Codifying/Indexing Documents

When I deliver ITIL® courses, whilst not on course syllabus, I often stress the need to carefully plan an approach in terms of adopting a naming convention for documents. This is not about just keeping them organised and tracking previous versions but to establish relationships between these documents, and which can be cascaded, typically applying this to database format.

Let me explain,

When a manager is asked about restoring live services, questions such as, how do we go about restoring a live service? When handling service restoration, how do we ensure that we are productive and efficient? And, how do we identify improvements? I have noted from past experience that a typical response is often, "let's grab a coffee and I'll explain," which usually leads to a lengthy and unclear explanation. Ideally, we need someone who will demonstrate this instead of just talking about it.

Some might just…

Product Development

I recently had an extremely productive discussion with a software development team (dev team) and an interesting point came out of this discussion.

Firstly, let me highlight that I am an advocator of ‘fast delivery’ therefore, I am 100% supportive of agile/scrum methodologies, principles and practices and embracing these methodologies within the service management framework to ensure total transparency.

Secondly however, it became apparent that the dev team were focusing primarily on the functionality of the application (the product), and overlooking many functional (utility) and non-functional (warranty) values which make-up the service (end-to-end).

This oversight impacts operational efficiency from the provider’s perspective and in turn, service experience from the consumer’s perspective. For example, when in design mode, there appeared to be less of a focus on the service (end-to-end) such as,

• Opportunities for automation and shift left

Moment of Truth

Firstly, what is a Moment of Truth? Well simply put, the ITIL® 4 textbook defines this as a "key touchpoint or service interaction between the service provider and consumer, and where the consumer forms or changes their impression of any aspect of the service experience, service organisation, products, and/or services”. For clarification, "changing their impression" can mean from positive to negative or visa versa.

Wow, this seems significant, i.e., from the consumer's perspective it sounds like all the great work in parts of the journey could be undone in a flash by other parts of the same journey. 

Service Desk (ITIL 4)

Someone recently said that they did not understand the reason or value in ITIL 4 defining the service desk as a “Practice” and not a team/function as did in ITIL 3.

I believe referring to the service desk as a team/function (as did ITIL 3) unintentionally created a culture where today we see some service desk teams failing to keep up with modern times, they have become old school, and struggling to demonstrate value contribution.