The Art of
IT Service
Management
(ITサービス管理の法)

 

A concise and holistic focus on Quality within IT Service Management

 

Levin J. Allen

Pittsburgh, PA

 

 

 

Copyright © 2018 Levin J. Allen.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

 

ISBN: 978-0-000000-0 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-000000-0 (Hardcover)

 

Library of Congress Control Number: 00000000000

 

Front cover image by Levin J. Allen.

Book design by Levin J. Allen.

 

Printed in the United States of America.

 

First printing, 2018.

 

Publisher: TBD

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Dedication

 

This book is dedicated to anyone who has been forced to make the decision to leave a company because of poor management, indistinct leadership, or bad culture.

 

I’d also like to express my deepest appreciation and respect for 4 superiors that I’ve had during my career who have left a lasting influence on me and how I manage today due to their professionalism, focus, diligence, rectitude, and trust:

• Richard Moore

• Chris Kowalski

• Bob Knutson

• Dr. David Miller

Your influence has help to make me the confident, wise, and honorable manager that I am today.

どうもありがとうございました

 

 

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Quote:

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

-Albert Einstein

 

 

Contents

The IT Manager 1

Focus on Managers 1

An effective Manager: 2

The manager’s impact on and responsibility to culture 3

Gauge and understand the quality of self 5

Starting that new position 6

The 3 Primary Goals: 11

Balanced Score Cards 12

Managing Quality Costs 12

Standardization 18

On Meetings 20

Meetings 22

Helpful Information and Recommendations 24

A Word on Planning 25

Recommendations: What every manager should know or at least be familiar with: 26

As an IT Manager… 39

My personal core beliefs and cornerstones: 41

My personal philosophies: 42

Final note: 43

Focus on the Staff 44

On recruiting resources: 46

A few standard non-technical interview questions that I’ve used - and why: 49

On Performance: 52

Teach them to: 54

On Retention: 57

My 5 steps for professional, effective, and efficient staff management: 60

Understand them: 62

Guide them – 67

Lead them 72

Focus on the Client 75

Value 75

Quality: 78

Innovation 79

The Voice of the Customer (VOC) 82

Methods of getting customer feedback. 85

Regarding methods of meeting customer needs 86

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) 88

Honest Communications 90

Capacity Management 91

My efficiency deconstruction process 96

Summary 98

On Upper Management 101

Strategic Management 102

Critical Growth Errors 104

Regarding the Culture 111

The development of a quality culture 116

Everything is connected 118

Japanese Based concepts and methodologies 119

Japanese businesses philosophies: 121

The Bushido Code: (The Eight Virtues of the Samurai) (武士道コード) (1899 Nitobe Inazō) 124

Sun Tzu sayings on…: 125

My Personal Philosophies 125

Summary 127

Everything stems from good leadership 127

Appendix A 131

Inspirational Leadership Quotes 131

Appendix B 135

14 Teachings of Sun Tzu and how I relate them to modern day business practices 135

Bibliography 141

Index 145

 

 

 

 

PREFACE

 

Given the critical importance of the IT manager within most companies, the fact that it is a cornerstone role for client, staff, and company interests, and can be a point of either positive or negative impact on service delivery, client satisfaction, and staff retention, I’ve written this book in hopes of sharing my insights, experiences, and research regarding IT Service Management. My hope is that it may hold some value with current for aspiring managers as well as with upper management and leadership personnel who are responsible for hiring for these positions. The goal is to highlight certain useful, helpful, and in some cases critical elements and considerations related to service management in general and specific to the IT service management arena. The overall objectives are to help with the retention of valuable staff, maintain and retain satisfied clients, and consequently lend to company profitability and stability. I hope that you find this book to be concise and informative, as well as a common sense guide for IT service management.

– Levin J. Allen

 

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FORWARD

 

This book represents a compilation of insights from 15 years of experience within the field of IT service management, formal training in information technology, and certifications in six sigma and ITIL. I also leverage my familiarity with other quality management methodologies, tools, and best practices and reference my personal observations and experiences in this field. Within this book I examine common and recurring themes regarding both issues and successes relating to client satisfaction, staff engagement, and IT service performance as well as other elements relating to service delivery, service support, company profitability, quality management, and continuous improvement efforts.

