Driving DPSM Adoption

# ITIL

# Industry Trends

# Thought Leadership

The Journey from Process & Platform to Business Value

July 23, 2026

Rajan Masilamani

Driving DPSM Adoption: The Journey from Process & Platform to Business Value

Why Adoption matters?

As part of transforming to Digital and AI enablement, Organizations invest millions in digital platforms, redesign processes, and launch transformation initiatives. Yet, 35% of digital transformation initiatives achieve their objectives (based on Boston Consulting Group analysis of 850+ companies) and many of these initiatives fall short of delivering their intended value. In my experience, the reason is rarely the technology itself. More often, it is the gap between implementation and adoption.

From Implementation to Adoption

In my previous blog, "ITSM Tools and the Future of Work - https://atv.peoplecert.org/itsm-tools-and-the-future-of-work /" I explored how service management platforms must evolve to support more agile, AI-enabled, and collaborative ways of working. But deploying a platform is only one step in the journey. The real challenge begins after go-live, when people are asked to change the way they work, collaborate, and make decisions.

Rather than focusing on technology alone, I would like to share my experience and observations in the transformation area about the role of people, process, and platform in driving successful adoption.

Beyond Traditional ITSM

Traditional IT Service Management (ITSM) focusing on manage the IT services, basically the outputs to be derived such as deploying application support, application implementation/releases, configuration of IT components, resolving IT outages etc., to ensure the foundation for delivering reliable, stable, and efficient IT services. This traditional approach suits to manage the end to end IT enabled services to support the business from backend.

As technology continues to evolve, consumers are also becoming more digitally connected and expecting for faster, simpler, and more personalized experiences. Today, customers expect to book a flight within minutes, track a food delivery in real time, receive instant banking notifications, and resolve issues through self-service portals or AI-powered chatbots without waiting for human intervention. This mindset is clearly evident that the consumer across globe becomes Digital Consumers and their expectations from every digital interaction is demanding for value/benefits not just the outputs, regardless of the industry/domain.

Naturally, organizations have been rethinking the way they operate, and shift towards Industry 4.0 and now Industry 5.0 to keep pace with these changing consumer expectations. This evolution is not just about adopting advanced technologies, processes and platforms. It is about building smarter, more connected, and customer-centric organizations that can continuously adapt to an ever-changing digital landscape.

The Rise of Digital Product & Service Management (DPSM)

People/employees/professionals who work for organizations and their culture will be capable of bringing this customer experience. It demands the user profile of professionals to be enhanced in terms of technology, process knowledge and the ways of working.

The shift from managing IT services to delivering end-to-end digital products and business services has given rise to Digital Product and Service Management (DPSM), where product teams, platform teams, operations, and business stakeholders work together throughout the entire Digital product and service lifecycle.

Unlike traditional ITSM, DPSM emphasizes collaboration, agility, and continuous value delivery, making effective adoption of processes, platforms, and new ways of working essential for realizing meaningful business outcomes.

Why Process, Platform, and People Must Work Together

When discussing adoption, many organizations rely on platform usage and process compliance metrics to measure adoption maturity.

But the truth is that DPSM adoption is not just following a process or using a tool. It is about understanding why the process exists, how the platform supports it, and the business value it delivers.

A platform-agnostic process adds little value because it relies on manual effort, workarounds, and inconsistent ways of working. Likewise, implementing a platform without a well-designed process creates limited value beyond capturing transactions and user login statistics.

And even when both process and platform are well designed, transformation stalls if people do not see value in changing their behaviours/ways of working.

Anecdote

In one of the transformation initiatives, we measured adoption based on process compliance and platform usage through adherence and usage metrics. Based on these measurements, we manage to attain close to 80% adoption. However, people found using the process and the platform to be additional work and, in many cases, a burden. Over time, this mindset led people to stop using the platform or following the process consistently, despite what the adoption metrics indicated.

What is not Adoption?

