Who? Sir Dave Brailsford famously led Team GB to cycling success in the 2012 Olympics, following a focus on “marginal gains”, making many small improvements that, taken together, added up to a significant and startling performance improvement. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian scientist who noted in 1906 that 80% of Italian wealth belonged to just […]

Aye Aye, Captain Have you ever thought, “I can’t speak up, I’m only a new member of staff”?  Or perhaps, “I think this is a mistake, but I’m the least senior person here”?  Maybe just “I’m not certain about this, so why does everyone else seem happy?” If so, you’ve encountered an authority gradient – […]

Service desks exist on a spectrum from call logging to expert, and the University has the full range of service desks currently. However, what are the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches?  Where is the best place to position your service desk? Let’s describe the two extremes ends of the spectrum initially. Call Logging This […]

A few weeks’ ago, I asked the question, “Is our knowledge management best practice?“, although I left the answer as an exercise for the reader… If you thought that our current practice could do with improving, but didn’t know where to start, I’m going to propose an alternative operational approach, drawn from Knowledge-Centered Service, some […]

What is best practice within Knowledge Management and what is our practice?  ITIL (circa 2002) covered Knowledge Management in one of the books no one read (Application Management), so it was quietly ignored until v3 when it appeared as a “new process” within Service Transition (2007). The ITIL 4 summary (2019) is comprehensive, “Knowledge management […]

“Where are you?” might be a common question, but how does that apply to processes?  The answer is “not at all”! Let’s consider a basic process.  Something will trigger the process, then there will be inputs, some sort of activity or task to perform, then outputs.  Good processes will have feedback loops, governance, etc. However, […]

In keeping with Betteridge’s law of headlines, the answer is of course, “no”.  However that’s only down to the inclusion of “just”! Processes indeed offer comfort, security and (re)assurance to organisations.  Going back to ITIL v2, the IT Service Continuity process had the “cushion of assurance” within operational management. Embedding operational processes (and similar organisational […]

Since 2007, the University of Edinburgh has trained many staff in Service Management best practice. 565 attendances on a Foundation in IT Service Management course (8 years of staff time) 178 attendances on a Practitioner or Intermediate course (3 years) 7 staff trained to Manager or Expert level (15 weeks) Training fees are in the […]

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I’m sure many of you will be looking forward to enjoying a whodunit, whether in print, film or game. I’d already referenced Holmes when introducing Kepner-Tregoe problem analysis and by popular demand have been asked to tell a story. So settle down and grab a mug – are you’re sitting comfortably?  […]

Doing certain things now will give us breathing and thinking space to assess our next response. First aid training includes a pre-prioritised list of immediate actions. Battlefield medics use MARCH, which in priority order means: Massive hemorrhage – if this isn’t stopped rapidly, everything else is in vain Airway – ensure an airway, as without a […]