The IT Skeptic - Comments for "User self-help - a skeptical view"

BYOD and cloud

CaryKing — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 01:08:41 +0000

Whew, I'm exhausted just reading through all this stuff....

BYOD and other moves to commoditization and cloud are just part of the change to the delivery model

IT seems to be going through the same disintermediation and supply chain changes that manufacturing did 30 or so years ago.

Ford's River Rouge plant used to be one giant plant with iron ore coming in one end and cars coming out the other. Now, more than 90% of car value is subcontracted.

I have no reason to believe IT won't experience a similar path. Tata, HP, IBM, etc. can do certain things, because of their scale, better than any small IT shop can.

On the other hand, they don't, necessarily, do a good job with high-touch, highly personal services. They sure can if you get the right person, but if you're a mid-sized company - good luck with that.

It seems to me that as people get more separated and technology becomes more a part of their lives, there will need to be a time for high-touch services that online doesn't offer. Recently, I had to make a complex flight arrangement that included different stops, etc. I tried to use the web page. But, quickly found it unusable. I finally got a person, actually a manager, and she saved me money and time.

I like using online where I can. I also like using experts when necessary. I conceive that the Service Desk will, increasingly, be the place to go for the expert services that we sometimes need to be satisfied.

As to BYOD and all the rest - there still will come a time when it is faster and easier to have someone in a SD resolve the problems of what doesn't work on what device or version. Expert problem solving is still a skill - and even after more than 30 years in the industry, I just don't want to spend the time screwing with it - I've got billing to do.

As to ITIL, it's a great inside-out guide for process. But, it doesn't help with Governance, Strategy, Architecture, Priorities, etc. And, there just isn't any cookie-cutter approach to this - we still have to listen to our customers and work out their specific needs. I help apply (as does TIPU) CobiT, ITIL, Lean, USMBOK, ISO 20k, etc.....

When the customer knows the options (pros/cons) they can better pick their own path. Or, as Blaise Pascal wrote, “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.”

the ITIL cult and the anti-ITIL cult

skeptic — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:29:50 +0000

I'm not sure how I'm doing inside-out thinking. perhaps you mean I'm doing ITIL-centric thinking. I hope its clear from this blog that I'm not part of the ITIL cult. I find anti-ITIL thinking to be as cultish as ITIL-is-the-answer thinking. "Bypassing ITIL" is as misguided as "implementing ITIL". it's a tool, among many. we all need it. the question is how much, from 1% to 80%.

As for the changing service desk, we're in violent agreement. i agree on the directions that the SD must evolve in. that will mean changing skills and sometimes changing people. all the service desks i ever met were evolving all the time. Sure they need the insight that we philosophers provide to help steer themselves, but evolution is nothing new for anyone in IT - they're all dealing with it already. change is a steady state.

And I don't underestimate awareness of these directions already. For example, one of the most conservative, isolated and under-funded IT organisations I know has a BYOD project under way, are fully virtualised in storage and servers, use mostly thin clients, and are both a SaaS customer and provider.

A timely reminder

JamesFinister — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:27:00 +0000

I found this cartoon both funny and yet creepily scary

http://onefte.com/2012/01/30/

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Progress

JamesFinister — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:46:31 +0000

I think a lot CIOs, and this has been confirmed to me this week by two other well known ITSM people, are now beginning to bypass ITIL on the search for transformation. They see ITIL as about just properly the things it should have been doing all along. It sits, or should fit, fairly low down the hierarchy. In Kano model terms it is a basic requirement.

When you think about it even the strategic bits of ITIL are really about sustaining and improving a stable steady state, not fundamental reappraisal of strategy.

I was going to say that some of the changes could appear to cancel each other out, and in a way they do, but in another way they combine to move us to a new place that inly superficially resemble where we were. Plus they don't cancel each other out automatically.

Organizations need to start doing some serious thinking about what support for BYOD ought to look like, and I can imagine different models suiting different organisations. guess worst case scenario for the SD is that their technical skills become obsolete and support for the browser based apps rests with the SaaS supplier.

