PART-01
ITIL 4 Foundations
Where the vocabulary of enterprise IT operations comes from, and what it buys you. Covers the service value chain, the difference between an incident and a request, how L1 to L3 escalation...Escalation Paths and Support TiersLet's map out how a tricky issue moves through support teams. The goal is to fix things fast without clogging the pipeline. Each tier focuses on what it does best. Knowing where your...4 slides / audioIncident vs Request FulfilmentLet's untangle two concepts that often trip up new support staff: incidents and service requests. They sound similar but lead to very different workflows. Picture a computer that suddenly...4 slides / audioJob Roles Across the Service LifecycleOne of the more useful things you can take from ITIL is a map of who does what, because the job titles you'll meet are otherwise fairly opaque. A service runs from someone requesting it to...5 slides / audioMajor Incident Management DrillWelcome to our major incident drill. Think of it as a fire drill for IT—everyone needs to know their part before the real emergency hits. We'll walk through a simulated outage so you can...7 slides / audioOverview of ITIL 4Welcome to our quick tour of ITIL 4. Think of this first slide as the stage curtain rising. Behind it lies a set of practices that guide how large organisations deliver tech support. If...4 slides / audioServiceNow as an ITIL Visual GuideWelcome to ServiceNow. Think of it as a living map of ITIL in action. Every form and button matches a step in the framework, so you can see where work flows next. We'll take a short tour...5 slides / audioService Value ChainImagine the service value chain as a relay race. Each runner hands the baton to the next, from planning to improving, so customers receive consistent results. ITIL lays out six...5 slides / audio
PART-02
ITIL Deep Dive
Beyond the foundations: how mature teams run change enablement, problem management and a configuration database without grinding delivery to a halt. Includes turning service level...Change Enablement vs Release ManagementChange enablement and release management are two sides of the same coin. One keeps risky alterations under control, the other moves approved work into production. In practice you need both...5 slides / audioBuilding and Maintaining a Configuration Management DatabaseA configuration management database, or CMDB, is the master inventory of systems and services. It lists configuration items and how they depend on each other so support teams have the full...7 slides / audioContinual Improvement Frameworks and Maturity AssessmentsContinual improvement is the heartbeat of any successful IT service organisation. It's not a one-time project but an ongoing commitment to making things better every day. This systematic...7 slides / audioMetrics & Reporting DashboardsDashboards are the way we turn thousands of ticket updates and log records into a single page the CIO can understand at a glance. When designed well, those tiny coloured boxes and trend...6 slides / audioProblem Management Techniques for Root Cause AnalysisProblem management digs into the why behind repeat incidents so we can stop firefighting the same issues over and over. It's about stepping back, analysing patterns and addressing the real...4 slides / audioService Level Agreements, OLAs and KPIsService level agreements, or SLAs, spell out exactly what customers can expect from the support team. They keep everyone honest about response times and resolution goals. Think of them as...4 slides / audio
PART-03
High-Velocity Delivery
DevOps and SRE for the people who will be measured by them. The four DORA metrics, trunk-based development, pipeline design in GitHub Actions, and error budgets as an allowance to spend...CI/CD Pipeline DesignPicture manually copying files to dozens of servers after every tiny fix. It's slow, error-prone, and frankly a bit soul-crushing. Exactly. Continuous integration and continuous...6 slides / audioDevOps, SRE & Platform CareersDevOps, SRE and platform engineering roles all grew from the need to ship software quickly without breaking things. Ten years ago you would rarely see these titles outside of tech giants....5 slides / audioDORA MetricsSoftware teams often argue about speed versus stability. The DORA study cut through that noise by identifying four metrics that predict success. Think of them as a health check for your...4 slides / audioGitHub Actions WorkflowsGitHub Actions runs automation inside the repository itself, which is a bigger deal than it sounds. The pipeline definition lives beside the code, gets reviewed like the code, and changes...8 slides / audioError Budgets & SLOsImagine you promised your app would be available 99.9% of the time. That still allows roughly nine hours of downtime a year. Site Reliability Engineering, or SRE, turns those promises into...5 slides / audioTrunk-Based Development vs Feature BranchingModern teams debate whether to work directly on the main branch or use long-lived feature branches. Each method shapes how quickly changes integrate and how much merge pain you face later.5 slides / audio
PART-04
Blameless RCA & Continuous Improvement
