While I was an impartial viewer for the Super
Bowl, frankly an excuse to yell at the television and devour copious amounts of
savory snacks, I couldn’t help but notice the coaching staff with their
playbooks in hand. I thought to myself, while each team has one, what is in
there to ensure that they are on a winning trajectory.
How does the playbook integrate with the
delivery of services? Much like in sport there should be an offensive and
defensive strategy applied to how we achieve our goals.
Offence
A plan for what we are trying to achieve for
each financial quarter should be known as well as understood by all those in
the department who are providing service, whether that is IT, HR or Finance. In
the football game scenario when you are watching on TV you are barraged with
statistical information at every turn. I would suspect that each of the teams
have compiled to allow them to not only make the best decisions to allow them
to win (meet business objectives) but to do so in an way which allows them to
build on each point they score.
Your service delivery teams also should be
reviewing the reporting that is available to them to continue to build off
their successes but to also adjust when something that was not planned for
comes their way.
Defense
Despite our best efforts there are going to be
times where we are not able to make improvements or “move the needle” in a
direction which we want to go in. This is where we need to ensure that in
addition to having a good offensive strategy that we have also planned for
areas where challenges present themselves.
Having regular checkpoints throughout the year
will ensure that we identify any potential challenges to providing service. In
some cases this might be soliciting feedback from your business partners to
ensure that we are continuing to deliver services which are reflective of the
business outcomes.
Remember that while we may have an end goal for
the year in terms of service delivery as it pertains to business objectives, our
business may also have had some adjustments to make as well and we need to
validate that we are all still on the same page.
Overall we need to make sure that no matter how
good the strategy is that is it communicated and understood by all the players
on the team. This might avoid some mistakes at a crucial time when you should
run the ball rather than passing…..
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Labels: Continual Service Improvement, CSI, ITIL, ITSM, Service Delivery