As we get
ready for summer, many of us are thinking about taking vacations. In some cases
the vacation will include a road trip with a full carload of people. “Getting
there is half the fun”, begins to take on a whole new meaning if the passengers
are not happy. You really want to ensure that each person is satisfied to make
the trip more enjoyable.
As we speak
in service management terms our passengers are the 4 P’s we have come to know;
People, Process, Products and Partners
All these
four components are in place in some capacity in your organization (car). The
key is to identify how much of a role they play. As the driver you need to
assess what needs to be done for each one of these to enhance the quality of
the journey.
You need to understand what you want to improve overall. Look at this from the
business perspective. While you are always thinking about the big picture from
a service delivery perspective start to think about how you can improve on people,
process, products and partners individually to make up the whole. Identifying
the inputs and outputs will allow us to define who we need to engage, or in
this case who or what we need in the car to fix this issue.
Just because some parties may not be vested in this improvement initiative
today doesn't mean that we don't need them tomorrow. Much like a screaming
toddler in the back seat who is looking for a cookie while we would like them
to just be quiet we need to identify the issue (cookie) and satisfy that need. In
some cases we may have that passenger that just is no longer a fit in the grand
scheme of things for our improvement initiative. A particular component within
the 4 P’s may need to be augmented or removed so, like a nagging uncle in the
car we might just leave them at the truck stop. Ensure that we have open lines
of communication and that all the improvement activities are transparent to all
stakeholders. There should be no secret that we are looking to make things
better. This goes for IT as well as your business.
Let’s look at an example
We have
application “ABC” which needs to have major releases regularly every 6 months.
The business has had some challenges with this. In their words “we don’t want
this system touched” the driver for this is that they are working on a project
with a client of theirs and they are worried any changes could cause this to so
awry. They need “ABC” up and running all the time operating the same way until
the project has been completed this fiscal year. In the beginning IT had
complied however as projects tend to do the launch dates were pushed out and as
such so has the ability to update “ABC”. IT is now at a point where we are
several releases behind from the application perspective and some of “ABC”
integrations to other applications are not working as they should. This has
been attributed to the fact that the application is not updated. Now IT is starting
to see incidents regularly because of that releases we have not done.
Think about
how the 4P’s apply in some way:
People – will
involve the people providing the service as well as the people who consume the
service. In this example there was a team who were using the application which
ultimately impacted clients, who, as you guessed it, are also people.
Process – make
sure that our process is measurable and is managed by an appropriate level of
people. This should include people (or in some cases a person) who owns,
manages or carries out the process itself.
Product – we need
to ensure we are positioning ourselves to deliver service based on the
stability of the services (in this case application ABC) we provide.
Partners – make
sure that we work with your suppliers. While we may have partners from an IT
perspective, IT may also be a supplier as it applies to client facing support
as in this example.
Overall
taking a look at your people, process, products and partners from another
perspective is just one component of continual service improvements. Doing this
will allow to see if you have everything you need in your car for the long trip
ahead.
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Labels: Continual Service Improvement, ITIL, ITSM, People, Service Management