Incidents are the cheapest teacher an organisation has, provided nobody is punished for the lesson. Five-whys and fishbone analysis, post-mortem agendas and attendee roles, and linking RCA...Alert Correlation & TimelinesDuring a major incident the alerts arrive faster than anyone can read them, and most of them are describing the same thing. Correlation is the work of collapsing that noise into a...7 slides / audioCommunicating OutcomesA post-mortem that identifies the right causes and changes nothing is a meeting, not an improvement. What closes the loop is communication and follow-up: who owns each action, when it's...8 slides / audioKaizen vs Corrective ActionsEver notice how IT teams love saying "continuous improvement" at meetings? It's usually right after something breaks for the third time this month. Exactly. That phrase isn't just...7 slides / audioLog Analysis & Git BlameLogs are where an incident timeline actually comes from, and git history is where a code change gets explained. Both are also easy to misuse. One buries you in noise, and the other has the...7 slides / audioManaging Emotions & Cultural BarriersEven the calmest engineers can get defensive after a sleepless night responding to an outage. We've all been there—you're exhausted, adrenaline is fading and suddenly every question feels...7 slides / audioMetrics to MonitorMeasuring outcomes is how we prove our process works. Without numbers it's just opinion. Exactly. Leadership wants to see trends like recovery times getting shorter, not just hear that we...6 slides / audioPost-Mortem AgendaPost-mortems can drift into rambling war stories if no one sets a clear agenda. A simple structure keeps the conversation productive and short. In this segment we'll outline a repeatable...5 slides / audioPost-mortem CultureRemember when our payment system crashed last month? The post-mortem felt like a witch hunt. Right! That's exactly what we want to avoid. Today we'll learn how to turn failures into...10 slides / audioRoot Cause Analysis FrameworksWe've spent time exploring how to hold post-mortems without pointing fingers. Now we need a toolkit for digging into the technical reasons behind failures. We'll cover two proven methods:...6 slides / audioRCA Records in ServiceNow & GitHubWe've talked about how to run a blameless post‑mortem, but what happens to those findings afterward? We've all seen post‑mortems that become "post‑mortem" themselves—dead and buried in...7 slides / audioTracking ImprovementIf you've ever wondered whether your quick fix actually solved anything or simply moved the problem somewhere else, this module is for you. We've all attended post-mortems where action...5 slides / audio
PART-05
Vendor/MSP & CRM Lifecycle
How vendors and managed service providers run the customer relationship, from first outreach through to renewal. Covers the SDR, account executive and customer success roles, contract and...Challenger Sales MindsetMany IT deals die because reps chase people who can’t say yes. With long procurement cycles and security reviews, smart qualification keeps you from camping in inboxes that never reply....6 slides / audioCommunication ProtocolsMost vendor relationships don't fail on capability. They fail because nobody agreed what "urgent" means or who to call at midnight. Communication protocols are the boring fix for that....6 slides / audioCompetitive Displacement StrategiesMost prospects already have a vendor in place. Winning the deal often means replacing that incumbent. Competitive displacement proves your solution fixes pain the current one ignores....9 slides / audioContract Negotiation BasicsContract negotiation feels like a legal activity, and most of it isn't. It's an operational one. The clauses that matter later are about uptime, escalation, what happens when things fail,...14 slides / audio pendingCost Optimisation StrategiesVendor spend has a way of growing quietly. Nobody approves a large increase; a dozen small ones just accumulate. And the goal isn't cheapness. Cutting a tool that people depend on creates...9 slides / audioCRM FundamentalsWelcome to CRM fundamentals—where customer relationship management meets IT operations. If you've ever wondered how tech companies keep track of thousands of customers across sales,...7 slides / audioCustomer Success TeamsThe deal is finally signed, everyone high‑fives, and then what? Does the customer magically become successful? Not even close. That's when customer success steps in, the team that babysits...9 slides / audioDiscovery Call TechniquesMany reps treat discovery calls as mini demos, but the point is to uncover the client's real struggles. I learned that after a prospect sat through my entire slide deck and then said their...7 slides / audioKey Economics in Tech SalesTechnical people often treat the commercial side as somebody else's department, right up until a pricing decision reshapes the roadmap. The core distinction is recurring revenue against...11 slides / audioLead Scoring & Renewal SignalsSales teams have limited hours, and a pipeline full of leads that will never buy is a way to waste all of them. Lead scoring is how a CRM tries to rank