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ITIL Service Operation - Tips For Managing Your Service Operation

Achieving balance in Service Operation

Managing an effective Service Operation is tricky in nature. Service Operation is orientated around tasks that  monitor and manage the various functions within an IT Services Organization, and in these challenging financial times - this is not an easy feat.

As various functions are formed and built primarily to work for different purposes and processes within the company, it is now the Service Operation primary goal to efficiently work out a scheme that helps in successfully delivering their goals without nagitvely impacting the quality of IT Service delivered to the business.

ITIL Service Operation provides us with core guidance in how to set about the planning, coordination and management of complex, multi-regional and diverse systems and services. ITIL Version 3 Design Guidelines are available to help. What's paramount is achieving a healthy balance across cost, time, effort and results achieved.

IT View V’s External Business View

It has been a struggle over time, on which view to choose when it comes to weighing up the importance of the business’ IT infrastructure. It’s always been a battle between what the customers require and what the business owners think is really necessary.

The conflict between the external and the internal view of IT has long been a struggle throughout the evolution of IT Service Organisations.

As customers point out the importance of IT as a set of services (external view) and the business owners scrutinize the importance of IT and their components (internal view), the intelligent IT Service Provider must find rapid and effective ways of understanding the gaps and closing them.

Most companies try to choose one mode of view, while ideally; there should be a semblance of balance within the two to assure a thriving relationship between customers and service owners.

 
Here’s a quick look at the different modes of the two views:

 
 Primry Focus

 
-         extreme internal focus

 The primary focus of a business with an extreme internal focus on their IT technology has little regard to the quality of their services; however they are very thorough with their IT components and internal processes.

-         extreme external focus

The primary focus of a business with an extreme external focus on their IT technology usually has a great service performance but it doesn’t really care on how they’ll achieve such feat.

Metrics

-         extreme internal focus

The metrics usually used with this kind of view focuses heavily on the internal processes of the organization with little regard on how it applies on their service performance.

 
-         extreme external focus

 
The metrics usually used with this kind of view focuses heavily on the external processes of the organization without providing any tips on how to improve such faults.

 
The IT staff usually gathers their own mode of measurement for their internal processes.

 
Customer/user experience

 
-         extreme internal focus

 
The customer experiences a high consistency of deliveries; however the services delivered are less of what is expected from the company.

 
This view uses a push approach, in terms of service delivery.

 
-         extreme external focus

 
The customer experiences a poor consistency of deliveries, and because of their chosen reactive mode of service delivery only a few services are delivered to its users.

 
Operations Strategy

 
-         extreme internal focus

This view uses a standard operation across the board and all of the services should be able to fit the present architecture.

 
-         extreme external focus

This view uses multiple delivery and processes.

Procedures and manuals

 

-         extreme internal focus

 

The procedures and manuals for this kind of view usually focuses on how to manage the IT infrastructure, however without the correlation of the technology to service deliveries.

 

-         extreme external focus

 

The procedures and manuals for this kind of view usually focuses on what should be done, however failing to describe how it should come into realization.

 

Cost strategy

 

-         extreme internal focus

 

The cost reduction for this view is usually done through consolidation of technology and optimization of operational procedures.

 

The business impact of such cost reduction would only be realized later.

 

-         extreme external focus

 

Budget is usually reserved for those business units that are most in need, and those who fail to address their needs are left with little or no financial aid.

 

 

Training

 

-         extreme internal focus

 

In this view, training is done as apprentices, where they are shown how things should be done without imparting with them the reason why.

 

-         extreme external focus

 

In this view, training is done per project, as technology is viewed as ever changing.

 

Operations Staff

 
-         extreme internal focus

 
In this view, the staff is trained on various skill set and they are led to believe that good technical achievement is similar to good customer service.

 

-         extreme external focus

 

In this view, the organization is filled with generalized staff that is organized based on their technical capability and they often encounter problems as they suffer from poor management of internal processes.

 

 

 

 

Free ITIL V3 Mindmaps

Download All 5 Core ITIL V3 Mindmaps

Provided by one of my companies ITIL Training Zone - we are the specialists in fully accredited, online ITIL Training - and I beleive you will find these Mindmaps are a real time saver.

If you need a quick overview  on what exactly the key contents of all five of the ITIL Version 3 core texts are - then this is for you.

