The Enterprise Digital Podcast

Barclay and Ian are back this week, and after a brief detour into the world of AI-powered smell (yes, really), they settle in for a reflective look at the SDI SPARK26 show in Birmingham. What made it feel fresh? Which sessions stood out? And what separates a presentation that lands from one that doesn't?Ian shares highlights from four sessions, including Mark Boyer's case for why great service desks shouldn't exist, Roman Jouravlev's ITIL Experience session on experimentation and hypothesis-driven improvement, and Alistair Reid-Pearson on the power of storytelling. Barclay adds his own perspective on why stories connect where slides fall flat, and they're not shy about calling out the demo-as-keynote format that still, somehow, keeps happening.They round off with a preview of what's coming at SITS26, where the Enterprise Digital Podcast will be on stage for a keynote, and a film crew will be capturing interviews across the show. If you're going, come and find them.

Stephen Mann from ITSM.tools joins Barclay and Ian for a wide-ranging conversation about innovation, adoption, and why the industry keeps going round in circles. The discussion covers the gap between what emerging technology promises and what organisations are actually set up to receive.Why do organisations keep churning through ITSM tools rather than improving what they already have? Stephen makes the case, as he has since 2011, that real capability improvement often only happens when a new tool project creates the funding and focus to do what should have been done all along. At the end of the day, most tools do broadly the same things, and swapping one for another rarely solves the underlying problem. The group also picks apart the gap between selling a tool and retaining a customer, and what it means when those two things are handled by different people with different measures.The thread running through the whole episode is trust: trust in new technology, trust that the foundations are in place to make it work, and trust that the benefits will follow. Stephen's argument at the end is that the innovation most needed right now isn't in the tools themselves, it's in helping organisations get to a position where they can use them properly.

Episode 128 of the Enterprise Digital Podcast features Sarah-Jane Bulley, Service Delivery Manager, talking through what it looks like to build a service desk and ITSM operation from the ground up.Sarah-Jane is currently doing exactly that, designing and implementing everything from incident management and service request processes through to team structure, stakeholder engagement, and feedback management, all aligned with ITIL and delivered using an agile approach. She talks about where to start when there is nothing in place, why understanding your users and their specific needs must come before any process design, and how building your service desk as a brand within the organisation changes how other teams engage with you.The conversation covers the growing importance of major incident management in a world increasingly reliant on third-party cloud services, the balance between automation and human interaction, and what service empathy really looks like. Sarah-Jane makes a strong case that people will always be the heartbeat of any service desk, even as AI and automation take on more routine work.She also shares practical approaches to breaking down silos between the service desk and resolver teams, including shadowing exercises, shared feedback loops, and the importance of psychological safety across technology departments.This week's trivia explores whether pigeons can tell the difference between a Monet and a Picasso. Turns out, they absolutely can.

Episode 127 of the Enterprise Digital Podcast is on the topic everyone in service management is talking about. Barclay Rae and Ian Aitchison are joined by Vicky Hunter, Portfolio Director at PeopleCert, to talk through the newly announced ITIL (Version 5). What has changed, what has stayed, and how it all came together.The big shift is a shared management lifecycle for digital products and services. Rather than treating product and service teams as separate disciplines with distinct languages, the new ITIL brings them together around a common way of working. Experience management, including employee experience, now sits as a layer across both.AI is in there, too, approached as a set of capabilities rather than a bolt-on topic. The seven guiding principles and all 34 practices remain, with minor updates to reflect the broader scope.The conversation also covers how the development team was deliberately built with a mix of long-standing ITIL contributors and people from outside the traditional ITSM community, and how early ideas were tested publicly before the formal announcement.This week's trivia explores whether tickling rats makes them more optimistic. Spoiler: it does.