We can't just be auditors and police, in the way we were with Shadow IT 1.0 . This time around we also have to be facilitators and mentors. Dare I say that they aren't skills that come easily to all in IT? We also need to think of how this impacts BCP, security et etc. Incidentally I don't think all the impacts are bad. Some are very positive - I've already been in situations where a workforce having access to mobile technology has helped mitigate major incidents.

I don't think it is a simple case of "a changing workload not a lower one" but again a mix depending on the specific situation, bearing in mind that none of these changes are liekly to happen in isolation. Some smaller desks could face a real challenge unless management change their way of thinking about them, and as I've said several times over, that means rethinking how we measure SD performance. Having agents sitting "idle" might start to be seen as a good thing, and perhaps we will shift to measuring outbound call volumes rather than inbound volumes.

Isn't it easy to slip into inside-out thinking "The only thing I see right now that might profoundly impact ITIL ideas " - There are two questions, one is more important than the other. One is that one, i.e. do we need to change our beloved ITIL. The important one us "Does ITIL have the content which is going to help us respond to these changes effectively, or will it get in the way?"

For what it is worth I think ACM is going to be a useful tool for some of us over the next two years and it might even have a profound impact on the next version of ITIL, But to the vast majority of ITSM practitioners that is academic compared to getting the advice and help they need to succeed until then. SD 2.0 is a call for action to get us through this transition period. Hopefully by the time the next edition of ITIL comes out everything Aale and I our talking about will be so mainstream it won't need a label anymore.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Case Management

skeptic — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:24:13 +0000

James, stimulating as always. i think your thoughts need a post in reply but I'll try for just a comment for now.

A demand from the business for transformational delivery of services that adds value to their activity and not just having an internal ROI for IT.

isn'rt that "why ITIL"? We've been wrestling with that for a decade or more

- Users expecting a higher level of responsiveness and support for BYOD
- A shift to SaaS and browser based solutions running on kit that is technically simpler to support

Interestingly I think those two pretty much cancel each other out in their impact on the service desk :)

Both customers and users combining services in novel ways to support business processes without IT being directly involved or aware.

This is where we need to be auditors and police: the Sheriff keeping the company safe

Self service reducing the need for users to have frequent direct contact with service desk agents.

Yup that has been a gradual longterm trend. That means a changing workload not a lower one, as you point out.

The only thing I see right now that might profoundly impact ITIL ideas is Case Management, which i suspect links up with "Freedom from Command and Control" and certainly demands stronger knowledge management and new SD skills. the more i dig into Case the more interested I get in the potential. it's nice that I'm doing lots of work in the health sector right now - they have vast experience in Case Management :)

A long answer that is still too short

JamesFinister — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:26:00 +0000

Kaimar

I thought I’d addressed these issues in my original blog, but then I realised Rob hadn’t linked to it in his opening post of this thread so I don't know how many people who have commented here have read what I actually said.

http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/2012/02/service-desk-20.html

What are the specific challenges that Service Desk faces?

I’m less keen to think of these as challenges than as changes:

- A demand from the business for transformational delivery of services that adds value to their activity and not just having an internal ROI for IT.
- Users expecting a higher level of responsiveness and support for BYOD
- A shift to SaaS and browser based solutions running on kit that is technically simpler to support
- Both customers and users combining services in novel ways to support business processes without IT being directly involved or aware.
- Self service reducing the need for users to have frequent direct contact with service desk agents.

All of the above are things I’ve already seen happen, though clearly they are a long way from being common place.

The potential knock on effects of this for the Service Desk in organisations going down these routes are:

- It becomes harder to justify the typical improvement activity we do around desks because it is seen as just fixing what is broken, not contributing to business level innovation.
- The SD have to support devices that are out of their immediate control or knowledge and need effective strategies for dealing with
- A reduction in “bread and butter” technical calls and therefore a higher proportion of functional support calls.
- More calls where effective agent intervention is hampered by the contractual relationship with a supplier, or lack of it.
- It becomes less easy to assess the business impact of a call-
- Traditional SD and incident management metrics become less useful, or need radical overhaul of the
expected performance levels if a significant proportion of what would have been routine calls are now handled by self service.
- Users becoming less dependent on the human contact aspect of SD, but more demanding on those occasions when they do ring the SD.

