I was recently asked "Do you have an average for the service desk of first call resolution?  We are trying to set a target for the team and I cannot find any data which gives me any indication what a good target would be."   First call resolution (sometimes called "first contact resolution" or FCR) is an industry recognized metric for the performance of the Service Desk.   Analysts are measured on their ability to restore service to a user and close an incident during the first call or contact.     This is a difficult metric to benchmark across all organizations and all incidents.   Factors such as incident complexity, service desk skills and empowerment,  outsourcing and remote control capabilities can influence the ability (or inability) to restore service during the first contact. While ITIL acknowledges FCR as an important Service Desk metric, it steers clear of offering a target or benchmark.  Industry experts generally accept a FCR range of 65 to 80 %.

The Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) is a well written, meaningful, asset-rich framework that is often overlooked in favor of its higher profile cousins ITIL, Cobit and ISO/IEC 20000.   Unfortunately, the big "M" that stands in front of the framework has created the perception that MOF is only relevant to Microsoft environments.  Nothing could be further from the truth - Microsoft has invested a great deal of resource and effort in creating MOF intellectual property and assets - giving it all away for free for anyone, in any environment, that is interested in learning more.  In fact, Microsoft considers you a Microsoft customer if you are working at a desktop or laptop running a Microsof operating system. Microsoft's goal in developing MOF was to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of IT service providers, thereby enabling those providers to get a better return on their infrastructure, applications and tools.   Here are six good reasons to consider learning

When we think about ITIL® we think about being able to manage the delivery of value-laden IT services to customers. But are there other, less obvious ways we can use and gain from the best practices and ideas contained within ITIL®? One of the areas that ITIL® and ITSM can help us with is by making conversations and meetings more effective and efficient. One of the ways that ITIL can help us with meetings is by using the concepts embedded in RACI. Traditionally the ideas of being responsible, accountable, consulted and informed have been for use with process activities and levels of authority and accountability. However, once we identify those levels and assign them to roles we can use them to help us establish the proper attendance at a meeting. When sending out a meeting announcement or invite we can indicate that the meeting is for those roles holding particular levels within the RACI models. In this way we have the appropriate roles and individuals at the meeting. Another wa

Part 1 of this series introduced the idea that a community of practice (CoP) is group of people who are bound together by similar interests and expertise . CoPs are an extension of the blended learning strategy being adopted by many organizations that combines formal, informal and social approaches to learning. Like service management, communities have lifecycles – they emerge, they grow, and over time they become institutionalized. Also like service management, the plan-do-check-act cycle can be applied to each of these stages. Plan involves identifying the audience for the CoP and defining its purpose. It is also critical to ensure the needs and goals of its members are understood and that its purpose and goals are tied to the vision, mission and values of the greater organization. For example, you could have a service management CoP that brings together all of the practitioners in your organization, or you could have CoPs that focus on individual lifecycle stages but occasi

What do you think would happen if everyone who attended an IT service management (ITSM) class – ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, MOF – went back to work and talked to the person who sits next to them about how their organization could apply best practices? Or, what if everyone shared their ideas with just the people in their work groups. Those organizations would see tremendous benefit. Even small steps – think plan-do-check-act – can reap large benefits over time. But why stop there? Many organizations have people in different departments and locations, perhaps even in different parts of the world, who must work together to realize the true benefits of a consistent, integrated approach to ITSM. A community of practice can be used to bring these people together. A community of practice (CoP) is group of people who are bound together by similar interests and expertise. Members are active practitioners who come together to share information, experiences, tips and best practices. Members prov

Techniques used to measure employee satisfaction include informal one-on-one discussions, focus groups and periodic surveys. As with customer satisfaction surveys, for accurate and reliable results, employee satisfaction surveys should be created with care by people who understand how to develop questions that produce unbiased information. In other words, ask your HR folks for help! So what questions should you ask? "How satisfied are you with your job?" is a good place to start. A question such as: "Compared with a year ago, how would you describe your overall job satisfaction?" can provide additional insight.  You can also ask employees to rate their satisfaction with areas such as: Reward and recognition programs Career development and advancement opportunities Education and training  Supervision, coaching and feedback Teamwork Availability of resources needed to do the job Ability to contribute to organizational goals  And in the spirit of co

I have often been asked about how to implement a good design coordination process.   My response is have you ever thought of implementation of a new process from a CSI approach?   First let’s understand what the purpose and objective of a design and coordination process should be.   Ensuring that the goals and objectives are met by providing and maintaining a single point of coordination and control for all activities and processes within the design stage of the lifecycle.   If we approach this from a Continual Service Improvement perspective the first question to ask is: What’s the vision?    Come to an accord among key stakeholders about what it is you want to create and what the underpinning critical success factors should be in support of the defined goals and objectives of the organization.   Will they ultimately support the long term mission and vision of the business leadership? Where are we now? Set that baseline starting point about the current condition of where yo