This is the sixth and last post in the series on Agile ITSM. You can find the first five posts at the links below:
- AGILE ITSM: THE ESSENTIALS – INTRODUCTION
- AGILE ITSM: THE ESSENTIALS –AGILE FUNDAMENTALS
- AGILE ITSM: THE ESSENTIALS – ITIL 4 AND AGILE RELATIONSHIP
- AGILE ITSM: THE ESSENTIALS – 5 TIPS TO ENSURE ITSM IS AGILE
- AGILE ITSM: THE ESSENTIALS – AVOID THESE 4 AGILE ITSM ROADBLOCKS
Incident Management with Agile ITSM
Everything we do in IT service management must provide value while ensuring that the results are as expected. While this is fantastic in theory, it is far more challenging to practice. With agile ITSM, you can create value by determining which processes are functioning, not, and which can benefit from an agile mentality.
Understanding where to begin will be different for each team and business. Continuous learning and improvement, for example, is an essential aspect of agile. So perhaps the best strategy is to start establishing feedback loops in your processes and attempt to constantly learn and improve them as you go.
Alternatively, your organization may benefit from a broader examination of friction and pain areas. Then, narrowing down where improvements could be made while always incorporating feedback and learning along the way.
Incident management is a service desk function that frequently serves as a springboard for agile. Incident management is critical since it restores client service and is a fundamental role of the IT department. You can swiftly apply agile incident management techniques if you keep your customers in mind.
Begin with incident qualification, which includes diagnosis and analysis, then resolve and, finally, closure.
Examine your current processes and analyze each step by asking yourself if each phase adds value for the customer, from incident qualifying to closure. Of course, you must first understand what your customer desires to answer this issue, which is most often a speedy response.
Revisiting the Customer Journey Map
This relates back to creating a customer journey map we discussed in this post and thoroughly knowing their demands, offering them the choice of participating in a collaborative way.
The purpose of incident management must be to work swiftly and efficiently in order to remain adaptable. While working rapidly, input is constantly sent back into the process to help optimize the incident management procedure for the next time, while also providing information to assist with problem management. Determine which procedures are wasteful and eliminate them.
You can use feedback loops to figure out what is wasting your time. These loops can occur at various stages of the incident, as well as after it has been handled. This input enables you to improve your knowledge base articles and incident categorization, as well as gain a better understanding of who the knowledge experts are.
Agile incident management also entails collaboration between the DevOps team and the service desk to address incidents. This collaborative approach not only expedites the problem resolution process, but it also allows the service desk and DevOps teams to exchange best practices and concepts as they keep improving their approach.
The final feedback loop may incorporate incident capitalization, which means that as soon as the beneficiary approves the incident closure, a satisfaction survey is done to gather information about the quality of service. As a result, organizations and teams can improve their procedures as part of the continuous improvement process. For example, modify the questionnaire to capture topic-related inputs in order to increase resolution time or communication engagements.
Remember that agile does not require a rigorous framework and that there is no single established method to it. In reality, that is precisely where its value lies: in the mindset of constantly learning, getting feedback, and pivoting swiftly based on that.
When an issue is resolved, the resolution information is added to the knowledge base to help prevent future incidents. Because events can be linked to problems in a cause-and-effect connection, extra inputs can be passed to the problem-solving process.
As soon as the beneficiary confirms the incident's resolution, a satisfaction survey is conducted to gain insight into the service's quality. As a result, businesses and teams may constantly upgrade and improve methods.
Conclusion
Agile ITSM does not imply that IT service management or established processes should be abandoned. Certainly, you should not attempt to apply a new methodology on your own. It is critical to have skilled specialists on your side, as well as robust, agile ITSM software.
That's it for this series on Agile: ITSM The Essentials.
Let me know what you think?
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