attention. And renewal alerts are...15 slides / audio pendingLegislation and SLA CompliancePrivacy law has a habit of arriving in the middle of a contract negotiation, usually as a question nobody in the room can answer. And the answers differ by jurisdiction, so a template that...11 slides / audio pendingCRM Milestones & ITIL AlignmentWelcome to the session on connecting CRM milestones with ITIL processes. We're going to look at how a Salesforce pip eline can become more than a sales tool—it can be an early-warning...14 slides / audio pendingMulti-Stakeholder Buying CommitteesSelling to an enterprise is like getting the extended family to agree on a restaurant. Exactly, every department wants a say before signing a cheque. So one enthusiastic contact isn't...6 slides / audioService Performance MonitoringWelcome to our discussion on monitoring vendor performance long after the contract is signed. Many organisations breathe a sigh of relief once a solution goes live and forget to keep...5 slides / audioProduct Team AlignmentEver seen a sales rep promise a feature that doesn't exist yet? Too many times. We call it "selling the roadmap's roadmap." Without product in the room, those promises become expensive...7 slides / audioProof-of-Concept ManagementA proof of concept is meant to answer a question. The trouble is that plenty of them run for weeks without anyone stating the question. Then it ends, everyone feels vaguely positive, and...9 slides / audioVendor Risk ManagementEvery vendor you sign becomes part of your service, whether or not your customers know their name. Which means their outage is your outage, their breach is your breach, and their financial...11 slides / audio pendingSales Engineering SupportEver wonder who makes the slick demo look like magic? That's the sales engineer. They're part coder, part translator, and part stagehand with a laptop. Most start as curious developers or...10 slides / audio pendingSalesforce Opportunity WalkthroughIn this walkthrough we're putting ourselves in the shoes of a Salesforce account executive taking a deal from first t ouch to signature. Instead of abstract theory, we'll follow a named...11 slides / audio pendingTech Sales vs Other IndustriesSelling software isn't like handing over car keys and waving goodbye. Right, no more "always be closing"—now it's "always be retaining". The relationship keeps going as long as customers...6 slides / audioUsage-Based Pricing & Churn PreventionUsage-based pricing sounds fairer to everyone. The customer pays for what they consume, and revenue grows as they get more value. It also makes revenue less predictable and gives customers...12 slides / audio pendingVendor Engagement FunnelEvery vendor relationship has a moment where it changes hands. The sales team who made the promises steps back, and an operations team inherits them. That handover is where a lot of value...6 slides / audioVendor Evaluation & SelectionThink about picking a phone plan or internet provider. Every vendor promises fast service and low costs, but only some actually pick up the phone when you need help. Exactly. Choosing a...6 slides / audio pending
PART-06
Start-ups & Small-Biz IT
Sarah has closed her seed round and has six weeks to hire fifteen people. Her entire IT estate is Gmail, Slack and hope. Day-zero services, cloud trade-offs, security baselines on a...Business Continuity for Small TeamsBusiness continuity sounds like something with a dedicated department and a thick binder. For a team of a dozen it's much simpler and much more urgent. Losing one system for a morning can...10 slides / audio pendingCapstone: Red Team Your Friend's StartupThis is the capstone for Part 6, and it's deliberately adversarial. You take a fifteen-person startup and try to break it on paper. Not the production systems. The toolchain, the culture...11 slides / audio pendingCapstone: Remediation RoadmapWelcome to the remediation roadmap workshop—the moment where all that red-team adrenaline turns into a plan people will actually follow. Exactly, and we’re keeping it grounded in Sarah’s...14 slides / audioCloud vs On-Premise DecisionsSarah's engineers want Kubernetes. Her CFO wants the bill to stop growing. Both are arguing about the same decision from different ends. And it isn't one decision. It's a sequence of them,...16 slides / audio pendingDay-Zero Startup IT AssessmentThe first forty-eight hours of a company's IT estate get set by accident. Someone signs up for something with a personal email, and five years later that account still owns the domain. So...15 slides / audio pendingDay-Zero Core Services SetupDay-zero sounds dramatic, but it's literally the first five business days. Exactly—incorporation, domains, devices and security all race to go live together. Miss a step and you're chasing...14 slides / audio pendingWorking with Fractional CTOs and MSPsLean teams eventually hit a ceiling—product ambition outpaces leadership bandwidth. That's when fractional CTOs and MSP partners start appearing in board meeting minutes. The trick is to...14 slides / audio pendingGuest Speaker IdeasGuest Speaker Ideas — Narrative Welcoming guest voices into the start-up IT module