 

First and foremost, I feel that it is important to mention that no matter where you are with regards to quality management within your area of management, there are 2 vital facts to consider: (a) that there is always both room for, and a continuing need for, improvement over time and (b) there are dozens of very well vetted, developed, and implemented methodologies, tools, ideologies, and philosophies specifically focused on quality management, operational control, continuous improvement, and overall management of performance with regards to service delivery and support. As I will mention more in depth within this book, what is perceived as quality today by whoever your client or customer base may be, may not be perceived as the same level of quality tomorrow. This is due to innovative ideas and solutions becoming commonplace over time, competition building a ‘better mousetrap’ that becomes the de facto/current standard for quality, changes in technology that become the outriggers for creativity and innovation, and the human predilection to become delighted by that which is new, different, more beneficial, or overall perceived as being more valuable.  

 

Over the years, with exposure to the above mentioned considerations as well as study and actual application of some of the more prominent methodologies, philosophies, and tools it has become apparent to me that there are:

1. Overlapping “core considerations” that can be found with regards to the oversight and management of quality and control going as far back as Sun Tzu’s treaties ‘the art of war’ and reaching all the way to modern day revisions for ITIL, ISO 9001:2015, six sigma, TQM, ITSM, and with other leading guiding principles and best practices

2. Reoccurring common mistakes and oversights that companies can and do make in regards to IT management that can, and often do, negatively impact staff, clients, and even the company’s well-being.

 

If during your management career you have not been exposed to or have not had the opportunity to study many of the leading IT quality management offerings and best practices, this book is an attempt to:

• Offer my insights and experiences, which may help you to quickly accumulate beneficial insight vicariously

• Place your focus on the common beneficial themes shared across most current day best practices and tools in order to target your attention on any heretofore unknown to you concepts, methodologies, philosophies, best practices and general guidelines from various leading authors and organizations without needing to perform a deep-dive in to all of them

• Allow you to harvest the most beneficial and informative, (or at least enlightening) guidelines, principles, and best practices that you may find of use personally or useful to your company, in the quickest, clearest, and most insightful way

 

Note: within the text you will see small sections that sit under the header of “helpful insight:”, these are small topics where I’ve lent what I hope to be useful insight from first-hand experiences in order to help you to possibly avoid certain tripwires and to help fill any potential voids in your day to day operations or management processes, with optimism that you can benefit from the at least some of what is shared.

 

I will take a brief moment to mention at this point that although the focus of this book is mainly towards IT managers and their roles and responsibilities within organizations, much of what you read here can and will either be supported by or hindered by upper management and/or company leadership. There are many ways to both strategically and in some cases cost effectively impact quality, improve service, and continuously improve in general. If these strategic goals are launched from above the manager they are most likely championed by leadership, supported, and should trickle down to managers, supervisors, and staff. However, if these strategic goals are initiated by the manager, without support of leadership it may be tantamount to shouting into the wind or the single ant attempting to push the pebble by himself. This can be very frustrating to the manager who has gained insight of and understands the methods and benefits but is powerless to enact them.

 

Over the years I have witnessed much in regards to what works well and what does not in and around the IT service Management arena, and honestly, most of the failures that I’ve witnessed were directly related to managers themselves or leadership. This is often time attributable to the lack of effective communications between the two by not working together as an effective team and sharing thoughts and insights. Another primary issues tends to be that often times the more strategic, client aligned, or business supportive initiatives are overlooked in lieu of actions that are perceived by company ownership or leadership as more directly ‘beneficial to the ‘bottom-line’ (actions that more immediately reflect positively in the accounting books and P&L statements). This often includes reducing staff (effectively removing their salaries from the expense ledger) and often times letting go the most tenured and experienced staff due to their salary rate. A company may also resort to reducing benefits and incentives, hiring less expensive (and thus less experienced) technical resources, and perform other actions designed to reflect a better profit margin today.

 

An analogy to this is a ship that is sailing fine until a hole is opened in the hull and the ship is beginning to slowly sink - panic mode kicks in and people start throwing things overboard to lighten the ship (some of which are important and required for future smooth sailing) as opposed to focusing on patching the leak and still having sails and oars with which to move forward with later. This is essentially keeping the ship from slowly sinking today in order to present the appearance of stability to any current stakeholders or potential investors, while sabotaging it internally. This is not a strategy that works over time. The internal issues (the hole in the ship) will still exist and ultimately, due to the lack of timely attention to the issues, the ship will fail. In other words, cutting quality costs (investments made to achieve and maintain quality) and valuable personnel may initially make the company look more profitable but ultimately will impact service delivery, upset clients, and impact revenue; which in turn creates a need to start the negative cycle all over again.