Here's a thumbnail of the Service Operation Mindmap (Click on it to view a larger image).

To grab your own set of free ITIL V3 mindmaps - simply visit:

ITIL Training Zone and register for your free account.

You can download all 5 straight to your PC - plus there's also some other free content there too.

Real-World ITIL Configuration Management - From Start To Finish

I recently interviewed Larry Klosterboer, the author of “Implementing ITIL Configuration Management”, for over an hour on best practices in implementing ITIL Configuration Management.

Larry’s got several large scale, complex CMDB implementations under his belt and he’s not afraid to share with you what really works, his 5 step framework, tons of techniques - as well as what definitely does not work.

Now, that’s my kind of interview!

We can often learn more from past mistakes than we can from just ‘what works’.

But what I really enjoyed about the Podcast is the extent Larry’s gone to lay-out for you, step-by-step, the key stages of planning, designing, building, implementing and enhancing Configuration Management.

If you are just starting out – or someway along your CMDB journey – listen to this practical, start-to-finish guide to help you establish a clear roadmap for success, customize standard processes to your needs and avoid the pitfalls and challenges that might just stand in your way.

You’ll learn practical tips on how to plan your implementation, deploy tools and processes, administer ongoing configuration management tasks, refine ITIL information, and leverage it for competitive advantage.

Throughout, Larry highlights his approach with lots of real-world advice and examples, and helps you focus on the specific techniques that offer maximum business value in your environment.

The Podcast is split into two 30 minute segments, covering: -

• Assessing your current CM maturity and setting goals for improvement
• Gathering Requirements to align ITIL with organizational needs
• Describing the schema of your CMDB
• Identifying, capturing, and organizing configuration data
• Choosing the best tools for your requirements
• Integrating data and processes to create a unified logical CMDB
• Implementing pilot projects to demonstrate the value of CM
• Moving from a pilot to wide-scale enterprise deployment
• Defining roles for deployment and ongoing staffing
• Leveraging configuration management information
• Measuring and improving CMDB data accuracy

I also twisted Larry’s arm to 'spill the beans' and take a deeper dive into Requirements Management and running CMDB pilot projects. These two sections alone are well worth a listen.

You rarely find anyone talking so openly about these two topics.


Listen to the Podcast

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Double Your Income Doing What You Love

New! Exclusive Book Tour for Inner Circle Members.

Goal planning and the achievement of goals has been written about by thousands of authors over the last few years - but never has 'achievement' been more important than in today's economic and business climate.

As markets continue to mature and global competition grows more fierce the need for every individual to contribute, and be able to measure their contribution, is critical.

One of my favourite ITIL books (if pushed) remains the now fairly rare volume called, "Planning To Implement Service Management".

You may remember this was the ITIL V2 green book. Inside we were introduced to a core theme of ITIL which was carried forwards into ITIL V3 (and the ITIL Foundation Training) which was:

• What is the vision?
• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get where we want to be?
• How do we check our milestones have been reached?
• How do we keep the momentum going?

This core theme is central to the whole ITIL V3 Continual Service Improvement book.

This 6 step model for CSI has been taught, learnt and instilled in many of us over the last 10 years in our ITIL Training.

The problem is that, however useful we find this model, the core ITIL texts do not have the bandwidth or appetite to take a deeper dive and examine how we, as human beings with aspirations, strenghts, talents and limited resources at our disposal can best leverage and adapt underpinning elements of the model for our own personal use.

That's a bit of a long way of saying - how can "I" personally leverage this model, from my own perspective and role in my organization to do the right things, at the right time in an efficient and effective way.

Well, as part of my IT Service Coaching and Mentoring work with several clients, I regularly research and present new tools, techniques and methods to help individuals overcome such challenges.

One great resource I found (pretty much by accident, see the PDF below for how I came across it!) provides a much more humanistic and personal approach to visioning, goal setting, planning and the achievement of goals.



This is a recent book called, "Double Your Income Doing What You Love", by Raymond Aaron. Don't let the title put you off - it's really not about some goofy 'get rich quick' schemes or selling you 'snake oil'.

Although, it's not really something that sounds like it should be associated with either a professional environment or IT Service Management, trust me on this, there are many useful and easily adaptable tools in here that will help.

Rather than me taking up too much space here - why not download the free 10 page PDF report that I've put together.

In the right frame of mind, you will discover more about you, your talents, what you 'love' doing (and what you don't) and how to get to where you need to be - from a personal perspective.

I've produced a free 10 page report that covers the key take-aways, the tools, the techniques and a summary of each chapter.

Download double_your_income.pdf


I've also provided a Mind map summary in .mmap (Mindjet MindManager) format for anyone who prefers 'bubbling'.

Download double_your_income.mmap


I would be really interested to learn what you think about this book, its tools and techniques and whether you have any further recommendations for this important topic... why not click 'comments' (below) and have your say?

Service Desk Performance - What's Missing?

From my IT Service and ITIL Coaching work with many clients over the last 10 years, I can easily site the following 'top 5' challenges and 'missing' solution components that I have seen time and time again: -

• Suitably Skilled and Experienced Service Desk Staff
• Pro-active and Pragmatic Second Line Support Teams
• Demand Management and Workload Forecasting Functionality
• Clear, at-a-glance, heads-up summaries - for all 'open items'
• Sound Workflow Linked to CMDB Information

I appreciate that bullet points [1] and [2] above are not strictly 'tooling' functionality, but they are essential solution components that are required to drive Service Desk efficiency and therefore help improve business efficiency.

Here are some observations to help drive efficiency for each of the challenges...

1. Suitably Skilled and Experienced Service Desk Staff.

* Thorough induction and education program on joining
* Appropriate ITIL Training such as ITIL Foundation
* Performance goals, measurements and feedback

2. Pro-active, pragmatic second line support teams.

* Ensure that 'bottlenecks', delays and un-helpful second line support personnel are removed/re-educated to provide maximum real-time assistance for the front line service desk team

* Instill quality reporting on 'what really matters', but from an end-to-end customer perspective, for example measure 'mean time to closure' for tickets and then focus *hard* on reducing this over time.

3. Demand Management and Forecasting Functionality.

* Implement true workload and demand management functionality, based on historical data, to predict the organizational workload currently placed on various people and teams. For example - at any given time, how many incidents require effort - and so - how many resources should be made available to protect/meet SLA's in this process area.

4. Clear, at-a-glance, heads-up summary of all open items.

* Solutions should provide real-time, at a glance, displays of all appropriate items such as #incidents, #problems, #requests, #changes etc. Not just the volumes and current status - but how long is left before a pre-defined internal check-point is going to be breached. Those approaching pre-defined SLA targets must be re-prioritised and action taken to avoid failure.

5. Sound workflow linked to CMDB information - providing real-time information and an accurate service picture.

* This is perhaps the most under-used and ironically - the most challenging to set-up quickly; implement the Service Desk Solution to leverage the data available within the CMDB to provide real-time updates on the current and planned status of CI's that matter most to incident, service request, problem and change management.

Running through all of the above is the central theme of removing reliance on, and interventions by, human beings (the Service Desk team) and driving automation.

ITIL V3 provides some good approaches for delivering these types of improvements (within the Service Design and Continual Service Improvement books) but alas, I believe, even ITIL V3 is still lacking in the Service Desk tooling and solutions area.

How To Eliminate Problems Before They Impact Your Business

Free 67 Page Ebook - Ready To Download!

The S7VEN Sources of Problems

Eliminating problems before they impact your business not only makes good service sense but it also allows scarce resources to focus on other, more value adding, activities.

The whole emphasis of my ebook is to provide you with real world, proven, practical tips and techniques that can be adapted for you use within your own organization.

Written in an easily accessible style this pragmatic ebook reveals:

- How to quickly use the S7VEN Sources model to eliminate problems in your Service Operation

- Four essential ways to manage 'known errors'

- How to remove 'single points of failure' or SPOFs

- The secrets of a 'problem free' Service Transition

- How to create implementation plans that really work

- How to maximise Vendor results month after month

- How to eradicate 'blame culture'

It's taken me many months to consolidate these good practices into one easily accessible ebook - so I hope you enjoy it.

Most of all - I would like you to adopt the most suitable ideas and put them to good use.

Why not find out what the S7VEN Sources model can do for you in 2008!

Download your free copy now...

Download the_s7ven_sources_of_problems.pdf

I'd really like to hear what you think about this ebook: what did you like, what's the best idea that you are going to adopt, perhaps you have better ideas - afterall no-one has got the monopoly on great ideas!

Why not click the comments link below and share your thoughts...