keeps the material grounded in reality. The aim of this segment is to highlight three complementary...7 slides / audioPreparing for Investor Due DiligenceSarah's term sheet is close, and now a stranger gets to read everything. Due diligence is where the story she told investors meets the evidence she can actually produce. That gap is the...15 slides / audio pendingLegal and Compliance Reality CheckWe keep saying "we'll sort compliance after launch" but the enterprise pilot is already asking for controls. Exactly why this session exists—let's map what "good enough" looks like so we...8 slides / audio pendingSelecting Lightweight SaaS PlatformsSmall teams buy software to avoid building it, which is usually right. The risk is buying twelve things that don't talk to each other. And every one of them looked reasonable on the day it...14 slides / audio pendingMock Vendor Evaluation ExerciseSlide 1 — Mock Vendor Evaluation Exercise Picture procurement as a dusty kettlebell. Everyone nods at it, no one lifts. Tonight we do. But why mock evaluations instead of just diving into...10 slides / audioPre-Seed Tool Stack ExampleWelcome to our pre-seed stack tour—eleven slides to prove that discipline beats signing up for every shiny SaaS trial. Exactly. We are keeping the runway intact while still looking like...11 slides / audioRegional Compliance ConsiderationsThe moment you have a customer in another country, you have inherited that country's rules, whether or not anyone told you. And it rarely arrives as a legal letter. It arrives as a...11 slides / audio pendingRemote-First Reality CheckRemote-first isn't a policy you announce, it's a set of logistics you either solve or don't. Onboarding, device shipping, access provisioning, and the rituals that hold a distributed team...13 slides / audio pendingRemote Talent Logistics at ScaleOnce you pass the first hundred remote hires, the "we'll figure it out" era ends. Exactly. Logistics becomes a product—you ship experiences, not just laptops. Our goal in this session is...10 slides / audio pendingScaling Support ProcessesRemember when founders personally reset Wi-Fi routers? That was charming at 10 people, but now it blocks product roadmaps. Exactly. We're here to show why scaling support is a strategic...12 slides / audio pendingSecurity Baselines on a ShoestringSecurity debt works like any other debt. It accrues interest, and the interest is paid later as a compliance project that costs far more than the original control would have. And the...16 slides / audio pendingSeries A Tool Stack ExampleWelcome to the Series A stack session—where governance grows up without turning into enterprise theatre. Our north star is a ~$2K/month toolkit that lets Sarah pass diligence, onboard fast...15 slides / audio pendingSeries B Enterprise StackWelcome to the Series B stack lab—where the tooling budget finally catches up with enterprise expectations. We are working with a ~$20K/month run rate that keeps investors calm while...10 slides / audio pendingShadow IT and Low-Code ExperimentationSlide 1 — Shadow IT and Low-Code Experimentation Shadow IT is not a villain; it's a neon sign flashing "your teams are hungry to solve problems." And banning every unsanctioned app just...11 slides / audio pendingBudgeting and FinOps for Start-upsWelcome to our deep dive into budgeting and FinOps for Sarah's start-up. We're here to prove that disciplined cost management can coexist with ambitious product roadmaps. Think of this...11 slides / audio pendingVendor Management RhythmsEver had a vendor whose idea of "urgent" is "sometime next week"? That's rarely bad faith. It's usually the absence of a shared rhythm. High-growth teams lean on vendors to fill capability...16 slides / audio pending
PART-07
Open-Source & Indigenous Digital Sovereignty
Open-source communities and Indigenous data sovereignty, treated as two answers to one question: who holds authority over shared digital resources. Covers FOSS licensing obligations,...Balancing Openness & Cultural SafetyWhen we say "open" in tech circles, people assume GitHub repos and creative commons everything. But for Indigenous communities, openness is negotiated, relational and grounded in tikanga....10 slides / audio pendingGovernance JourneysNow that we’ve wrapped the Te Hiku kōrero, let’s switch lenses to the mainstream open-source world. Governance in open source isn’t just paperwork; it’s how communities decide who shows...9 slides / audio pendingCommunity Tech-LeadsOpen-source projects at any scale need someone who sits between the code and the people writing it. That role goes by different names, but community tech-lead captures it: part engineer,...10 slides / audio pendingFOSS Licensing ChoicesLicences are the terms and conditions developers genuinely do need to read, which makes them unusual. And the stakes are practical rather than abstract. The licence on a dependency decides...13 slides / audio pendingTe Hiku Media Case StudyWe wanted a case study that shows Indigenous communities leading their own digital futures, not being passive data subjects. Te Hiku Media is perfect because it’s iwi-owned, rooted in te...8 slides / audio pending
PART-08