Im/It Service Management
Introduction Only the most progressive organizations are adopting best practices in IM/IT service management, while many IM/IT departments continue to rely on informal, “seat of the pants, “ error-prone processes. This leads to reactive “fire fighting” operating norms within IM/IT departments, when formal, proactive approaches would be more effective. Recent studies suggest that one of the most accurate indicators of IM/IT departmental effectiveness in delivering quality services is the percentage of unplanned work in which the departments is engaged (Glandon, Smaltz, and Slovensky, 2008, p. 170).
Why does unplanned IM/IT work increase costs? Glandon et al. (2008) describes unplanned work as any activity in the IM/IT organization that cannot be mapped to an authorized project, procedure, or change request. While unplanned work can never be entirely eliminated from an IM/IT department, the nature of the unplanned work is very different for high- and low- performing IM/IT departments. In a low performing IM/IT department, low-performing unplanned work includes the following: 1) Failed changes: The production environment is used as a test environment, and the customer is the quality assurance team. 2) Unauthorized changes: Engineers do not follow the change management process, making mistakes harder to track and fix. 3) No preventive work: Failing to conduct preventive work makes repeated failures inevitable. Mean time to repair may be improving, but without root-cause analysis, the organization is doomed to fix the same problems over and over. 4) Configuration inconsistency: Inconsistencies in user applications, platforms, and configurations make appropriate training and configuration mastery difficult. 5) Security-related patching and updating: Inadequate understanding and inconsistency of configuration make applying security patches extremely dangerous. 6) Too much access: Too many people have too much access to too many IM/IT assets,
Why does unplanned IM/IT work increase costs? Glandon et al. (2008) describes unplanned work as any activity in the IM/IT organization that cannot be mapped to an authorized project, procedure, or change request. While unplanned work can never be entirely eliminated from an IM/IT department, the nature of the unplanned work is very different for high- and low- performing IM/IT departments. In a low performing IM/IT department, low-performing unplanned work includes the following: 1) Failed changes: The production environment is used as a test environment, and the customer is the quality assurance team. 2) Unauthorized changes: Engineers do not follow the change management process, making mistakes harder to track and fix. 3) No preventive work: Failing to conduct preventive work makes repeated failures inevitable. Mean time to repair may be improving, but without root-cause analysis, the organization is doomed to fix the same problems over and over. 4) Configuration inconsistency: Inconsistencies in user applications, platforms, and configurations make appropriate training and configuration mastery difficult. 5) Security-related patching and updating: Inadequate understanding and inconsistency of configuration make applying security patches extremely dangerous. 6) Too much access: Too many people have too much access to too many IM/IT assets,
References: Glandon, G. L., Smaltz, D. H., & Slovensky, D. J. (2008). Austin and Boxerman 's: Information systems for healthcare management (7th ed.) Chicago, Health Administration Press.