ITIL Success | Opimise

Best Practice...

The best practice baseline is ITIL

ITIL is a comprehensive set of general best practices for IT service management (ITSM). The framework's processes are minimum operational requirements; best practice at the most basic level.

Tool configuration for ITIL success

For ITIL success, IT organisations must built-up from the process basics. ITSM tools are generally fit for use in that each process can be built-upon through tool configuration to be made fit for purpose, supported by good operational governance and management where necessary, with one exception.

For success in ITSM's foundational processes - IT Support Incident and Request Management - the process itself must be improved.

Typically, slow, unresponsive, and failed IT support cannot be prevented in use of ITIL's processes alone, no matter how well they are configured, even with well-developed standard operating procedures and proactive management.

ITIL's base process is inadequate because it is focused on the wrong thing - tickets, not activity. Completion of tickets is merely an aside to the work activity that teams must contribute to meet needs and expectations. An improved process is required to guide it.

Disadvantages of a ticket-focused approach

With ITIL alone, every IT organisation has the following operational issues:

1. Teams focus mainly on new tickets coming in.

2. Progression of older tickets is completely unguided. Frequent inappropriate delays and inertia are the norm. Of particularly harm, support conversations often fall dead:

Unanswered questions sent to customers are not followed-up, or a follow-up is ineffective or untimely.

Customer answers and other comments captured in ticket updates are not reliably seen or promptly responded.

Harm from delay and inertia is most acute when a customer comment is a chase on progress, or is time-critical, especially when chases build in number.

On balance, communication is prone to failure at both ends. Service customers are frequently ignored, sometimes repeatedly, even in the most sensitive of situations. It is where perception of service is at its weakest.

3. Progression relies on the ticket owner alone. Ownership silos substantially worsen unreliability in IT support.

4. Ticket-based measures of performance (e.g. an SLA) are highly inaccurate and do not reflect (weak) service experience.

A further seventeen issues are removed by taking the activity-focused approach that is the Flow Management.

IT support is different: For ITIL success, the process must be improved

By adding Flow Management to efficiently guide ticket progression through every support situation that can ever arise, where governance and good management was once needed the most, it is not needed at all.

Teams are unified with a systematic focus on high priority activity no matter who owns a ticket. Managers are enabled too, intervening simply by exception when timeliness is seen to dip, to help teams recover back to the expected service experience. Resource allocation can be adjusted with confidence.

Business lost work time is minimised, absolutely.

See how AP works

Why, then, is Flow Management new only now?

ITIL is globally accepted as being best practice for IT service Management, forming ITSM's high-level standard, ISO 20000.

For decades, its processes have remained the universal criteria for ITSM tool functionality, cementing its stature.

Deeply embedded in the status quo, organisations and ITSM tools intrinsically presume that there is no better way of working. The status quo has such strength that despite the extent of support's undesirable outcomes, they are simply tolerated as "it is what it is" without a second thought to consider that the process is a basic minimum requirement and must be the cause; that Incident and Request Management is an exception to ITIL processes being best practice.

To understand this pivotal fact in some detail, please request our white paper on the subject which includes the top nine unmanaged support situations and where IT Experience Management is positioned - overly challenged - without Flow Management.

Some ITSM tool developers have realised that status utilisation can improve the ITIL way of working, and so have added advanced status-based functionality. Not to the point of the AP breakthrough though.

Success for 12 ITIL practices

Recognising that something was acutely wrong, and with a "digital transformation" lens to the problem, Opimise was formed in 2019 to modernise and advance IT support, to establish "true best practice" dedicated solely to it.

The result is the Support Ops Focus Framework (SOFF). SOFF has two practices: Support Lifecycle Management (aka Flow Management), and its entirely complementary Team Performance Management centred on Contribution Recognition.

All twelve SOFF capabilities across both practices are more than ITIL-aligned. They bring twelve ITIL processes to life. An optimal methodology and standard for upmost service quality against which IT organisations can be accredited.

With all support-related process gaps filled to remove the 21 common operational issues, SOFF accredited organisations and service tools are "Flow verified".

