Question: We currently track defects in a separate system than our ticket management system. With that said, my question is does anyone have suggestions and/or best practices on how to handle incidents when a defect is involved? Should the incident be closed since the defect is being worked on in another defect tracking system if it is noted in the incident ticket? I am considering creating an incident status of 'closed-unresolved' so the incident can still be reported on in our ticket management system but know it is being worked on/tracked in the defect system. With defects, it is possible that we may never work on them because they are very low priority and the impact is low to the user. However, in some cases a defect is being worked on. Should we create a problem ticket instead? Thanks, René W. Answer: René. In ITIL, the activity you are describing is handled by the Problem Management process. ITIL does not use the term “defect” but it does use the term “known error”

Earlier in my career I had the pleasure of managing a Service Desk. This function is the unsung hero of IT support! We had a multitude of measurements and metric that were taken every day and then meticulously charted, reported and analyzed. At the time it’s what we did. I recently had the opportunity to visit my old Service desk and found to my horror, that many of these metrics were no longer being used. I also was informed that customer satisfaction had not dropped significantly and that some of the KPI still being measured were well within an acceptable range. Now that I no longer am in the thick of it, I took some time to really think about what was it we were measuring and what did it really mean. As an organization we did all of the industry best practices measurements. Speed of answer Call duration Number of calls per day/week/month and analyst Abandoned calls Number of tickets opened versus number of tickets closed Percentage 1st call resolved Customer satisfaction

Data is a critical asset of every business. It needs to be managed properly in order to deliver services effectively. If we do not manage our data, we will be maintaining and collecting data that is not needed. Data quality, integrity and security of information may be compromised. We are painfully aware of identity theft and the risk of unprotected data to our business. To effectively manage our information we must be able to answer the following questions: What data do we currently have, how is it classified, what if any are the security constraints? What data needs to be collected or created to support our business? What are our current and future needs for data storage and maintenance? Who will access the data, how will they access it? What are our disposal considerations, how long does the data need to be kept?  In the ITIL Service Lifecycle, during requirements gathering, answering these questions is essential for the implementation of new or changed services.

Often, when we talk about implementing IT Service Management we refer to one of the Founding Fathers of the Quality Management movement, Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Most people focus on the Deming Cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. Perhaps lesser known but just as important is the fact that Dr. Deming spoke of the changes needed within an organization’s culture to make the Deming Cycle work to its greatest effectiveness. Dr. Deming wrote and spoke of Seven Deadly Diseases that infect an organization’s culture and prohibit it from truly succeeding in achieving quality for the customer. Lack of constancy of purpose: You must remain focused on doing the right things because they are the right things to do for your customer and to achieve quality. ITSM is not a fad it is a way of behaving. Emphasis on short-term profits: Cutting costs can bring short-term profits and are easy to achieve. But cutting costs can only go on for so long, before you have cut to the bone and have nothing left to cut.

Too often, IT professionals jump from strategy right into implementation without doing the proper due diligence in collecting, analyzing and recording detailed customer requirements. The ITIL Service Design book defines three levels of requirements: Functional, Management / Operational and Usability. It gives us in-depth descriptions of Functional requirements and Management/Operational requirements but leaves me a bit empty when it comes to Usability requirements. The definition is as follows, “The primary purpose of usability requirements is to ensure that the service meets the expectations of its users with regard to its ease of use. To achieve this: Establish performance standards for usability evaluations Define test scenarios for usability test plans and usability testing. I like to define this as “User-ability”. Service Design (Section 5.1.1) describes this as the ‘look and feel’ needs of the user that facilitates its ease of use. Usability requirements ar

HDI (formerly Help Desk Institute) recently released its 2009 Practices and Salary survey and reports that an incident resolved via the telephone costs $22, while an incident resolved via self-help costs $12. Furthermore, 11 percent of the organizations surveyed report that self-help tools are prompting a decrease in the number of incidents reported to the Service Desk. Having said that, these organizations also report that only three percent of incidents are resolved via self-help. With the Baby Boomers retiring and technically savvy Gen Y joining the workforce – and, oh yeah, the economy – the time has come to get serious about self-help as a support channel. Many think the solution lies in finding and installing the right technology; however, new technology projects often fail from a lack of preparation and management. Here’s where the four Ps come in to play. Introduced in the ITIL Service Design publication, the four Ps – in the context of self-help – include: People – How can yo

Sandy, if you have any more questions, just let me know! Standard Operations and Maintenance is really something that gets defined in the Service Level Agreement in consultation and negotiation with the customer. It is not really a determination made solely by IT or Operations. It is the customer or receiver of service that helps to establish whether an “outage” has occurred. Because we want to adhere to the terms and conditions set forth in the SLA we want strong controls in place. I think it is not a question as to whether the Change Management process will be used or not used. It is more a question of the degree of Change Management that will be used. A solid approach would be to establish a clear definition of a Service Change in the organization. ITIL says it is any “addition, modification or deletion of elements of the delivery of service” [paraphrased]. This is a broad definition and covers just about everything we do in IT. So, next we need to identify what we actually do in