The process of building and maintaining an IT Service Management (ITSM) project looks different for every organization. There is, however, something that all robust initiatives have in common; they combine and adapt different concepts and frameworks within teams to maximize value and operation maturity.
The benefits of this approach are clear. You get to tailor your ITSM project through multiple perspectives that can help achieve different aspects of your goals. At the same time, the process can become a little bit overwhelming if there’s too many concepts or terminology going around that’s not being put to good use.
Luckily, to help you with this, for March’s Ticket Volume webinar, we explored how to make a multidisciplinary ITSM project work. Joining our host, Matt Beran, Jyoti Chopra and Darrel Popowich shared their experiences on how to introduce and combine different frameworks effectively and what common aspects can make ITSM projects fail.
Keep reading for a summary of the episode’s main points. And, to get information on future live webinars, topics, and guests – register here!
So, without further ado, let’s dig in.
Download IT service frameworks cheat sheet
During the webinar we shared with the attendees an ITSM frameworks cheat sheet, that includes 14 frameworks, their scope of action, and use cases.
How to combine frameworks within ITSM projects
When it comes to building a robust ITSM project, the bottom line is that frameworks should get people to act together in a particular fashion. For this, it’s essential to get buy-in from teams and address resistance to change. Different frameworks and management methods attack different problems in a different way, and the goal is to be able to integrate them into the organization’s processes efficiently.
In this sense, both guests are BRM (Business Relationships Management) experts, and brought it up as a powerful tool when it comes to managing projects and combining different methodologies within your project.
For Jyoti, the perfect mix is to bring together ITSM frameworks and BRM; while the first adopts a customer focus and addresses processes such as Incident Management and Change Management, the second brings in communication and transparency and helps to integrate the previous processes successfully within your ITSM project.
When choosing which framework to use, she argued that the pick will depend on each organization’s specific needs and goals. However, Jyoti advised leaders to be mindful of this decision, as it will define your project’s culture and have a big impact on your team’s morale. So, it’s fundamental to experiment, try, ask for feedback, and learn from your mistakes.
Darrel, on his side, also highlighted BRM as the overarching framework for organizing and integrating the rest. Whichever methodologies you choose to combine, he argued, you need to bring in this guiding principle that connects the rest and that is making sure that everything and everyone is working towards the same goal of delivering value. In BRM terminology, this would be “Is this on or off value?”
Before moving on, we didn’t want to miss out on the chance to mention that David Tomlinson, Senior Learning Specialist and DevOps Ambassador at QA Ltd, came on the pod earlier this month to discuss how to make different frameworks work successfully together for your organization. The valuable insights he shared on the episode can help you further explore these topics!
What makes ITSM projects fail?
Now that we have explored some fundamental strategies to make them work, it’s time to flip the coin and explore what are some of the common denominators that make different ITSM projects and framework implementations fail.
Jyoti was the first to give an answer to this, and for her the big deal breaker is transparent communication and building strong relationships within teams. In this sense, and particularly when difficulties might arise, if there isn’t solid teamwork in place things are much more likely to fall apart.
