On Friday I had the privilege to take part in a vendor’s local user group forum (ah heck, I won’t be vendor neutral and just tell you it was with Service-Now.com).  Service-Now showed that their next release will include a specific time management module.  This is a concept that’s not new to me, especially since at my current organization we’ve been wanting to build a separate field in our current ITSM tool specifically to allow people to enter in time spent on Incidents/Requests/etc.  What amazed me is that this is the first vendor I’ve seen that includes it as an OTB feature.  Maybe I’m not looking at the right tools, but I’m not really seeing this elsewhere.  In fact, another positive feature set of Service-Now is that they include a project management module.  How perfect is it to be able to use a tool to connect I.T. project management (translation:  Service Design and Transition) to Incident and Problem Management?  I have no idea why this isn’t prevalent in more ITSM tools, but if you read my previous post on considering Problem solving as a project, you’d understand my excitement with such a technology.  Now here’s my next question.  Could Time Management become its own process in ITIL?  I honestly think it’s possible, especially to measure cost and efficiency it’s important to be able to track time as a metric.  Since one can say time is money then it’s possible that this would simply fall under Financial Management, but I think time tracking as a whole should have its own process since it really follows the entire lifecycle of a service.  Of course, I could also just be stuck on time since I saw a great documentary about Einstein’s theories on relativity.  And since it’s definitely time for me to get my rest, I’ll leave the question open; should future versions of ITIL deal with Time Management processes?

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.