ITSM

Goodness

TFT December 2012

3

Service Desk, SLM and ITSM Goodness

Agenda

Life, ITSM and everything…

Building a Brilliant Service

Service Desk Goodness

SLM Goodness

ITSM Goodness

Questions

Life, ITSM and everything

What are practitioners saying?

• We need practical help

• We need to be doing stuff that's relevant for the business

• Where do we start?

• How do we react to the new challenges and 'messages' from the industry?

Current dilemmas in ITSM

• Are we/will we be relevant? (ref cloud, BYOD, mobile, social, gamification) Is ITIL relavant?

• What is the future for Service desk? Is it broken and does it need re-defining?

• Should SLAs be banned? What's the point of a service catalogue? What is a service catalogue?

We don’t need…ITIL

ITIL, but we need to be:

Consistent Reliable Efficient Profitable / Productive Delivering in line with

expectations

We don’t need…

We don’t need a Service Catalog

We don’t need…

A service catalog, but we need to

Be able to articulate and present our services.

Be accessible and easy to do business with

Have relevant information to hand to deliver efficient support

Have a basis to identify if we are meeting business expectations

We don’t Need…SLAs

We don’t need…

SLAs, but

We need to have a way of measuring whether we are delivering the right levels of service

Customers and users want to be given some expectations around support and service delivery

We do need…a Service Desk

We do need…

A service desk, unless of course:

We can eradicate all issues and problems associated with IT

We are happy that customer communication is handled in an 'ad hoc' manner

Moving on…?

Listen and talk to our customers and businesses… Use the information to build a service model that: • Focusses IT on meeting organisational / business goals • Gives clear targets to work towards • Provides a basis to present our services • Provides a basis for reporting and value demonstration

Ask ourselves What business are we in? Who are our customers? What do they need from us?

Moving on…?

Building a Brilliant Service

A brilliant service organisation:

Has a great reputation with it's peers and customers

Is respected and appreciated for the value it delivers

Has tangibly motivated and positive people working in it

Has a strong identity - a clear and well communicated definition of its roles, services and ways of working

Has an open and positive culture of self awareness, development and improvement

Is well marketed and publicised to

its customers

How is this achieved?

By hiring for personality not cv or tech skills first - and by being choosy (those people represent the organisation)

As a result of Teamwork across the it organisation, as the e.g. service desk can't do it all on its own

By technical staff showing respect and appreciation for the Service ‘Supply Chain’ and the work done by the service desk

By establishing a clear set of supporting

processes, with owners and governance

How is this achieved?

By establishing clear operational practises and expected levels of quality and performance, which are constantly measured and reviewed

By trusting staff to get on with delivering service, with empowerment and appropriate autonomy

By implementing incident tracking, being strict but fair to police progress and quality of updates across teams

By building and developing skills profiles that include communications and business skills as well as technical ones

‘Service Desk Goodness’

A brilliant service desk:

Is the focal point for the delivery of IT services - and is supported by other back office and support groups

Is regarded and actively supported by management as a valuable asset, not just a cost centre

Has high levels of first line and first contact resolution (70%+), low levels of attrition (>5%) and minimal telephony abandon rate (>5%)

Has very high levels of customer advocacy and satisfaction ratings

Is seen as an aspirational place

to work

Building a brilliant Service Desk

Hire brilliant (people)-people

Set the tone

Clearly define the 1st/2nd/3rd level model

If the Service Desk is important, invest in it

Make it an aspirational place to work

Generally first time fix is faster cheaper and better for customers

Service Desk – World Class (sample) Customer Advocacy

• Customers are happy to recommend the service received

• They are enthusiastic about providing references or testimonials

Efficiency

• Efficiency and performance are constantly reviewed with actions

• Metrics are publicised and promoted across IT and customers alike

• The organisation continually looks at optimising cost with BAU

Emotional Intelligence

• All are empowered to act beyond their normal remit

• Proactive behaviour is encouraged and regularly demonstrated

• Issues are seen as opportunities for improvement

• Issues are tackled with teamwork, customer focus and professionalism

Using the right people

Using the right people Think about the real requirements and outcomes from a role

– do they fit the jacket?

