Getting to new and improved services

I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about providing IT services effectively and efficiently and how to make improvements along both dimensions in any given situation.  To start, let's look at IT responsibilities in two major categories:

• New/improved services - business analysis, projects, research, development
• "Keeping the lights on" - break/fix, service requests, planned maintenance

The first category is where IT really adds value, as a team that can both understand the business' needs and provide robust and ever-improving solutions that increase the "top line" of performance.  Unfortunately, IT tends to spend only a fraction of its time here, largely due to the effort needed to satisfy the second category.

"Keeping the lights on" consist of a series of challenges that have largely been solved within the industry.  Quick searching for any facet, ranging from authentication/authorization to service desk management to configuration management, will yield results for processes, tools, and methods.  In fact, it's almost overwhelming to consider all of the available options.

The goal is to optimize the efficiency of this category.  No one gains a competitive advantage from "keeping the lights on", so we should spend the minimum in resources to achieve the organization's needs for support and maintenance.  Bear in mind, however, that doing so will be different for each organization - for instance, some organizations accept a remote call center approach for efficiency, while others demand a high-touch, in-person support experience.  When evaluating an environment for efficiency, you should consider the following factors:

• Variety of technology to support and ability/need to standardize
• Importance of support characteristics, including speed of response and resolution, interaction types (email, phone, in-person), and environment context
• Automation of common tasks

Ultimately, some balance of these factors are required, and not everyone is going to be happy with the outcome.  When considering such an evaluation and potential change, inclusion is critical - involve at minimum the following people:

• The people who actually fulfill these tasks, such as end-user support, systems/network administrators, and application support personnel
• Key end-users that require a significant portion of IT's effort for support
• Business leadership that can help articulate overall technology goals and objectives and provide context for technology strategy

Finally, be clear about the benefits of possible change.  Essentially, any time not spent on "keeping the lights on" can be used for new and improved services.  An end-user support person who isn't fixing an email problem for the umpteenth time can be researching and consulting on the value of mobile technology or finding out about new requirements ("wouldn't it be great if I could...").  A systems administrator who isn't manually patching servers can instead enable new features for existing services or identify new technologies based on customer feedback.  An environment that can spend time on real improvement is better for the end-users, better for the IT team, and better for the organization.