Fresh Ideas for the Service Desk: Inspired by ITIL 4 The Service Desk has always been at the heart of IT service delivery, connecting users to the services they need and providing vital support. But in today’s fast-paced digital world, the expectations placed on the Service Desk are evolving. Organizations need more than just a team that answers tickets; they need a strategic partner that contributes to business value, user satisfaction, and continual improvement. Whether you're just beginning your journey or ready to take your Service Desk to the next level, here are some fresh ideas inspired by ITIL® 4 that can help you modernize and thrive. 💡 1. Shift from Process-Focused to Value-Focused ITIL 4 encourages us to think in terms of value co-creation , not just process adherence. The Service Desk isn’t just logging incidents, it’s playing a central role in delivering value to users and the organization. Idea: Start mapping common user interactions to value streams...

IT Service Management (ITSM) is far more than a set of processes for managing IT services. It’s a strategic tool that can help organizations achieve their broader goals, from driving digital transformation to enhancing customer satisfaction. However, realizing this potential requires a deliberate effort to align ITSM with organizational objectives. In this guide, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step process to ensure your ITSM initiatives directly support and amplify your organization’s goals. Step 1: Understand Your Organization’s Goals Before aligning ITSM with organizational objectives, you need a clear understanding of what those objectives are. Engage with leadership and business units to identify key priorities, such as: Improving customer experience. Enhancing operational efficiency. Driving innovation or digital transformation. Increasing profitability or cost control. 💡Pro Tip: Translate high-level goals into actionable metrics. For example, “improve customer exper...

For 21 years, ITSM Academy has been at the forefront of IT Service Management education, equipping professionals to navigate the complexities of ITIL, DevOps, and more. Along this journey, we’ve gathered invaluable insights from our learners, instructors, and partners. Lessons that transcend the classroom and resonate throughout the ITSM profession. As we celebrate our 21st anniversary, we’re excited to share 21 key lessons we’ve learned.  Whether you’re new to ITSM or a seasoned professional, these insights hopefully inspire your journey. 1. ITSM Is About People First Processes and tools matter, but people drive success. Focusing on collaboration, communication, and culture is essential for any ITSM initiative. 2. Continuous Improvement Is Non-Negotiable The IT landscape evolves rapidly, and staying stagnant is not an option. Always seek opportunities to improve services, processes, and skills. 3. Start with the "Why" Successful ITSM projects begin with a clear under...

How well-prepared are organizations to start their sustainability journey in digital and IT? It’s often difficult to start, either through a lack of awareness about the problem or engaging in too much talk and little action. However, with a greater understanding of how sustainability will make organizations’ and other people’s lives better – while supporting their business goals – we realize that it’s a problem to solve now, not in the future. Equally, many companies associate sustainability only with reducing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. But there are three sustainability pillars: social, environmental, and economic. And there are numerous areas connected to each pillar: e-waste, responsible sourcing, digital poverty, fair salaries and digital carbon footprint – topics that still surprise many business leaders. ITIL® 4: Sustainability in Digital and IT is a professional guidance to help digital organizations start with sustainability. The book follows the steps of the...

By Donna Knapp For many organizations, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed one of two ends of a spectrum: poorly defined processes, or overly-rigorous processes. At either end of the spectrum, these organizations likely struggled to adapt as the pandemic impacted our lives. For those with poorly defined processes, things were probably pretty chaotic. For those with overly-rigorous processes, things were most certainly taking way too long. Even organizations with well-defined processes felt, and continue to feel, pressure to speed up the flow of work, minimize toil, and automate processes where possible. To do this, they must develop a culture of continuous improvement and learning. Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all aspects of an organization; its people, processes, tools, products, services, and experiences… all of which are tightly integrated. Whether improvements are large or small, what matters most is that they are constant. The highest performing organizations a...

Most organizations, especially service management organizations, strive to improve themselves. For those of us leveraging the ITIL® best practices, continual improvement is part of our DNA. We are constantly evaluating our organizations and looking for ways to improve. To aid in our improvement goals and underscore one of the major components of the ITIL Service Value System , Continual Improvement .   AXELOS has updated the ITIL Maturity Model and is offering new ITIL Assessment services. This will enable organizations to conduct evaluations and establish baselines to facilitate a continual improvement program. A while back I wrote an article on the importance of conducting an assessment . I explained the need to understand where you are before you can achieve your improvement goals. Understanding where you are deficient, how significant gaps are from your maturity objectives, and prioritizing which areas to focus on first are key to successfully improving. One method many or...

Guest Host Post by Jeff Jensen , previously posted on Jeff's Blog , February 23, 2021 I thought it would be valuable for me to share my own personal thoughts on what you will be able to do differently or better as a result of investing your time and money in becoming an ITIL 4 certified Strategic Leader : ITIL 4 Foundation WHY this class is worthwhile ITIL 4 Foundation introduces a brand new framework and concepts to reflect modern ways of working while providing guidance on how an IT organization can both position itself as a high-performing organization and improve its products, services, and underpinning practices and capabilities.  The class introduces the Service Value System, which is a systems thinking framework t hat is foundational for showing how an organization can visualize the end-to-end delivery for current state products and services, as well as utilize the guidance as a means to improve. This class is also the foundational basis of more advanced learning...

For high performing IT providers, the sands are shifting. If you are getting certified in ITIL 4 , DevOps , or Agile Service Management you hear that we have to “Think BIG and ACT small!”. Minimum Viable Products and Minimum Viable Processes (MVP) are on the move. Historically, IT organizations delivered products and processes into production with huge batch runs or the big bang approach. This method is fraught with issues, escalations, and constant firefighting. These large releases are tightly managed, governed from the highest levels, and require participation from all parts of the organization. The days of large batch runs that take months to create and war rooms staffed 24×7 for weeks before and after the release, have given way to small incremental deployments. In comes Minimum Viable Products/Processes:  High performing organizations know that deployments that deliver value to the consumer fast are required. The idea is not to stage, stage, stage until you have a huge b...