In an ideal world these would almost all be seen as positives, and indeed I think they mostly are. Pat Bolger suggests that the major consequence is going to be that the agents now have more control of their time and can “do what they should be doing to add value” Hopefully that will continue to be the case in enlightened IT departments, but I can also see real pressure for FTE reduction and a mis-match between what the desk think they should be doing to add value and what IT management think they should be doing.

That last point brings up the point that my own thinking has also been heavily influenced by John Seddon and Freedom from Command and Control. A command and control mindset is not the one needed during these sorts of changes.

What are the changes in the *core concept* of the Service Desk that will be required?

I suppose first of all it depends what you mean by the core concepts, and where we find them. I think my view, and that’s all it is, is that:

- The ACTUAL underlying concepts around how we service interactions don’t alter
- The CONCEPTS DESCRIBED in ITIL will be found to be incomplete and to have confused the actual underlying concepts with the mechanisms and conventions we currently use to implement them in the real world.
- The UNDERSTANDING that many people have of what the key concepts are is what will require the relearning.
I believe in the ITSM world we are only just developing the maturity and tools to actually explore these distinctions and to suggest improvements. That isn’t surprising, other than outsourcing there hasn’t really been any external changes that have required rethinking. I would really recommend those recent papers from Charlie Betz, by the way.

I'm reminded of Plato's parable of the cave.

What is the risk if all of this is not taken into account?

I’m trying to avoid discussion that centres around FUD, or at least the F bit, the UD is perhaps inevitable currently. This is about recognising we need to change because things around us are changing.

If we do lag behind the business in both our thinking and our execution then I suspect you will see yet more outsourcing of service desks, or existing contracts being given to vendors who can innovate throughout the contract life without slaughtering the client with contract change costs as the required SD service changes.

I‘m afraid the cases where management rejoice in the new found freedom of the agents to do more effective work will be less common than the ones where the changes are used to squeeze costs and FTE count.

My greatest fear, though it is probably only a short term issue, is that managers will continue to assess the SD based on metric frameworks and targets that are no longer valid, and as an industry we won’t have mature suggestions for alternatives. That will also impact how SD services are specified in contracts. Again, I’ve already seen that in the real world.

In a very few cases I think we might see the SD as we know it disappear, but only where a large number of factors coincide.

What are the main steps Service Desk needs to take to keep up with the times?

Well surely the most obvious one is to start thinking about the possibility that there is a need to change and to be starting to think about a coping strategy. Will new skills be needed? What about investment in Knowledge Management? Do we need to start changing our call categorisation now so that we can predict the likely impact on volumes in the future? Can we start producing different metrics now to either defend our position or to give a realistic before and after benchmark of performance? Again I suggested some others in my blog.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Where it could lead

JamesFinister — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:45:27 +0000

True, IT in the business would be as embarrassing as a party of priests in a lingerie department

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Careful now

RichPem — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:47:59 +0000

What are you suggesting?!! Down with this sort of thing... ;-)

Transformation and the role of revolutionaries

JamesFinister — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:41:39 +0000

Rob,

I'm obviously concerned with timescales that coincide with the typical services contract life cycle, as, needless to say, our the customers. Most of them are looking for a transformation within the current the next two years. I use that term because it is the one they tend to use themselves. They are also all aware that the starting point for transformation has to be a service that is currently stable and reliable. Automating services without a good understanding of what those services are clearly isn't a good idea.

I don't think in the European market the desire for transformation is itself a driver for outsourcing. We are largely talking about organizations that have been using large scale outsourcing for at least three to seven years. It is, however, a driver for seeking out a new supplier. Clients also want to know what tomorrow's transformation will look like today, even if only in broad outline and to have some indication of how it will impact QoS and changes they foresee in how they do business themselves.

Automation for the sake of automation isn't a good thing, and in today's climate the business case is king. However our own experience, and that of others, is that well designed industrialisation, supported by automated workflow produces tangible benefits.

