I’ve been having a great time sitting in presentations and seminars about Problem Management and I can’t help to come across a recurring theme; organizations that have successfully implemented Problem Management provide a documented and official training manual for the I.T. personnel.  I’m not referring to the policies, but the actual “here’s how you problem solve” instructions.  This got me thinking about a broader idea that successful Service Management has at least three important elements.  I’m calling this the Service Management Triad and if your organization can nail all three of these, then it’s well on its way to providing high quality services.

Since I already mentioned education, I’ll state this as the first item.  I’m not simply referring to education to tell people about ITIL or ITSM, but I’m talking about education on the entire scale of Service Management.  This includes getting personnel ITIL Foundation certified, building a training program for the different processes, and even providing training for common methodologies (such as Kepner and Tregoe for problem solving).  It’s to basically to teach people how to function in the IT department.

Secondly, I’ll say it yet again – culture.  If the culture is established that your organization is there to deliver services and not just provide an IT infrastructure, then attitudes and behaviors will follow (see how I worked in the ABC’s – it’s hard being this clever).

Third, and most obvious, are the processes.  Every organization is different so there will never be a simple set of “one size fits all” processes for ITSM, but they have to be created or else why would the other two even exist?  For that matter, why even bother with IT Service Management?

So there you have it – three important parts of Service Management that needs to happen.  I think culture and processes are definitely obvious, but I’m now realizing the importance of education, because if there’s not a defined and documented education system, how will anyone know what to do?

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.