Adopt Lean IT to Streamline the Service Desk
Turn your service desk into a Lean, keen, value-creating machine.
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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
- 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.
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.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Implement the Lean service desk plan
Implement the Lean service desk and sustain its development.
Guided Implementations
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.
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Develop a Balanced Scorecard
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
Assess current state of service desk and IT, and goals of the business.
- Balanced Scorecard
Develop service desk strategy.
Module 2: Develop a Customer Journey Map
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
Identify customer personas.
- Customer Journey Map
Break down “jobs to be done.”
Identify customers’ stages, goals, and touch points.
Build customer journey map.
Module 3: Assess Current State Value Stream
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
Perform a physical walkthrough of the value stream.
- Value Stream Charter
Plot and assess current state map with metrics.
- Current and Future State Value Stream Map
Module 4: Implement and Sustain the Lean Implementation
The Purpose
- Develop a strategy for implementing the Lean service desk and sustaining its operation.
Key Benefits Achieved
- An effective strategy and roadmap of tasks to be completed in order to achieve and sustain a successful Lean implementation.
Activities
Outputs
Determine CSFs, KPIs, and metrics.
- Lean Service Desk Plan
Develop a Lean implementation plan.
- Value Stream Roadmap Tool
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Palmer College of Chiropractic
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
