks at the complexity of some systems and how we could get more work done with a simpler approach to using tools. Just because we have great tools doesn’t mean we’ll deliver great services and we need to be clear on what we really need from our systems. We also encourage mor...

The podcast resumes discussing trivia, although this time its ‘serious trivia’. We also await news on the fate of the podcast cockroach…. Our guest is Martin Sadler an experience CIO, who currently runs a large public sector IT organisation. Martin also has written a book about being a CIO – Aspirationally Idle. This includes a number of useful tips and guidance about running IT,  presented with j...

This episode covers a few aspects of where the current Service Management industry is and is going – with feedback on THE SDI SPARK event and the sorts of topics and trends emerging from that. Ian Aitchison and Barclay Rae also have eschewed trivia this week – apart form ‘meta trivia’ – although we will resume this in the next episode surely… There’s some good stuff in this episode on the differen...

This weeks guest is Simone Moore, who is, amongst other titles, is AI ethicist, Woman tech ambassador, sassy minds and - Neurospicy… And indeed we get spicy talking about truth, data, empathy and many other aspects of how we build up knowledge and can make decisions. The conversation clarifies narrative from storytelling, and woolly mice from empathetic mice.    This is a brilliant chat and well w...

This week’s special guest is Stephen Mann from ITSM.tools, discussing the latest piece of research published with @peoplecert and @atomicwork. There’s some great discussion and insight into finding including the level of trust in AI – which is not complete but is increasing, as well as some practical insights into Governance and Risk –which are areas of increasing focus and which are more about do...

We have a mascot for the podcast! This is a hissing cockroach that needs a name – please send your suggestions…. Ian Aitchison and Barclay Rae also discuss the key elements of ‘Discovery’ as used in consulting and product management. There’s also some sage advice on how to build up a good summary and clear analysis of the information that you might capture – and move projects and operations and pe...

This week’s discussion begins with some forgetfulness from Barclay Rae and some weird stuff about animal spies from Ian Aitchison. The main topic is about how we can improve our analysis and understanding, communication and engagement from – listening… Lets not talk to our users rather listen and talk with them, lets practise active listening – a key negotiation skill. There is some good advice he...

No, not Tom your workmate or friend, but TOM - Target Operating Model.  After all the ‘excitement’ of the 100th episode, Barclay and Ian settle down for some typically practical conversation, peppered with tales of eels – mating and being used as currency – ‘eelcoin’ perhaps… There is some good discussion on the need to define, visualise and project clear simple images of plans and ways of working...

After many attempts to call previous fake episodes the 100th, we are pleased to release the latest version – the real 100th, No really it is. This is a special episode with a few guests and familiar faces – Roy Atkinson, Karen Brusch, Ollie O’Donoghue Daniel Breston, @James Finister.   Together we talk a lot about trivia, mice with virtual headsets, and the future of ITSM. Actually, we talk a lot....

We are still nonagenarians, soon to be centurions..! On this one we discuss recent events – itSMF UK, HDI, Gartner, Nexthink…balance and convergence are keywords as well as AI, DX and Cloud as the big things for 25, and also some reality around the use of AI.  Then we played buzzword bingo – please don’t mention P*thways… and how we are going onto Blue Sky, which we like because its like the early...

This week’s podcast is a short discussion between Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison (who we learn is officially an ‘inventor’ – with a patent..!!). The topic is on Improvement, and the constant stiving for constant betterment and higher levels of quality. Do we always need to do this? Why can’t some businesses and customers just be satisfied with what they have got and say that they are happy with? Ar...

In this episode Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison explore some current themes around truth – how do we know what is real and correct as opposed to fake and plain wrong, or even just bad..? This is a universal topic at present around social media, and political discourse, however we explore some elements of how our industry deal with these issues. In particular we discuss the way that we communicate id...

This week’s guest is the irrepressible Ollie O’Donoghue, lead analyst at Cognizant, and we are once again chewing the fat on the future (if there is one..) of the workplace, work and of course, workers. The impact of Ai and automation is being assessed at many levels and some of Ollie’s recent research looks at the effect this will have on entry level and also expert level jobs. Does Ai remove the...

This week’s guest is Randy Silver a Product Management expert – originally from the US and based in the UK. We explore the definition and clarification of what Product Management is and how this also overlaps and interacts with Service Management.  Product  is different from  Project  Management in perspective and scope – a project has an endpoint, a product is a lifecycle. We also discuss pioneer...

This podcast is about leadership and management - how we can improve the quality of leadership, via the ability to unlearn and relearn. Our guest Karren Ferris joins us again on the podcast to discuss the 'Remarkable' qualities required. The challenge is avoiding the temptation to go back to pre-2020 management and really move forward as leaders. This can be scary and takes humility and co...

This episode is a great conversation with Daniel Breston, on the occasion of his final curtain call in the ITSM industry. We discuss his career, achievements, challenges and areas of interest, including ongoing focus on Mental Health and Women in ITSM, to name a few. Mostly we have a good chat about Dan the man and his place in the universe, and the IT industry, and his favourite tipple, and more…...

This week we look at how we are improving and making Knowledge and knowledge management work. Some of the challenges in the past have been with how can use tech to support this and tech has significantly helped us to improve and make e.g. KCS and Shift Left work for us. We discuss a number of related topics like ESM and problem management, as well as how we can be successful in re-using knowledge....

Ian Aitchison’s great grandmother used to say ‘ never push code to production on a Friday’  – and yes we all know what has happened. Ian and Barclay discuss the fallout in terms of people, lives, businesses, oh and who will pay. What should we learn? What can we do as people and organisations, if or when this inevitably happens again? What does this all say about our current high dependency on tec...

This discussion includes robot faces made from human skin, robot Hari Kari, and a mini rant about shiny new things and why we shouldn’t throw away good stuff… But its mostly about some of the new areas around DEX/XM - some practical and strategic discussion around experience management – new tools and ways of working. We also talk DEX teams and XLAs and how we need to ensure that we capture and re...

Is #ITSM still dead..?! The latest episode features ex analyst and #ITSM guru extraordinaire KENGON Ken Gonzalez, who started the whole ITSM and Death thing with @Charlles Araujo a few weeks ago. We discuss some of the features around how #ITSM# is perceived and used, as well as misappropriated, and why, in Kens view, this is an ex framework. We also discuss the value of assessments and how we sho...

This week Ian and Barclay discuss how we can or should get the best value and ROI out of our tools – avoiding shelfware. Do we just expect to buy software off the shelf and expect it to work in an enterprise organisation… OR should vendors be more specific and strong to provide good implementation advice. Do we see the distinction between functionality (processes ) and data..? We don’t need to re-...

This episode picks up on the debate that was started at the recent HDI conference between Charlie Araujo and Ken Gonzales. This looked at the existential proposition about the future and existence of the ‘ITSM’ industry…!? Are we just talking about words and definitions? The various Industry elements of ITSM are gradually disappearing – does this even matter? We agree that the functions and needs...

We revisit the discussion on the future life or death of the Service Desk – after getting a lot of feedback from the session in Episode 84. What will survive? There’s some stuff about predictive AI and also the need for human contact. We also do a short pre-SITS preview, with some surprising results about ESM and key topics…