Service needs people who show commitment, EiQ, empathy, maturity, professionalism, doggedness, openness, confidence, consistency

If you hire based on people’s qualities then you don’t need so many rules and processes

If someone doesn’t fit or deliver, customers and service will be affected

Producing appropriate documentation

Since when did technical writers write by-lines for newspapers?

No-one reads more than a page or a few lines

Don’t write communiques like project documentation

‘SLM Goodness’

Making SLAs work for you Start with Services…!

Move from systems to service focus

Simple language – not technical or legal jargon

Realistic and sustainable

Must be measurable

‘SLD’ ?

‘SLM Goodness’

Don't write an SLA like you are a frustrated lawyer, a novelist, or a tech junkie...

SLAs need to show up gaps in capability and performance. Otherwise how can you improve?

Don't fudge SLA targets into % of % of %. Keep goals real, not just easy targets.

SLAs should be about positive value delivered by IT services, not just how IT responds to failure.

Too much information

IT Services – VFM?

System, not service, reporting

Good news! Your service reporting is a bundle of stuff you already report on, like availability, customer satisfaction, and support performance

IT SLM documentation should be written in human English, otherwise it's self-serving, patronising tech BS...

Don't be side-tracked from setting aspirational SLA targets because of 1 or 2 occasions where it will fail - that's the point!

‘SLM Goodness’

SLM projects are not for the faint or tech-hearted...

Don't expect too much if you ask a junior person to set up SLAs

Turns out you can't actually set up SLAs without defining Services first. No really...

"We tried doing SLAs before - no one was interested" (Surprised?)

‘SLM Goodness’

‘ITSM Goodness’

It’s not just the Service Desk

Get other IT teams involved

Teamwork across IT – avoid ‘Us and them’

Use business outcomes as the mandate

Tools and processes can unite (and divide)

Service development and transition

Release and service readiness

SLA and OLA – supply chain

Selling your project and getting budget

Clear measureable goals

Business language - not IT/ITSM

How will success be achieved and accepted?

Beware too much cost/financial ambition

You can’t ‘do ITIL’ in 20 days

Building a realistic plan

Short term wins

What can we do in 30/60 days

Phasing & focus - reality and outcomes

Get project management - focus on logistics and people

Training alone won’t deliver organisational change

Getting business people interested Don't just talk to them - listen to them

Ask them in their own terms - make them feel they are being asked

Beg, coerce, bribe, start with friendly customers

Involve them - not a lot of their time needed

What are the benefits for them and the business as a whole

‘We tried this before’

Making Problem Management work

More about ownership + people than just a process

Problem Management – part analyst, investigator, mostly project manager

Spyglass and whip

Visibility helps – teams/crowds solve more problems

What are your top 5 problems?

Not necessarily just the (successful) ex Service Desk Manager

Cutting through the culture

Management reporting lines need to be ignored or subverted

ITSM is not a traditional IT development project

People need to feel they are in an environment where they can (and should) change

‘If you can’t change the people, change the people’ - true but you need to create a clear and positive culture

Governance

Great processes and tools are useless without –

ownership, controls and good management – good governance…

Practicalities What can we achieve in 10 – 20 – 30 days?

• Get customer feedback and implement quick wins • Identify cost per service • Agree cost per service unit – e.g. incident • Build business metrics model • Reduce cost of service request handling • Reduce % incidents + problems • Increase first time fix by % • Reduce errors caused by failed changes • Define the service (process) supply chain • Clearly define service owners • Design key services • Build a service transition process • Enforce a single Change Process • Use simple Customer feedback and NPV

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Thank you for listening… For more information: bjr@barclayrae.com @barclayrae #ITSMgoodness www.barclayrae.com www.itsmtv.co.uk www.itsmIndex.com