Service management needs to change. The philosophies and understanding that gave way to the original concept of ITSM have been overtaken by time and perspective, rendering them outdated and leaving IT managers grasping with how to move forward.
Because the various factors of work are constantly shifting (shown most clearly over the course of the last two years, but broadly true of any given period of time in tech), we need to be limber in our ways of thinking of these concepts. For as much as we plan and project ahead in painstaking detail, the future is forever just out of sight, which means the future is unknowable.
This means that people need new ways of perceiving and interacting with work. This includes a total overhaul of the concept of service management, and whether service management within an organization needs to be separated into its own entity.
This topic is explored on the first episode of Ticket Volume, a new podcast where InvGate Product Specialist Matt Beran speaks with IT leaders to explore their views on service management, technology, and business. In the premiere episode, we interviewed former "IT Skeptic" Rob England about the future of work and why new management methods are sorely needed.
Rob is known for contributing to ITIL Service Strategy, The Unicorn Project, The Agile Manager, Open Management, The DevOps Handbook, and as the lead author of the VeriSM digital framework. He puts it thusly:
“In order to unlock new ways of working you need new ways of management. If you don’t manage the people differently, they’re incapable of working differently.”
IT, as we understand it, is only one of several organization capabilities that need to work together and synchronize efforts to deliver the products and services – which is to say, IT is not servicing HR. The service provider is the organization as a whole, and its capabilities define the quality of the service that is provided.
These new ways of thinking of service need to go hand-in-hand with an overhaul in how we perceive workers themselves. This is because this perception informs how we manage them.
“Service management is steeped in ideologies, some really deep philosophical thinking which is dated. The scientific management and thinking of people as machines that can be measured and optimized is obsolete. And yet it’s very difficult for service management to let go of that because it’s so woven into the fabric of service management thinking.”
In our conversation with Rob, we spoke about what service management is, what it isn’t, and what it should be, resulting in a surprisingly deep and philosophical conversation that spanned the gamut of service philosophy.
Listen to the full episode above. You can also find Ticket Volume on all podcast platforms.
