service desk

The Standard+Case approach: applying Case Management to ITSM

Image ©canstockphoto.comHere is an exciting new approach to categorising and resolving any sort of activity "tickets", such as requests (including incidents) on a service desk, problems, or changes. It is called Standard+Case until somebody comes up with a better name. I know there is so much to read these days, but if you have anything to do with service support or change management, read this. It'll change your year.

Standard+Case is a synthesis of our conventional "Standard" process-centric approach to responding, with Case management, a discipline well-known in some other industry sectors such as health, social work, law and policing.

S+C addresses criticisms of approaches like ITIL for being too process-centric and not allowing customers and knowledge workers to be empowered. S+C does not seek to replace or change ITIL or other theory: it expands and clarifies that theory to provide a more complete description of managing responses.

It provides a good skills path for service desk analysts that fits well with gamification. And Standard+Case is applicable to Problem Management and Change Management (and Event Management...) as well as Service Desk activities. S+C applies to anything that requires a human response: there's either a standard response or there isn't.

For more information about Standard + Case, see the Basic Service Management website.

User self-help - a skeptical view

Continuing our debate about social media it occurred to me what a load of bollocks this idea is that users are going to support each other without a service desk.

ITIL-Aligned Sharepoint? Nooooooooo!!!

Servicesphere brought to my attention the recently announced product from GMA that is an "ITIL-aligned SharePoint IT Service Desk Solution". I break out in a cold sweat just hearing that. So what is meant by "ITIL Aligned" and "Service Desk"?

Why are the analysts dumping IT Service Desk

I heard it first on @ServiceSphere's tweets. The analysts are losing interest in IT Service Desk tools.

Who does the service desk serve?

Who does the service desk serve? That comes back to what the support service is there for.

New technique to squeeze optimum performance from helpdesks

According to news reports,

Workers at a government call centre were ordered to observe a three-minute time limit when using the toilet and keep diary entries of how long they spent in the bathroom.

Separation of incident and call

From time to time, a consultant is in the position of explaining and justifying fundamentals. Recently I was describing how incidents are not the same thing as calls, that every call is not a new incident if the same user has already called about the same incident previously, that it is more effective to record the call history on the same incident. I went to three sources of "best practice" for support - there isn't any.

Is ITIL KEDB so important or should we always look broader?

A discussion on LinkedIn prompted me to comment that KEDB is a subset of knowledge management for service desk. I think it is important to take a broader view and provide access to more general information about solutions to incidents and resolutions to requests, not just workarounds to known errors. I've seen folk micro-design that one bit without considering a more generally useful system. I never quite understood why ITIL seems fixated on KEDB, giving it a disproportionate amount of attention vis-a-vis the more general support knowledgebase. Thoughts?

How much good user feedback is lost by the Service Desk?

I'm a good citizen of the internet communities I inhabit. If something is not useful to me or could be improved, then I generally use the written contact mechanism to let them know. I'm a smart guy and tech-savvy so my messages are - I hope - pretty clear and to the point (if a bit abrasive - it's just the Antipodean in me). But I don't have a good success rate with them.

Real ITSM user priority

As we said before, Real ITSM does things differently to, say, ITIL. Readers may recall that Real Priority (also known as Care Factor) is measured by the number of metaphorical fans that are being hit by effluent: it starts at zero and goes up. More conventionally, Real ITSM also tracks a separate User Priority (also known as the Dummy Factor, for the number of dummies being spat).

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