 

This also tends to create a fearful and uncertain environment amongst the technical staff (usually engineers and administrators) who will not become engaged, will not or cannot perform at their peak, and the best of them may seek employment elsewhere in an attempt to stabilize their lives - in keeping to the tone of the analogy, they will jump ship. This additional loss of knowledge, familiarity with infrastructure and procedures, and relationships with clients will in turn impact service delivery as well as client confidence. Unfortunately, the immediate profit focused shortsightedness has a deleterious impact on the 3 areas that effect long-term company success and business stability the most – the client, the staff, and the culture - and thus, the cycle continues.

 

The main but simple point that seems to be missed is the fact that all things within a company are connected (in the way that all of the gears in a clock are vital and impact the desired outcome: the delivery of accurate time – which relates to the perception of value to the person who has invested in the clock. There is an inherent synergy between leadership, staff and staff performance, management astuteness, client satisfaction, revenue, sales, project management, and company success. Companies also sometimes fail to realize that championing improvement and satisfaction leads to retention at all levels - (not only customers, employees, and management, but also to revenue, stability, and reputation). If you doubt this, just take a look behind the scenes of some of the most successful business today – they get it.

 

As opposed to cutting personnel, quality costs, and improvement initiatives, an alternate more insightful and ecumenical means for exacting positive change and improving the bottom line would be to examine performance costs associated with poor quality, waste, and efficiencies with regards to day-to-day operations. It helps to periodically audit policies, processes, and procedures in order to reduce or remove the costs associated with poor quality (mentioned more in chapter 1, these costs are extracted directly from revenue) - this in turn can increases capacity, ability, and availability or resources and allows the current staff to do more for the client with less effort. This can lead to increased client satisfaction and in addition reduces stress on the current staff (thus increasing retention and performance). Your efforts could include examining variances within service delivery as well as across staff and within process execution (variances within process efficiencies), determining where effort is spent that does not produce anything beneficial to client or company (waste). Examining KPIs and other metrics will help with your understanding of how to produce better quality from existing staff at less cost. This borders on the concept of Lean Operational Strategy – doing more with less, and doing it more efficiently with less negative impact to operations.    

 

Contrary to the previous example (where valuable elements may be discarded by the company), these actions help to engage, empower, and reduce stress on staff while at the same time enhances overall performance and increases client satisfaction. The retention of staff not only increases continuity and efficiency via knowledge retention, it also consistently presents the same faces to the clients over time, which increases resource embeddedness, ability, and client confidence. As a result, you’ve created a cycle that is the opposite of the previously mentioned negative cycle - the staff is happier and longer tenured, the clients are better cared for and happy with the quality of service that they receive, and company revenue is increased via renewed contracts, additional service requests, positive reputation, and other related factors. 

 

Everyone within leadership from CEO down to supervisor needs to take responsibility for the quality that sits within their area of care, control and obligation. If this starts at the top, it creates a shell within a shell, within a shell of quality. In order for a well informed and professional manager to take root and become effective, leadership needs to become an advocate of quality and work with management to ensure quality with people, processes, performance, and culture. In this scenario, company’s quality system is championed from above.

 

My personal definition of quality

I see quality as the attention to detail, resiliency, and other forethought placed on the final design (all based on customer expectations) and the dedication of effort to achieving the design parameters of the final product or a service.

In short: quality takes focus on outcome and effort on design to achieve.

 

Leaders must set the tone. They need to always be strategic, in control, professional, honorable, passionate, compassionate, ethical, and well aware of the best methodologies, tools, insights, and industry standards related to their business, their goals, and their objectives. This is how you garner loyalty, retain staff, build a positive reputation, and effectively set the stage for growth and continuous improvement for the company and for yourself.

 

Moral leadership inspires ethical behavior. Insightful leadership creates a solid direction, honorable leadership assures that the proper paths are chosen and a win/win/win cycle can be created between company, staff, and client. This 3-way win cycle is what I call the ‘circle of business synergy’: good employees deliver good service to the customers, who in turn are happy with the service and generate revenue for the company, who in turn can provide better security and compensation to the employees, and on and on – this is a win/win/win scenario that works!

 

Kaizen

Levin j. Allen - 2017