In my entry in Notes from the Field today I discussed privacy as it related to presence and availability management. If you read my 25 April entry there you'll see initiatives sponsored by IETF IMPP Working Group and the Presence and Availability Management Forum. Those are not the only two groups that have emerged with privacy-related initiatives and proposed standards. An article titled Implementing privacy/preference policies with P3P introduces the W3C standard titled Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). This is an XML standard that describes the privacy and/or user preference policies for a Web site. Personally I applaud the recent activity by these groups to establish standards to assure privacy - something that may be sorely missed if the Liberty and Passport factions proceed unchecked.

Mike and Linda frequently write about the ITIL, service delivery and related topics. Until I joined TEAM Zarate-Tarrani my career path was a straight line in the knowledge management and competitive intelligence areas. Since joining the team I've been more involved in the service delivery domain, and it turns out to be a natural fit. Two documents that gave me the points of reference I needed to change direction are Delivering High Quality Service, which explains the goals of the International Service Management Forum, and a PowerPoint presentation on the ITIL essentials. Where my skill base allows me to fit in and to grow as a service delivery professional are the direct connection between managing knowledge and providing support services, and the process analysis and reporting that service level management requires. The latter is similar to competitive intelligence, with the difference being my information gathering and assessment activities will be directed inward towards the service delivery process. In addition, my competitive intelligence background will serve me well in benchmarking to best practices and the security knowledge areas of the ITIL.

An example of how competitive intelligence relates to service delivery is shown in eShopper Modeling and Simulation. This paper is a classic example of the grey area between competitive and business intelligence, but is also an approach that a skilled service delivery professional would take in establishing business patterns that can be used as the basis for service level objectives. Another example is a typical source document that a competitive intelligence specialist would use: Understanding Web Performance. Yet another competitive intelligence source document that is as applicable to service delivery as it is to surveying best practices and trends is Strategy for Exploiting Improvement. The bottom line is that it's not a great leap between the skills and experience I've accured and those that I'll need to perform effectively as a service delivery professional.