Itinerary
• Meeting with ASL BiSL Foundation partner Capgemini in Shanghai and Kunshan, including a introduction to application management for 70 trainees. Capgemini provides consulting, technology, outsourcing and local professional services, is headquartered in Paris, France and operates in more than 30 countries; in China in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Kunshan.
• Guest lecture followed by a discussion with faculty members at Hangzhou Institute of Service Engineering at Hangzhou Normal University. While the university is more than 100 years old, the Institute was established in 2008 in order to improve the outsourcing industry in Hangzhou and deliver qualified personnel for the outsourcing industry. It is the first outsourcing college for undergraduates in China. The college has chosen IT Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) as its main subjects and collaborates closely with major IT Service Providers.
• Presentation at the EXIN IT Service Management event in Beijing. EXIN, the Examination Institute for Information Science, is a global, independent IT examination provider that improves the quality of the IT sector, the IT professionals and the IT users, by means of independent testing and certification.
• Two day ASL Foundation Training organized by EXIN, attended by 14 participants from Asiainfo Technologies, BSI, Capgemini, Easthome Consulting & Service, EXIN, HP, IBM, Shanghai Information Training Center, Siemens, Sino Service One. They all took the EXIN exam and achieved a high pass rate of 86%.

Topics
Mark spoke in general on Application Management and Business Information Management, sketching the current and possible future challenges and referring to our ASL and BiSL frameworks and best practices. Topics that were discussed in Q&A and sessions were:
• Skills needed to deal with composing applications out of services and other components from third parties, as opposed to traditional programming;
• How to acquire the business domain knowledge that is essential to respond quickly to business needs – show interest in what business people do and they are usually more than willing to explain things;
• How to deal with the information overload we are faced with – there’s no fixed formula but intuition is becoming more important in order to respond quickly to a complex environment: there seems to be not enough time for rigorous analysis;
• How to develop your career – show interest in what other people do and keep your eyes and ears open; take the initiative instead of waiting for somebody to act on your behalf;
• The need for the business to take on certain responsibilities regarding IT – the business needs capabilities to do this;
• Intercultural collaboration – being aware of differences is the first step;
• Bridging the gap between what educational institutions deliver and the skills that the outsourcing industry needs;
• How over-ambitious big bang projects are slowly being replaced by a more controlled and agile approach – lots of little bangs;
• Techno babble and business babble – the poor quality of strategic dialogue between business and IT;
• The CIO role – to advise the business, not to make decisions on what the business.

Further Information
General information about ASL and BiSL is available on our site with the option of a free subscription to our Newsmail. For specific enquiries about the China Tour, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Photo Impression
EXIN IT Service Management conference

EXIN ASL Training