Risks to successful Service Operation

The risks to achieving successful Service Operation are numerous – and in many cases are the opposite of the Critical Success Factors as described earlier – but also include:

• Inadequate funding and resources: Funding must be justified, allocated and held in reserve for its original purpose.
• Loss of momentum: Where staff see Service Management as ‘flavour of the month’ rather than permanently changing the way they work for the future, any impetus is lost as a result: it must be made clear from the outset that a new way of working is required. Also, mechanisms should be in place to ensure that the initiative survives organizational changes.
• Loss of key personnel: Sometimes the loss of one or two key personnel can have a severe impact: to try to minimize this effect, organizations should seek to cross-train staff and reduce dependencies upon individuals. This is especially true in less mature organizations where knowledge has still not been formalized into processes, documents and tools. These organizations tend to be dependent on ‘heroic’ efforts of a few knowledgeable people, and are devastated when they leave.
• Resistance tochange: Sometimes people object to new things and are reluctant to take them on board. Education, training, communication and highlighting benefits will help.
• Lack of management support: This often occursamong Middle Managers who may not see the overall vision or gain the hands-on benefits that more junior staff may gain. See paragraph 9.2.1 for more information on this, but managers need to support Service Management and participate in the appropriate phases and processes of Service Design, Transition and Operation to provide tangible support.
• If the initial designis faulty, a successful implementation will never give the required results – and redesign will ultimately be necessary.
• In some organizations Service Management can be viewed with suspicion by both IT and the business. IT staff see it as an attempt to control them, while the business perceives it as an attempt by IT to gain more funding without actually improving anything. The benefits of Service Management should be clearly articulated for all stakeholders.
• Differingcustomerexpectations. While operational staff are encouraged to execute against standards, customer and user expectations sometimes differ. In other cases one customer may have paid more for a superior service, but when a user from a different area sees the superior service, they feel cheated. This problem should be resolved through clear SLM and careful communication during Service Design. Complaints of this nature should be taken up through Continual Service Improvement processes and should not simply involve Service Operation automatically increasing service upon request.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1151