The most widely used approach of measuring Adoption is to measure the number of tickets created, platform login frequency, mandatory field completion, training attendance, assessment average score, and process compliance adherence etc., and it will give us some useful operational insights not the indication of successful adoption. This is one of the common reasons for the adoption initiatives failing miserably. We often end up measuring what is possible/easy to measure instead of what is meaningful.

As a result, a team may achieve high compliance scores in terms of platform usage, certain activities to be adhered in a process workflow and it may show that the team achieved adoption, however they yet continue to rely on manual workarounds, bypass key process steps, or fail to improve business outcomes.

Then what could be the True adoption?

A True adoption always depends on the 3^rd P, that is People, it focusing on how effectively teams embed new ways of working into their day-to-day operations. It’s all about the mindset of people to adapt to a culture/new way of working and that will result in the real adoption.

A real adoption measures the faster incident resolution, higher change success rates, reduced service disruptions, improved customer satisfaction, and increased operational efficiency provide a much clearer picture of whether adoption is creating real business value. Ultimately, we should measure the people capability of understanding and produce the value—not just activity and compliance.

For example, the purpose of Major Incident Management is not simply to declare a P1 incident. The process exists to restore critical business services as quickly as possible as the outcome. To enable this outcome, the platform should support this by automatically notifying stakeholders, creating collaboration channels and tracking actions. People should understand the overall business value is to reduced downtime, faster service restoration, improved customer experience, and lower business impact. If people don’t possess the awareness of the business value, then the well-designed process combined with efficient platform serves no value.

Adoption Approaches – How to make people to adopt?

In my experience, successful adoption doesn't happen because people attended a training session or because a new platform went live. It happens when people are given the time, support, and confidence to embrace new ways of working.

The journey usually starts with Capability Building & Readiness, where role-based training, awareness sessions, and tabletop exercises help teams understand not just what they need to do, but why it matters.

As teams begin applying these practices, Governance & Oversight plays an important role in keeping them on track through regular governance forums, performance reviews, and compliance discussions that reinforce the right behaviours and address challenges early.

Over time, adoption becomes sustainable through Continual Improvement & Operational Excellence, where CSI reviews, Gemba Walk sessions, team feedback, and lessons learned help refine processes and strengthen organizational capability.

From what I've seen, adoption isn't something that is achieved once and forgotten—it's a continuous journey of learning, improving, and delivering better business outcomes.

Different Adoption Models for Distributed/Hybrid teams

One of the biggest myths in the industries is to have a common Adoption model for all the teams and that will lead to lots of confusion in ways of working, decision-making and the role clarity of the professionals.

In today's IT organizations, distributed and hybrid operating models have become the norm rather than the exception. Teams such as Product, Platform, Support, and Operations operate with different objectives, skill sets, delivery models, and levels of process maturity. Expecting all these teams to adopt the same DPSM model in the same way can lead to misalignment and reduced effectiveness.

A successful DPSM adoption strategy should recognize these differences and provide a tailored adoption model for each team type.

Team wise adoption model for various teams such as Product, Platform, Support and Operations teams can be achieved by aligning the operating model with the team's specific business goals, capabilities, and responsibilities.

Adoption Is About Value, Not Governance - Over the years, I've learned that adoption cannot be enforced through governance alone. When people understand the purpose of doing something and the value it creates for the business, then they don't see the process or the platform as an additional task or work.

Measure Adoption Maturity

The adoption metrics should reflect each team's capability and business context, instead of measuring activities.

A Practical Example

Instead of Team focusing on an activity:

"Are Major Incidents being declared?"

Team should Ask:

Are Major Incidents being identified and declared within the defined SLA?

Are the right stakeholders being engaged and communicated with throughout the incident lifecycle?

Are Post-Incident Reviews (PIRs) completed on time, and are improvement actions being implemented?

These questions shift the conversation from "Is the process being used?" to "Is the process being adopted effectively and delivering the intended business outcomes?"

Final Note

Successful organizations measure capability, not merely activity.

DPSM adoption is not about increasing platform usage or enforcing process compliance. It is about building organizational capability where processes, platforms, and people work together to create measurable business value.

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