Episode 126 features Faith Thomas, Lead IT Service Management Practitioner at the University of Birmingham, discussing neurodiversity in the workplace and how agile practices can create environments where neurodiverse teams thrive.Faith shares her personal journey through ADHD diagnosis, the relief and validation that came with it, and how understanding neurodiversity has changed her perspective on past behaviours and work patterns. She explains the advantages neurodiverse individuals bring to IT roles, particularly in problem-solving, empathy, and seeing solutions others miss, and why these aren't just nice-to-haves but genuine competitive advantages.The conversation covers how Faith's team successfully integrated agile practices like time-boxed stand-ups, structured retrospectives, and gratitude check-ins with service management, creating a framework that works particularly well for neurodiverse team members while improving outcomes for everyone. She emphasises the importance of awareness training for managers, the need to understand why people behave as they do rather than forcing them into rigid role definitions, and the risks that AI can perpetuate existing biases around disability, gender, and race.The episode also includes Ian's trivia on rising IT job demand and the discovery of chocolate honey made from cocoa bean waste.

Barclay and Ian are joined by Dr Ewelina Kurtys, advisor at FinalSpark, to explore biocomputing, using living human neurons as the physical basis for computing. Elina explains why modern AI is costly, how neurons process information differently from silicon, and why working with spikes in time and space creates both opportunity and challenge. The conversation covers what FinalSpark is building today, what could change behind the scenes of enterprise technology over the next decade, and why this work matters for energy use and long term AI accessibility.If it helps, when I was brainstorming the titles with ChatGPT it suggested the following prompt for design: The episode explores computing using living neurons rather than silicon. The cover should feel like discovery and curiosity, using our mascots encountering something alive and intelligent, abstract and biological rather than technical or sci fi.

Barclay and Ian reflect on a wide-ranging set of observations from across the service management landscape.The conversation covers why the ITSM tooling market continues to evolve, why organisations replace tools so frequently, and how different sizes and ambitions drive very different needs. They discuss the limits of process-led thinking, the importance of governance and understanding requirements, and why tools alone rarely deliver the outcomes organisations expect.A significant part of the discussion focuses on data. Barclay and Ian explore how reporting often becomes overly complex, why large volumes of information can obscure rather than support decisions, and how experience and judgement still play a central role in interpreting what matters.They also touch on the role of AI in simplifying information and supporting executive communication, while recognising that it cannot replace subject knowledge or accountability. Throughout the episode, the emphasis remains on making better decisions by focusing on what matters most.

In this episode, Barclay and Ian are joined by consultant, author, and STEM ambassador Sophie Hussy for a focused conversation on leadership, authenticity, values, and confidence in IT service management. Sophie shares her journey through tech, the inspiration behind her book, and why being true to your values is central to effective leadership at any level.They explore what authenticity actually looks and feels like in the workplace, how confidence shapes behaviour, the difference between management and leadership, and why the service desk remains one of the best places to build essential leadership skills.The episode also includes this week’s trivia, featuring NASA’s discovery of an unexplained particle detected above the North Pole.

In this episode, Barclay and Ian are joined by for Gartner analyst, Keith Andes from EasyVista. The conversation explores findings from Keith’s recent global survey into how SMB organisations are approaching ITSM, endpoint and asset management, integration, and AI readiness.Keith talks through the realities of SMB IT operations, including fragmented tooling, manual processes, skills shortages, budget constraints, and the growing demand for faster time-to-value.He also highlights the gap between the desire for AI and automation, and the foundational ITSM practices that need strengthening before either can deliver meaningful results.The discussion includes market movement, the return of the Magic Quadrant, the risks of uncontrolled home-built automation, and the difference between AI embedded in tools versus DIY approaches.This week’s trivia is based on an internet-connected bed stuck online during the AWS outage.

In this episode, Barclay and Ian are joined by long-time industry figure Martin McKenna to reflect on four decades of service management. From the early days of handwritten call logs to today’s AI-powered tools, Martin shares how the industry has changed and what has stayed the same.The conversation covers his journey from building help desks to founding conferences, the impact of the pandemic on live events, and his latest project using AI to help organisations find the right ITSM tools in minutes. There are also lighter moments involving naked mole rats, Scrabble, and why some things in ITSM never really change.