In a recent episode of our IT Experience podcast, I spoke with Sophie Hussey about the IT service management (ITSM) landscape she sees in her role as a Service Management and Leadership Consultant. This blog shares some of her insights and opinions, from the “people pipeline” challenges in ITSM to how to future-proof service management.
The “people pipeline” challenges in ITSM
It’s a big one to start with – many experienced ITSM professionals are nearing retirement, with insufficient young talent entering the field. In Sophie’s view, this is because service management is often invisible in educational curricula, especially in UK computer science programs.
At school, at least in the UK, people learn about the IT options available to them. They’re told about infrastructure and cybersecurity. So, consequently, you get the obvious coding and developer ambitions, but there’s a whole other career pathway in service management that’s often overlooked or not even considered.
Service management lacks visibility in schools. For example, Sophie’s eldest daughter did Computer Science at GCSE level, the exams for 16-year-olds in the UK, and there was nothing in the course related to service management. It was all about hardware and coding and little else. Consequently, young people just aren’t aware that service management is a viable (and valuable) career path. Plus, it doesn’t help that our ITSM job titles and descriptions are often unclear or uninviting. It’s almost as though we don’t want to attract new talent.
ITSM symptoms that indicate a need for help
Often, organizations bring in outside consultancy help because they want or need to improve their ITIL or ITSM processes (or practices in ITIL 4). Sophie sees some common issues that indicate improvement is required. These include:
- Poor change management outcomes
- Disconnected or disengaged teams
- Overlooked process inefficiencies
- Risks and compliance gaps are not being addressed.
However, Sophie often finds that, while these might be the challenges she goes into organizations to solve, there’s usually more to it. There are usually two distinct needs – there’s the ask of what they think they want, and then there’s what they really, really want or need. For example, one of Sophie’s clients, a large organization, wanted her to go in to help them set up the ITIL framework. They had some ITSM processes in place but wanted to do everything. So, Sophie went in and did a current state assessment. She found that IT only used about 16 ITIL processes, with others used in other parts of the organization. So, she wasn’t going to waste her time looking at those.
However, in addition to the 16 processes, she found that the organization needed help with talent management, including a talent competency framework, and operational risk management. So, while a consultant might go in with a very clear remit, what’s really needed might differ.
Educating people on “service” is vital
People need to be able to think in service terms, particularly how a service is delivered. It’s not about the technology or what an app looks like; it’s about the user experience and the colleague experience.
So, when talking about service management, there are key aspects to consider:
- What value is a service adding?
- What are you delivering to the end-user or customer?
- What objectives and outcomes are you delivering to?
People need to understand how a service actually works and what the word “service” means. This is the biggest gap we need to eliminate as an industry – to help ensure anyone working in a development role or designing a service is always thinking “with a customer hat on.”
Service management is more than ITSM processes and tools
This follows on from the previous point. People need to understand the bigger picture – that service management is about delivering value to customers and end-users. For example, developers and architects should consider service impact and end-user outcomes from the start.
Tying this into the lack of educational awareness, understanding “what service means” is a major knowledge gap in technology education.
Future-proofing service management
Sophie believes there’s a need to make service management more visible and accessible in schools and beyond through:
- STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) outreach – Sophie is a STEM Ambassador who advocates service management (as well as trying to get more young people into technology)
- Apprenticeships and school engagement
- Simplified, relatable language and role descriptions
Sophie also advocates dropping the “IT” from ITSM because service management is a universal business discipline. It can be applied anywhere in the organization and help various business functions work cohesively and collaboratively.
To listen to Sophie talk about these and other interesting insights into where service management is and is going, including the use of experience data for performance management and improvement, listen to the podcast here.
And, for further insights into the future of IT support, see what a further ten industry authorities have to say in this article.
