I was recently speaking with a service management
practitioner who was looking to revisit a service management improvement strategy.
When I asked her what she was working with she indicated that her organization
was looking to build out its service management capability regarding the following
processes: Change, Incident and Request to start with.
The initial component of the project, which was completed
was performing the gap analysis from where they are today and where they need
to be. The company had outlined several roles which needed to be filled but
like any company these days identified that money is an object and that they
need to be selective with the overall operational cost of the newly rebuilt
service management team.
My advice to her was simple. Quality vs Quantity.
You want to position yourself to have the people filling
these roles as agents for change for the ITSM project. The reason is simple,
you need to have people who can not only manage the work but be advocates for
the work being completed. In many cases their skills will need to allow them to
train material, be able to market the processes to those who do not understand
them as well taking metrics and translating them into something tangible for
lasting improvements.
I suggested that her efforts in the initial component of
the improvement phase would be best served having these types of people
compared with more warm bodies occupying seats. I went on to state that rather
than hiring 5 people of average skill if they were to have one all-star in each
of the three roles you would have a better shot at not only delivering value
but sharing the success that goes along with it.
After all, when it comes right down to it being able to
show tangible results will allow to further grow this improvement initiative in
future phases over the long run. In cases where you do not have these advocates
you may run the risk of implementing processes with process managers which will
keep the business operating but not enable them to take service to the next
level.
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Labels: business value, Continual Service Improvement, ITIL, ITSM