The need to transform will come for some Service Desks much earlier than others. A lot will be able to benefit by following in the steps of others, giving them a chance to evolve themselves but also to learn lessons from the early adopters. But some service desks, some organisations and some suppliers are going to have to respond a lot quicker to changes in requirements. They need to find their cheerleaders, and their sense of direction now to start implementing eighteen moths from now.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

more gradual

skeptic — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:47:14 +0000

Hi James

I know you aren't announcing the end of service desk (it happens) but Service Desk 2.0 to me implies a total rebuild and I see things as more gradual. it's this evolutionary vs revolutionary thing. i'd hate to see clients rip everything out and start again with "2.0" when they are perfectly capable of growing into this - in fact better off. I guess if they were to go the revolutionary route they'd be more inclined to outsource eh? :D

One small detail. ITIL says "The single point of contact...." not "The single channel of contact....". I've had this debate with Aale. I still want user support to be centrally owned, managed and measured, however many touch points there are. that's MY definition of a Service Desk.

And this myth that automation is always a good idea has to stop. As i've said before, much in IT isn't worth automating when you look at true ROI and TCO. Often it's cheaper to stick with real people, especially for we 95%. It's also questionable that errors are always reduced.

Being literal for once

JamesFinister — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:09:41 +0000

Rich,

Don't forget the option of physically letting them out of the basement and putting them somewhere the business can see and interact with them.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Is IT a broker?

Kaimar Karu — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:09:21 +0000

It seems that we all agree that Service Desk will not disappear, but needs to modernize itself as the world is modernizing. No disagreement here from either side I think.

The relevance of Service Desk for users is the key issue. While Aale appears to be saying that users are less end less reliant on Service Desk (comparing Service Desk to travel arrangements), Rob is saying that Service Desk as such is still as relevant as ever, but agrees that the way Service Desk functions needs to change "as times change" (my quote).

I see two issues/misunderstandings in this debate. Firstly, as Rob has also pointed out, the concept of "Service Desk" is unclear. We have not defined it properly before arguing for or against its relevance. Aale seems to equate it with Incident (or in essence "user problem") resolution providing, while Rob sees it as covering Incidents and Requests. Regardless of the user's technical skills, most of Requests do require Service Desk involvement - and yes, here we run into "is an un-manned Service Desk i.e. Self Service Portal still a part of the Service Desk or is it a separate non Service Desk entity?". I personally don't see as separate. Secondly, as Rob also has pointed out, the personal experience cannot be mapped 1-1 to corporate environments. The fact that you can book flights or hotel rooms online without a travel agent does not mean there is no need for airline or hotel helpdesks. Is IT equivalent to a travel agent or any type of broker? This seems a rather limited description of what IT's role in a company is. Also, the fact that you can find answers to "how to update my TV firmware" online does not mean a corporate helpdesk who can help you with a) incident resolution, b) request fulfilment and c) information needs a significant change.

For me, it seems there is much ado about nothing in many of the ITSM discussions. Too much fluff, placards and manifestos and not enough thoroughness. What are the specific challenges that Service Desk faces? What are the changes in the *core concept* of the Service Desk that will be required? What is the risk if all of this is not taken into account? What are the main steps Service Desk needs to take to keep up with the times?

Desk

RichPem — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:07:06 +0000

James said: "It also means being prepared to let the Service Desk out oif the basement and into the business."

I think this is true. At a simplistic level, I've seen the IT service desk used to handle non-IT business process requests very recently, including FM, HR, Finance, data/information management. A single point of contact for all business support requirements is far from a pipe dream; service is service.

You're no doubt talking at a more strategic level, however, and I think this serves to emphasise Rob's key point. Perhaps the reality is that the future holds a bigger more capable Service Desk, diversifying from IT into all kinds of business support activities. Ironic when the other chatter is of the business splitting away and doing its own thing; I suspect it will be the opposite direction, albeit with some rebranding of IT. That is, demediation in terms of a greater business presentation than ever before.

