This one or two day event is ideal for those ICT Professionals who want to experience the ITIL ® theory in practice. It is an excellent way to consolidate the “best practice” approach taught in the foundation course.

'Houston, we have a problem'

Fifty Five hours and fifty-five minutes into the mission. Imagine you are on board Apollo 13 when one of your crew members reports hearing a loud 'bang'.

The bang is the explosion of the liquid oxygen tank No.2 in the Service Module, providing vital oxygen used by the fuel cells that are Apollo's primary power source.

The backup battery-powered electric supply in the Command and Service Module (CSM) has a lifetime of up to ten hours. Unfortunately, you are 87 hours from home. Your spacecraft is slowly dying. You have a serious problem, unless you and the ground support staff start working as a team to solve this problem. But remember, time is running out. Fast.

The game - The process

In the game the teams can experience up to 4 phases of the mission. In each phase the players are confronted with mission events and situations. Throughout the game various ITIL ® processes are necessary to enable ground staff and the crew to resolve problems and to make timely changes to the spacecraft configuration and its trajectory.

Phases

• Build and Launch: 'Fitting it all together and making it fly'
  • Managing the release, build and testing of the Apollo 13 vehicle
  • Integrating the vehicle electrical, flight and communications systems with Mission Control (Computer Operations & Service Desk).
• Earth orbit & Lunar approach: 'the earth is getting smaller and smaller...'
  • Providing crew communication and support (Service desk)
    
  • Dealing with incidents and fixing problems (Incident and Problem management)
    
  • Invoking emergency abort procedures as availability of critical systems signals an approaching disaster situation. (Availability and Continuity)
• Transearth coast: 'the long journey home'
  • Making the available Oxygen and power last the long
    journey home, with three men in a spacecraft sized for two. (Capacity management).
    
  • Planning and executing untested changes to flight trajectory to ensure a safe return path home. The 'docked-DPS burn' (Change management).
• Re-entry and splash down: 'Making it back alive'
  • Proactively working to prevent a major problem as carbon dioxide build up threatens the astronauts safety.(Capacity management, Problem management and Configuration).
    
  • Planning and executing a mid-course correction and fast engine burn to speed up the journey home. The PC+2 engine burn. (Change management).
  • Managing the critical level of capacity to power up the
    command module and ensure all critical systems are
    operating.(Capacity management and Availability
    management) .

Post Mission Review

Following the game a post mission review is held. Finding out what went wrong and making sure it wouldn't happen again, became a key concern for NASA mission control. A Review panel was
put in place. The Key activities of the panel were:

• Tracking the history of the configuration items (Configuration management).
  
• Determining the root cause of the failure (Problem Management).
  
• Recommending a service improvement plan (Service Level management).
  
• Proactively working to prevent future accidents (Problem and Change management).

Game Approach

At the start of the game the team receives a balanced scorecard which represents their Service Level Agreement with NASA. At the end of each phase the team will report on its compliance with the Service Levels required. Before each phase a set of ITIL ® theory is explained in relation to the processes that will be encountered in that round of the game. At the end of each phase the actual
Apollo 13 mission will be reviewed and related to the ITIL ® processes to show how mission success was ultimately realised, using those processes.