Adopt Lean IT to Streamline the Service Desk

Turn your service desk into a Lean, keen, value-creating machine.

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Your Challenge

The service desk is the public face of IT. Its processes are critical to the effective and timely delivery of IT services.
Yet, even organizations with relatively mature service desk processes can struggle to achieve the high levels of end-user satisfaction and productivity the business expects.
Analysts for each of the three tiers of the service desk often do not understand how the customer experiences end-user support.
IT staff feel overworked, and believe the service support organization is understaffed, yet they waste time on unnecessary tasks. They struggle to identify and prioritize activities that create the most customer value.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Lean is not a project. Adopting Lean principles will encourage your team to become a proactive, value-generating unit.
Look before you Lean. You need to view the service desk from 30,000 feet before you dive into adopting Lean principles.
Harness the value of freed capacity. Lean will free up time through the elimination of waste. Use it to your advantage.

Impact and Result

Lean is not only a new initiative, but it is also an organizational culture shift. The goal is to embed a new approach to problem-solving and workflow at the service desk.
Identify how service desk activities integrate with the business and how they create customer value at each tier.
Map out the customer journey for each of the key processes of the service desk to understand how customers experience end-user support.
Use value stream mapping to tailor service desk processes to customer demand, focus on the activities that create the most customer value, and eliminate waste.

Contributors

Brett Andrews, Managing Director, BAPTISM Consultancy
Charles Betz, Principal, Digital Management Academy LLC
Ravi Prakash Singh, MS IS Student, Stevens Institute of Technology
Gautam Bangalore, Business Analyst, Sydney, Australia
Tess Savini, Manager of IT Service, Moog, Inc.
Daniel Breston, Chief of DevOps Transformation, Ranger4
Michelle Hoyt, Enterprise Application Supervisor, Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District
Lucas Gutierrez, End-User Services Manager, City of Santa Fe
Vlad DeRamos, General Manager, AIM Corporate Solutions, Inc.
Tina Erickson, Service Desk Manager, Kinetic IT
Brian Frank, Lead UX Researcher, ResIM
Marty Miller-Crispe, Service Management Officer, Griffith University
Pedro Soto, Managing Director, TOPdesk
Roeland van Rijswijk, Service Management Consultant, TOPdesk
Wendy Eusebe, IT Support Manager, Aquarion Water Company
Francis Villamil, Technology Services Support Manager, City of Cambridge

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Get to Action

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should adopt Lean principles for your service desk, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Integrate business and IT goals to drive customer value

Perform a current state assessment of the service desk and the business to plan a strategy and map out the customer journey.
Construct a value stream map to identify and eliminate waste

Map out the current service desk process, identify sources of waste, and eliminate them to form a future state map.
Implement the Lean service desk plan

Implement the Lean service desk and sustain its development.

Guided Implementation

This guided implementation is a six call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Integrate business and IT goals to drive customer value

Call #1: Determine the financial, customer, process, and learning goals of the service desk as they relate to the business.
Call #2: Identify the customer personas. Brainstorm customer stages, goals, and touchpoints for the journey of each persona to complete a customer journey map.

Guided Implementation #2 - Construct a value stream map to identify and eliminate waste

Call #1: Map out the current value stream and assess its efficiency using core metrics.
Call #2: Identify wasteful steps and work, eliminate them, and add other value-adding steps if necessary. Improve the flow of work in the value stream and develop a future state map.

Guided Implementation #3 - Implement the Lean service desk plan

Call #1: Select KPIs and metrics to measure progress and prioritize initiatives using the Roadmap tool to implement a Lean service desk.
Call #2: Complete the Lean service desk plan and develop a strategy to sustain the activities of a Lean service desk.

Schedule Your First Call

Onsite Workshop

The Purpose

Form your service desk strategy as it relates to the goals of the business, customer, process, and learning & development.

Key Benefits Achieved

A balanced, broad approach to developing a strategy for improving the service desk through Lean principles.

Activities:		Outputs:
1.1	Assess current state of service desk and IT, and goals of the business.	Balanced Scorecard
1.2	Develop service desk strategy.

The Purpose

Develop a deep understanding of your end users by mapping their journey of resolving a ticket with the service desk.

Key Benefits Achieved

Clear identification of what the personas, touch points, jobs to be done, and stages your end users experience are.

Activities:		Outputs:
2.1	Identify customer personas.	Customer Journey Map
2.2	Break down “jobs to be done.”
2.3	Identify customers’ stages, goals, and touch points.
2.4	Build customer journey map.

The Purpose

Evaluate the current state of your service desk’s value stream. Identify all key steps and assess their value with core metrics. Set the stage for building a future state map.

Key Benefits Achieved

High-value steps identified.
Wasteful steps identified and quantified.
Clear picture of value stream built.

Activities:		Outputs:
3.1	Perform a physical walkthrough of the value stream.	Value Stream Charter
3.2	Plot and assess current state map with metrics.	Current and Future State Value Stream Map