Incidentally, is it true that corporate people want a paper trail? I think we might be confusing IT's delighting in their seige mentality here, rather than acknowledging that most people just want to be serviced in a convenient way.

Rich Pemberton

Some sort of Service Desk help will still be needed?

JamesFinister — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:05:50 +0000

Kaimar,

Yes, some sort of help will be needed, whether that comes from what we would currently recognize as a service desk is another matter, after all it isn't the waiter who fixes the oven, or the steward who lands the plane*. And when I book my flights on line there isn't a little man somewhere printing out my order and ringing up the airline to book the flight instead of me doing it.

So when I order a new laptop the request can be placed straight with the desktop service supplier.

And let me repeat for the umpteenth but I guess not final time that we aren't saying the Service Desk will disappear, we are consistently saying that the Service Desk will have to up skill and provide the real value adding part of the service.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

*Yes, I know sometimes they do, but it isn't part of the job description.

Shift Left

JamesFinister — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:57:33 +0000

Rich,

At TCS Shift Left is a massive part of our SD value proposition, and lets be clear I'm not just doing all this thinking about SD2.0 out of idle curiosity. I'm doing it to take our own SD model to the next level to sell to CXO level customers.

If I'm pitching this as a potential way forward the incumbent SD need to think through how it can either respond in kind, or produce a response that can't be summed up as "We've always done it this way and that would never work because users are dumb - it didn't work when we tried it ten years ago, so that proves it" especially if they are in an organisation that has already seen disintermediation transform their business processes.

There are prerequisites though for it to work, which include business involvement in the design of the self service and knowledge management approaches, and designing for service rather than retrofitting support on top of legacy services built from uncontrolled system aggregation. It also means being prepared to let the Service Desk out oif the basement and into the business.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Intrinsic or a remote dependency?

RichPem — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:33:43 +0000

In truth, people are generally OK to follow an automated process (Amazon's returns process is one example) because the priority is to have their issue resolved. I accept some people will always prefer to talk to a human being of course, less often is that the primary option available for consumers and it's more than realistic to imagine this will apply to corporate environments as well in time, particularly as ITSM toolsets are becoming more and more business rules/objects focused.

I'm a big believer in the principle of 'shift left' - the closer the [useful] support to the user the better, but mostly because it is better value to have your more technically qualified and expensive resource focused on things that will benefit the wider business rather than individual users. Such a philosophy also, in my view, contributes to a greater prizing of the value of the Service Desk in influencing positive perceptions of IT. "You're closer to the users, you need to be shining examples of who we can be."

A previous client didn't really have a Service Desk in the sense of people sitting on phones waiting for users to call. Emphasis was placed on prevention and early warning of significant incidents, automated workflows for as many service requests as possible (even if ultimately fulfilled further to the right) and giving the impression of an attentive support though the reality was much more hands off. The biggest improvement in perception was delivered by improving the new starter process, delivering access and equipment from minute one.

And shift left can mean something as simple pushing possible knowledge base articles to users in the incident logging workflow. It might be about better and more accessible training. Traditionally IT has been precious about knowledge sharing, but empowering the user is good business sense in my view - and that's what shift left, self service, knowledge bases etc are all about. After all, IT's no longer about managing a business dependency from the basement - it's about enabling business through technology, and if it is such an intrinsic part of business life then users should know more.

And this will change emphases but not remove the need for Service Desk.

SD 1.0

JamesFinister — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:44:36 +0000

Rob,

I quite agree that Service Desk is currently narrowly defined by convention.That is part of SD1.0 thinking.
Why is that?

- Because we continue to have a them and us mentality with SD not being seen as fully paid up members of the ITSM community on one hand.
- Because if you want to outsource the service desk you need to be able to draw a nice ring around it
- Because a generation of IT workers has been taught ITIL by rote to pass multiple choice exams

Yes ITIL does talk about functions as being logical rather than physical. I don't know where it is 2011 edition incidentally, but on p19 of v3 Service Operation for instance it talks about the SD either being a separate function as part of a Technical Management group . I'm not sure if that is actually the message that people walk away with though, especially since the v3 glossary left out the logical part of the definition and defines it as just a team or group. This isn't helped by the v3 Service Desk definition beginning with "The SINGLE point of contact...."

