- [Instructor] How do we ensure metrics
are rationalized and leveled
across services, channels, and processes?
How do we ensure we can see them,
and we have visibility into them?
Visible management.
Let's have a look.
First, here's some guidelines for managing things.
To manage something, you must know it exists.
And you must know its current and desired state.
And that state has three facets,
each of which you must know.
Its configuration or parts,
and their arrangement, its functionality or features,
including its telemetry it uses
to make its state known.
And its qualities or characteristics.
Next, you must monitor its state
and work to keep it in a desired state.
And lastly, know that for dynamic systems
versus static systems,
the systems that are prevalent
in today's digital organizations,
both what the thing is
and what its desired state is
will change continually,
so continual adjustment is needed
to understand its current and desired states
as they change.
The same approach applies to managing service desk services,
channels, people, processes and tools.
You must have the telemetry
to know the configuration, functionality
and qualities of each
and their desired state.
And we must expect that these elements
and their desired states
will constantly change
since the modern service desk is a dynamic system.
That said, let's take a look
at balancing metrics across these elements.
Let's start with the service desk services,
which are under configuration,
for example, what prioritization scheme is used?
We should understand and work
to continually improve its functionality.
For example, the trend analysis suggests an uptick
in BPN issues,
perhaps we'd launch an agile improvement project
to create a VPN click to fix solution.
And we should understand and seek
to improve its qualities based
on the makeup of our users.
For example, 1 in 12 men are colorblind, that's 8%.
Knowing this may drive us to improve colors used
on our apps and web properties.
The modern service desk must recognize all channels used
and seek a balanced set of metrics across each.
In traditional service desks,
it not uncommon to find very mature metrics
for the voice channel
but few or none for other channels.
They might, for example, track first call closure rate
and average handling time for voice calls
but if asked about the bot,
you might be faced with blank stares
or an answer of uh, we don't know,
somebody else handles that
to be sure to level your metrics across channels
using the same basic set for each.
For people, you might be tracking things like number
of calls handled, first call closure rate,
contact quality statistics,
absentee rate, performance objectives,
completion of training and development plans
but be sure you have a balance
across key performance metrics for people
that include both the doing of the work and its improving.
So be sure to balance this
with things like 360-degree feedback,
net promoter score ratings,
improvements made and coaching of others.
As with all other areas,
balance is needed when measuring processes.
All other things being equal,
it shouldn't be the case
that you track say 10 KPIs
for incident request management
and none or one for channel management.
Be sure you can stand back
and say that you've got the right metrics
in the right amounts across processes.
The same goes for tools.
Know what you have out there,
how each is configured,
its functionality, its qualities.
Having this information is necessary for improvement.
For example, you know what LMs
of your portal are bing used and which are not?
If you don't know,
you can just stand up telemetry to capture it.
It is common for service desks
to be very proud of their portals
and knowledge bases without this information,
only to find when they have it
that only a small percentage of knowledge articles
are getting used, and not the ones they thought would be,
and that they have some work to do as a result.
So don't fly blind.
Stand up telemetry to get it the metrics you use
to manage, improve and succeed.
Now let's talk about visible management,
a concept from Lean.
Visible management is making the status
of workflow and performance against KPIs easy
for everyone at all levels
and within all functions
to see and understand and manage at a glance.
Visual displays or dashboards present information
and provide visual controls
when there's a need to act.
The ideal state is where problems and opportunities
are clear to everyone
so that their decisions, actions, communications
are informed in real time by facts.
Such visibility takes the place
of bureaucracy as a method
of establishing direction and control
in a modern workplace.
This is no small point.
In traditional IT service management environments,
operational level agreements or OLAs
were used to support commitments made to customers,
users and sponsors in SLAs,
or service level agreements.
OLAs describe the responsibility
of each internal support group
towards another support group,
including the process
and timeframe to deliver your other services.
Instead in a modern setting,
we make the state of things visible to all
and use that visibility to drive the right behaviors
and to consistently achieve results.
People see, for example,
where the speed of service
or the number of reassignments is off
for their workflows,
and the numbers are off for KPIs
and decide, act and communicate
to move them in the right direction
without the need to rely
on only bureaucratic agreements
and centralized top-down control.
And instead of working to service levels fixed
over relatively long periods of time,
measured in years, they can take the initiative
to do things like driving down cycle times
from where they sit.