Talked with a company today that had a self-service catalog but the users did not know where it was or how to access it.
Like many other things in life, it does no good to invest in something and not communicate it well.
Yes, yours and every other self-service catalog need improvement. But, so does your communication of where it is, how to engage self-service, and how to add more items.
Problem Management will be one of the largest beneficiaries of AI in all of Service Management.
I know that sounds outrageous, but consider:
1. The AI looking for Incident patterns for Proactive Problem Management. The humans will set the thresholds and the tooling will give Problem candidates that can be analyzed. This is exciting to me. I see it like the thresholds of Event Management. Eventually, like with Event tools opening an Incident, then resolving it, AI will do the same for Problem.
2. For Reactive Problem Management, AI should be able to see the tech stack end-to-end and see what happened and be able to narrow down the root cause.
Exciting times. What are some of the AI use cases you see?
There are many things an organization can do to help users have a better experience.
Many times, all that is missing is communication.
I cannot understate how frequently users complain about something that a simple communication would solve.
The flaw is in the assumption that everyone knows.
I had a conversation yesterday on how an organization can do Change Management better. I was reminded how every process/practice is unique to that organization and the “right” answer is what is right for that organization at that specific point in time.
This is one of the major reasons why I love baselines and dislike benchmarks.
There are so many variables that it takes expertise to identify and define what is right for the organization.
If your organization needs help identifying how to do Change (or Incident or Asset or other) right, let me know.
One thing the past 3 years should have taught us is to believe in baselines, not benchmarks.
Why?
Your goal should be bettering yourself and how you are doing things, not comparing yourself to organizations (and people) with very different variables.
I make the case in “ITIL4: The New Frontier” that every organization is unique in many ways, including:
– leadership
– risk-aversion culture
– expertise of personnel
– maturity of processes
– everything in between.
If there’s that much uniqueness, comparison is futile.
I love the quote, “comparison is the thief of joy” in that comparison bogs you down from focusing on improvement.
The focus should be on improvement.
Leaders are like little kids in one aspect…
We like colorful pictures to tell a story.
With time in limited supply, there is nothing more effective than an easy-to-consume graph or chart that speaks to the problem that needs addressing.
We often forget that this is communication through pictures.
One thing I am seeking to improve on this year is how to present data in an easy-to-consume manner.
What are some of the tips, tricks, methods, you use?
One that I see underutilized is “conditional formatting” in Excel. A simple pivot table with conditional formatting speaks volumes.
What’s the percentage of standard changes to total changes at your organization?
I maintain that a mature ITSM organization should have standard changes be 60-75% of total changes.
This is for a few reasons:
1. allowing speed-to-delivery for low-risk changes.
2. allowing the CAB & change authorities to focus on higher risk changes.
3. allowing the organization to utilize a risk-based approach
4. allowing for an easier discussion on what is a change.. This is one of the more difficult areas for Change Management/Enablement.
There are more reasons but these are just a few.
So, does your organization push the use of standard changes?
The rates of change will only increase.
When we think of how things will be different in the future, the changes will be driven by technology. RPA, AI, NLP, and everything in between.
These innovations will drive how we do things on the process side of business outcomes.
Think of how AI will impact:
Knowledge Management – knowing which knowledge article is most likely to be needed based on searches, incidents, and implementations.
Service Desk – knowing the likely topic of calls before the users pick up the phone.
Event – connecting the event system to everything so the events drive responses even before humans know there is an issue
There are many more that I will dive into in the future like Problem, Change, CMDB, etc.
Everyone wants more chatbots.
Few want to invest in the Knowledge Management that it takes to do chat right.
Bad chatbots are MUCH worse than no chatbots.
Sure, technology can enable chatbots, but not ensure their success.
The more I talk to people during and after an ITSM tool implementation, the more I fervently believe we – as an industry – are missing something.
Let me first say this is not directed at individuals or companies but the general practices of how things are done.
Companies not doing Service Management well buy a tool so they can improve. Great first step.
The tool implementer’s focus is on the tool, data, groups, workflows, etc. This is all an improvement for the company.
But, it never addresses why the company is struggling with Service Management. Here are some specific things I have seen recently:
– no understanding or push for Standard Changes
– poor Emergency Change process
– poor Major Incident process
– Incidents misprioritized
– poor response time on Service Requests
– poor Self-Service Catalog
– poor CMDB governance
– poor CAB attendance and standardized decisions
– poor management of IT hardware
– poor Service Management governance
– the list goes on.
We must do better.
What happens next is that the company thinks the issue is the tool. They ponder getting a new tool.