ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Kurt McWhirter has over 30 years of experience in IT strategic planning, operations management, and enterprise process design and implementation. He holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Bellarmine University. Kurt is certified as an ITIL^® Expert and ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant. He is also an ITIL^® Trainer accredited with EXIN^® and APMG^® for all ITIL^® 2007/2011 courses. He is accomplished in IT functional requirements analysis, budget planning and forecasting, and service process design and implementation. He has created and led several process workshops with senior business and IT management teams that assisted clients to develop strategies and processes aligned to business requirements. Kurt is a recognized authority on using the ITIL^® framework to focus on business requirements that deliver high quality solutions to customers.

Ted Gaughan has over 25 years of experience in business/technical strategic development, program/project management, and IT engineering and operations management. He holds a Master of Arts in Management and Supervision from Central Michigan University. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP^®), Process Design Engineer (CPDE^®), ITIL^® Expert, ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant and TIPA^® Lead Assessor. He has managed numerous large enterprise IT project portfolios, applying ITIL^®-based processes to maximize the utility of delivered results. Ted is an authority on assessing IT service processes, and planning and implementing IT service improvements.