Incidentally in the outsourcing world I would say we are still seeing the majority of clients wanting to consolidate desks rather than distribute the capability across teams other than the SD. We are seeing a few cases where clients want additional desks to handle particular geographies , user groups or applications, but they are still calling them service desks and not distributing their workload across other teams.

Moving on to self service; I used password resets as an example. To a greater or lesser extent all the counter examples you gave " access (request), process a new user, book training, get another copy of something, request procurement etc etc " lend themselves to either fully automated self service or a self service wrapper. After all the majority of so called service catalogue tools flooding across the industry have primarily been request management tools.

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of moving to a self service front end for tasks that still require manual intervention and the impact on SD workload. It enables SD to manage demand more efficiently, whilst also giving th user a more predictable and standardised service. Variability plays havoc with customer expectations. Internally the great advantage of wrapping self service around activities is that it can act, in ToC terms, as a buffer allow use of the constraining resource to be optimized.

Most SD have a target for "First Time Fix/FIx at Desk/One and Done" that represents a substantial proportion of the volume of work they process. I certainly come across 60%-70% targets. The majority of those are candidates for at least some degree of self service.

Stephen Mann, the Forrester analyst. my ex colleague at TCS, and an avid user of Pinterest recently pinned to one of his Pinterest boards a sign that read

"I'm only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand"

I'm not advocating the demise of the Service Desk. Far from it, I'm advocating a Service Desk that is perceived by the business as adding real value because it is free to focus oin the things it needs to focus on.

I'm doing so because someone is about to remove the Service Desk's cheese.

James Finister
www.tcs.com
http://coreitsm.blogspot.com/

Ordering services vs. using those services

Kaimar Karu — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:22:26 +0000

In travel, the control that is given to a traveller in regards of flight and hotel bookings is extensive, yet minimal. You can choose your travel class (though usually not a ticket class, which tells a lot more to the service provider than cattle/business). You can choose your room type (though usually not the floor or a specific turn-down service lady). In neither cases are you expected to fix almost any of the issues related to these services yourself. You wouldn't fix the food warmer when the meal you get is lukewarm. You wouldn't take out a screwdriver to fix the seat if it is a bit wobbly. You wouldn't try to emergency land the plane in case of a need. You wouldn't replace a light bulb in your room, nor - again with the screwdriver - tighten the screws on the chair.

Aale, I think you are confusing the ordering of a service with using that service. It might be as easy for the corporate user to order a new laptop or a new application installation as it is to make travel arrangements, but when that service does work as expected, some sort of Service Desk help will still be needed. Sometimes, yes, Google can help - but the higher the business criticality, the more the corporate user requires a verified and trustworthy solution, as opposed to a best guess google answer.

Not theory

aroos — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:21:12 +0000

I have studied sources of support in several companies. A usual result is that only about 15 - 20% of all attempts to solve a problem are done by calling Service Desk. I am sure there may be cases where the "market share" is bigger but my data also shows that the SD staff over estimate their share. This a fact, not theory.

The Service Desk 2.0 initiative is an attempt to get the SD people to see that the train has already left and they are standing on the platform with their outdated ITIL concepts. Customer service is not going to vanish although self service will increase as it increases everywhere else. I'm writing and posting this at 10.000 feet (Norwegian has free WiFi onboard) on my way to Rome. I booked this trip with no help from a travel agency. I printed the tickets, boarding passes and even the baggage strip.

So I do disagree. Things are changing and we have not seen more than a start yet. Different countries will advance at different speeds and for awhile there may be major differences but usually the laggards will catch up.

Aale

The idea with KBs and

aprill — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:31:58 +0000

The idea with KBs and self-help is that, as an administrator/knowledge manager, you only provide the information for those issues the user/customer HAS access to fix and CAN fix by following clear, sensible steps. You have to be selective to be able to do it right and not waste everyone's time, but it can be done.

cheers,
Aprill

knowledgebird.com