I recently had the opportunity to chat with a practitioner about the importance of knowledge management and had to smile when she declared that ‘knowledge management is back.’ The premise of the comment was that early attempts at knowledge management were unsuccessful as organizations seemed to think that the knowledge was going to ‘magically’ appear. Gartner speaks to the fact that organizations also often focused on collecting knowledge, rather than dispersing it. It has taken the IT industry a while to understand that there needs to be a strategy for knowledge management that culminates in the right information being delivered to the right place or person at the right time. Doing that successfully requires a process, methods, policies, procedures, tools, and metrics. Another consideration is the shifting of generations in the workforce. Think about it. How do young – or young at heart – people solve problems today? They Google or Tweet and draw upon the knowledge and exp

Picture this: A patient walks into the doctor’s office and says “doc, every time I raise my arm it hurts”.   Of course you know the punch line.     But can you see the analogy?      Fill in the blank:   Every time we _____, our customers/services/users hurt (how?)   To identify and improve pain areas, you must analyze the overall performance and capabilities of your services, processes, people, partners and underpinning technology.   Do you know how they support desired business outcomes and where they fall short?     The first step is to identify the “as-is” state in order to document current performance and justify the need for improvement.    Part of this step will involve determining what needs to be measured and who is going to collect, process, analyze and synthesize the data into useable information.   Key stakeholders will need to be identified and engaged in order to understand the intensity of their pain, the residual impact and their input into possible opportuniti

I recently read a very interesting article in the June 2, 2012 Technology Quarterly edition of The Economist magazine.     There is a new trend in technical and customer support that relies heavily on the contributions from actual customers, “Unsourcing” involves the use of online communities to enable peer – to – peer support among users.   Instead of speaking to a paid internal or outsourced service desk analyst, customers post issues to a central forum and wait for answers from experienced users.     To create unsourced communities, companies are setting up discussion groups on their website or leveraging social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  As you can imagine, the savings can be considerable. Gartner estimates that user communities can reduce support costs by as much as 50%.   When Tom Tom, a maker of satellite navigation systems, switched to social support, members handled 20,000 cases in the first month , saving the firm around $150,000.   Best Buy has instituted an

In this age of the global economy we repeatedly hear about how organizations must continually innovate and change to meet the challenges of global competition.   Does your organization have a plan of continual service improvement (CSI)?   Has the executive level defined how CSI will be part of the overall business strategy?   Is there alignment, from IT management?   How much time, resources and budget is being allocated towards improvement?   Is it a structured corporate program or an ad-hoc initiative with little direction and no defined benefit?  Institutionalizing CSI is one of the critical success factors for the 21 st century. A well-defined and managed strategy is necessary when confirming that all resources and capabilities of the organization are aligned to achieving business outcomes and that those investments are lined up with the organization's intended development and growth.   It also safeguards that all stakeholders are represented in deciding the appropria

In the 1920’s while working at ATT Bell labs, Dr Walter Shewhart (mentor of W Edwards Deming) sought a way to improve telephone transmission systems. Seeking to reduce variations and failures, on May 16, 1924 Dr Shewhart wrote an internal memo introducing the concept of the control chart [Wikipedia]. Today the control chart (AKA process quality control chart or Shewhart chart) has become the standard statistical tool for finding variation that lead to continual improvement. As with other continual improvement tools, the control chart can be understood in a short time, yet takes a lifetime to master as a truly powerful tool for statistical and incremental improvements. The control chart is a tool that tells us whether a process or system is in a state of statistical control. The state of statistical control is one in which a minimum or acceptable amount of variation is acceptable while still meeting the desired output of the process. Shewhart recognized that every process and sys

As with most things, ITIL® can be viewed from multiple perspectives. I have found that many people seem to take a polarized view of the set of best practices. They either see ITIL® from a very literal, functional and operational focus or they see ITIL® from a more figurative, conceptual and strategic perspective. The interesting thing about ITIL® is that it is both of those things and everything in between all at the same time! After spending many years reading, thinking, teaching and using ITIL® I have found that one of its greatest benefits is its flexibility. The set of best practices can be seen from strategic, tactical and operational perspectives. In addition it is my firm belief that to be a true expert in the best practices one must be able to think at all three of those levels at the same! Because ITIL® takes a lifecycle approach (cradle to grave for the life of a service) it operates very strategically. Because ITIL® provides a set of processes for achieving value fo

One of the most important questions we can ask in ITSM is “How do we keep people engaged and excited about ITSM?” This question is fraught with danger. If too little energy is put into keeping people engaged then ITSM has a chance of withering and dying. If too much energy is put into the people aspect then other important efforts gets sacrificed. So how do we find the right balance? How do we know what is the right level of energy to employ in an effort to keep ITSM on a steady path for your organization? The answer lies in the concept of engagement. The term means to hold the attention or efforts of a person. To keep people engaged we must therefore keep everyone involved, active and attentive to ITSM in our organizations. How do we keep people engaged? By giving them new opportunities to learn, demonstrate capabilities and new challenges to overcome. We can provide new areas for exploration and engagement by using process and maturity assessments to identify current levels of