12 ITIL processes / practices improved by Flow Management

Service Desk - All operational needs are met | Enablement of the Digital Channel Service Desk.
Incident | Request - With AP, focus switches to what matters - timely activity for attentive service.
Workforce & Talent - Fully supported teams who benefit from accurate achievement knowledge.
SLM | Measurement & Reporting - Flow Metrics gauge support's primary experience factor - attentiveness.
Continual Improvement - Every procedural shortcoming is identified, coordinated to develop lean service.
Knowledge Management - Form Knowledge Centred Service | Swarm to avoid escalation and delay.
Supplier Management (SIAM) - proactively manage supplier provision, ticket-by-ticket and at a service level.
Problem Management - identify "Problem" Incidents much earlier, and more of them.
Relationship Management - expose where business conversations are needed.
IT Asset Management - maintain CMDB accuracy.

Best Practice...

For success in ITSM's foundational processes - IT Support Incident and Request Management - the process itself must be improved.

Typically, slow, unresponsive, and failed IT support cannot be prevented in use of ITIL's processes alone, no matter how well they are configured, even with well-developed standard operating procedures and proactive management.

ITIL's base process is inadequate because it is focused on the wrong thing - tickets, not activity. Completion of tickets is merely an aside to the work activity that teams must contribute to meet needs and expectations. An improved process is required to guide it.

Disadvantages of a ticket-focused approach

With ITIL alone, every IT organisation has the following operational issues:

1. Teams focus mainly on new tickets coming in.

2. Progression of older tickets is completely unguided. Frequent inappropriate delays and inertia are the norm. Of particularly harm, support conversations often fall dead:

Unanswered questions sent to customers are not followed-up, or a follow-up is ineffective or untimely.

Customer answers and other comments captured in ticket updates are not reliably seen or promptly responded.

Harm from delay and inertia is most acute when a customer comment is a chase on progress, or is time-critical, especially when chases build in number.

On balance, communication is prone to failure at both ends. Service customers are frequently ignored, sometimes repeatedly, even in the most sensitive of situations. It is where perception of service is at its weakest.

3. Progression relies on the ticket owner alone. Ownership silos substantially worsen unreliability in IT support.

4. Ticket-based measures of performance (e.g. an SLA) are highly inaccurate and do not reflect (weak) service experience.

A further seventeen issues are removed by taking the activity-focused approach that is the Flow Management.

IT support is different: For ITIL success, the process must be improved

To understand this pivotal fact in some detail, please request our white paper on the subject which includes the top nine unmanaged support situations and where IT Experience Management is positioned - overly challenged - without Flow Management.

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Best Practice...

For success in ITSM's foundational processes - IT Support Incident and Request Management - the process itself must be improved.

Typically, slow, unresponsive, and failed IT support cannot be prevented in use of ITIL's processes alone, no matter how well they are configured, even with well-developed standard operating procedures and proactive management.

ITIL's base process is inadequate because it is focused on the wrong thing - tickets, not activity. Completion of tickets is merely an aside to the work activity that teams must contribute to meet needs and expectations. An improved process is required to guide it.

Disadvantages of a ticket-focused approach

​​​​

With ITIL alone, every IT organisation has the following operational issues:

​​​​​

1. Teams focus mainly on new tickets coming in. ​

2. Progression of older tickets is completely unguided. Frequent inappropriate delays and inertia are the norm. Of particularly harm, support conversations often fall dead:​​​

Unanswered questions sent to customers are not followed-up, or a follow-up is ineffective or untimely.

​​​

Customer answers and other comments captured in ticket updates are not reliably seen or promptly responded.

Harm from delay and inertia is most acute when a customer comment is a chase on progress, or is time-critical, especially when chases build in number.

On balance, communication is prone to failure at both ends. Service customers are frequently ignored, sometimes repeatedly, even in the most sensitive of situations. It is where perception of service is at its weakest.

​​​

3. Progression relies on the ticket owner alone. Ownership silos substantially worsen unreliability in IT support.

​​​​​​​

4. Ticket-based measures of performance (e.g. an SLA) are highly inaccurate and do not reflect (weak) service experience.

​​

A further seventeen issues are removed by taking the activity-focused approach that is the Flow Management.

IT support is different: For ITIL success, the process must be improved

To understand this pivotal fact in some detail, please request our white paper on the subject which includes the top nine unmanaged support situations and where IT Experience Management is positioned - overly challenged - without Flow Management.

1. Teams focus mainly on new tickets coming in.

2. Progression of older tickets is completely unguided. Frequent inappropriate delays and inertia are the norm. Of particularly harm, support conversations often fall dead: