Working in IT is amazing! We get to save the world multiple times every day, play with sparkly new technology, and engage with our awesome end users (or customers). Sometimes though, we can get so caught up in doing what we think is the best thing to do, when actually we’ve gotten sidetracked or are missing out on the most effective way of restoring service. This blog looks at seven deadly sins of IT service management (ITSM) as well as how best to avoid or correct them.

Topics: ITSM, IT Service Desk, CAB, problem management, knowledge management

The change advisory board (CAB) can be one of the most important and useful meetings a service-oriented IT organization holds. It sets out a view of what’s happening to key services over the next week (or longer depending on its frequency and timeframe), confirms the impact to the business, reviews previous change activity, and looks at continual service improvement (CSI).

Topics: ITIL, ITSM, change management, IT Service Desk, CAB

With the creation of IT service management (ITSM) capabilities, you’ll find that role types are an important aspect to include; because, after all, you can’t get anything done without the right people (and with those right people knowing exactly what they should and shouldn’t be doing). To help, ITIL offers up a number of generic role types that are then applicable across its various ITSM processes (or capabilities) – where these are then specific, rather than generic, roles, i.e. the generic roles become specific when attached to a certain ITIL process such as incident management.

Topics: ITIL, ITSM, enterprise service management

So, you’re about to take your ITIL Foundation Certification exam and can’t wait to get the new qualification. However, if you’re like us, it might have been quite a while since you last took an exam, and you now feel a little apprehensive about proving that you know your stuff. Plus, even if this isn’t the case, you still might be thinking: How can I increase the probability that I’ll pass the exam? Perhaps even with flying colors.

Topics: ITIL, Help Desk, ITSM

Kanban has become a very popular work – or workflow – management tool, especially in the Lean, Agile, and DevOps worlds. It has also found its way into IT service management (ITSM) as a way of providing focus and insight into work jobs/tasks and flows. For example, in managing ticket queues, planned and unplanned tasks, or projects and improvement activities. As well as offering a visual overview of all of the work to hand, it also provides insight into the status of work items and offers motivation to people who can hopefully see their work progressing from left to right – from “to do” (or “to-be-started”) to “complete.” Plus, it allows management to better understand the relative workload levels, blockages, and the performance of both individuals and teams.

Topics: ITSM, DevOps, Kanban, Agile, Lean

You’ve probably already heard of COBIT – it has been around for a while. If you have, then you might remember COBIT from its days of being an approach that was applicable to those with, shall we say, audit requirements. You might also remember COBIT’s longer name (as was) – “Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies” – which reinforced its audit-based roots. But it’s just plain-old COBIT now. Like ITIL, and the IT Infrastructure Library nomenclature, the acronym has superseded the longer-form name to reflect the evolved focus and scope of coverage. And if COBIT is potentially of interest to you, especially with the new COBIT 2019 recently replacing 2012’s COBIT 5, please read on for 10 tips on how best to start your COBIT journey.

Topics: ITIL, ITSM, COBIT

IT service desk reporting is an essential IT service management (ITSM) practice, which can help to identify troublesome processes, training requirements, customer satisfaction, and more. Most IT service desk managers understand this and make the time for reporting, but often the reports produced aren't as effective as they could be. So, if you’re spending significant time creating performance reports that aren’t being read or acted upon by your department, then it would be wise to look at what your reports contain and how the important messages are delivered. Ultimately, do they hit the mark – and help the reader – or do they sadly hinder more than they help?

Topics: Business Analytics, Service Desk, ITSM, KPIs, Analytics

For the last few years, employee self-service access to IT services has been offered as up as a key way to reduce costs, speed up resolution/provisioning, and deliver a better service experience. According to both North American (HDI) and UK (SDI) data, over 80% of IT support organizations have already invested in some form of IT self-service technology. It all sounds great until viewed through the lens of benefits realization, when – according to SDI research – only 12% of organizations have realized the expected benefits from their investment in self-service for IT.

Topics: ITSM, Self-service

Continual service improvement (CSI) has unfortunately been a long-neglected area in IT service management (ITSM), sometimes viewed as the ultimate post-success undertaking (“We’ll get to that once all of the planned work has been completed” – which is shorthand for “never”). With the publication of ITIL Practitioner, CSI as crucial capability has become significantly more prominent, but the results could often be better. This blog explains why and what to do about it.

Topics: ITIL, ITSM, CSI, Continual service improvement