Best Practice...
Learn why Flow Management is needed for ITIL success: The ITIL process gap | Worldwide disadvantages | Flow Management's place | The Flow Management imperative
ITIL's ticket-focused approach to IT support came decades ago and is still best practice today. Tickets are not what is important though - not what teams must do. Support activity is. It's a pivoting fact:
IT support has always been focused on the wrong thing.
The ITIL baseline
As a comprehensive framework of general best practices for IT service management (ITSM), ITIL processes are minimum operational requirements: best practice at the most basic level.
Tool configuration for ITIL success
For success, IT organisations must built-up from the basics found in all ITSM tools. Tools are generally fit for use in that IT organisations can do so through configuration, with a process then made fit for purpose, supported by good operational governance and management where necessary.
With one exception.
For success in ITSM's foundational processes - IT Support Incident and Request Management - the process itself must be improved.
Typically, slow, unresponsive, and failed IT support cannot be prevented in use of ITIL's processes alone, no matter how well they are configured and supported. The ticket-focused approach lands well short.
Completion of tickets is merely an aside to the timely work activity that teams must contribute on the run-up to completion. An improved process is required to guide it.
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Key specific disadvantages of a ticket-focused approach
​​​1. Teams approach incoming new tickets first and foremost.
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2. Support activity for the progression of older tickets is not just secondary, it is completely unguided. Without focus brought to it, inappropriate delay and inertia is frequent and normal. Of particular harm, support conversations do not flow:​​​
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Unanswered questions sent to customers are not followed-up, or follow-up is untimely and still ineffective.
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Customer answers and other ticket updates are not seen in good time, and when they are, necessary follow-on activity isn't prioritised, often delayed for long periods.
With communication prone to failure at both ends, service customers are frequently left ignored, sometimes repeatedly, even when a customer comment is sensitive - a chase on progress, or when it is time-critical. Resulting frustration is where perception of service is at its weakest. It is also the primary cause of needs failing to be met.
3. Progression relies on the ticket owner alone, without any cross-queue-cover unless managerially arranged. Being a "single point of failure", ownership silos substantially worsen unreliability in IT support.
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4. Ticket-based measures of performance (e.g. an SLA) are highly inaccurate and do not reflect (frequently weak) service experience.
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A further seventeen issues exist, removed by taking the activity-focused approach that is Flow Management.
For an introduction to why IT support is this way, what Flow Management is, and where Experience Management is positioned without it, read this 3-minute article.
IT support is different: For ITIL success, the process must be improved
Where governance and close management was needed the most, adding Flow Management means it is not needed at all.
Teams unify with a systematic focus on high priority activity. Managers intervene simply by exception when monitors show that help is needed recovering back to the expected service experience. Team size can be adjusted with confidence.
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Business lost work time is minimised, absolutely.
Why, then, is Flow Management new only now?
ITIL is globally accepted as being best practice for IT service Management, forming ITSM's high-level standard, ISO 20000.
For decades, its processes have remained the universal criteria for ITSM tool functionality, cementing its stature.
Deeply embedded in the status quo, organisations and ITSM tools intrinsically presume that there is no better way of working. That ITIL processes are "true best practice".
The status quo has such strength that despite the gravity of support's undesirable outcomes, they are simply tolerated as "it is what it is" without a second thought to consider that support is a complex operational arena but its process is a basic minimum requirement, so the process must be inadequate and at fault. That Incident and Request Management is an exception to ITIL processes being best practice.
To understand this pivotal fact in some detail, please request our white paper on the subject. "The ITSM breakthrough was always just two small steps away" includes the top nine unmanaged support situations and detail in where IT Experience Management is positioned - overly challenged - without Flow Management.
Realising that status utilisation can improve the ITIL way of working, some ITSM tool software has advanced status-based functionality added. Not to the point of AP breakthrough though.
Success for 12 ITIL practices
Recognising that something was acutely wrong, and with a "digital transformation" lens to the problem, Opimise was formed in 2019 to modernise and advance IT support, to establish "true best practice" dedicated solely to it.
The result is the Support Ops Focus Framework (SOFF). SOFF has two practices: Support Lifecycle Management (aka Flow Management), and its entirely complementary Team Performance Management centred on Contribution Recognition.
All twelve SOFF capabilities across both practices are more than ITIL-aligned. They bring twelve ITIL processes to life. An optimal methodology and standard for upmost service quality against which IT organisations can be accredited.
With all support-related process gaps filled to remove the 21 common operational issues, SOFF accredited organisations and service tools are "Flow verified" as far as possible. Optimised.
12 ITIL processes / practices improved by Flow Management
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Service Desk - All operational needs are met | Enablement of the Digital Channel Service Desk.
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Incident | Request - With AP, focus switches to what matters - timely activity for attentive service.
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Workforce & Talent - Fully supported teams who benefit from accurate achievement knowledge.
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SLM | Measurement & Reporting - Flow Metrics gauge support's primary experience factor - attentiveness.
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Continual Improvement - Every procedural shortcoming is identified, coordinated to develop lean service.
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Knowledge Management - Form Knowledge Centred Service | Swarm to avoid escalation and delay.
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Supplier Management (SIAM) - proactively manage supplier provision, ticket-by-ticket and at a service level.
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Problem Management - identify "Problem" Incidents much earlier, and more of them.
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Relationship Management - expose where business conversations are needed.
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IT Asset Management - maintain CMDB accuracy.
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