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Problem Management Yields Service Improvement

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“Why are we in business? To help our customers

achieve their goals. Simple as that.”

John Varley, Group Chief Executive Barclays

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SUMMARY

•Approaching process implementation

•Moving from incident to problem management

•4 steps in problem management

•The next step on the evolutionary path

•The process is working why change

•The process is working why we must change

•Processes need people

•Hidden dangers

•Overview

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ITIL DEFINITION

A Problem

A cause of one or more incidents, the cause is not usually known at the time a Problem record is created, and the problem management process is responsible for further investigation.

The Problem Process

The process responsible for managing the lifecycle of all problems, the primary objectives of problem management is to prevent Incidents from happening and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented.

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SOMETIMES YOUR REPUTATION GOES BEFORE YOU

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HOW DO WE APPROACH PROCESS IMPLEMENTATION

• The feasibility study

• Does size matter

• Review, learn and evolve

• Hardest parts of the process evolution

•The acceptance that its not doing everything you wanted it to do

•The thought that you may have been wrong.

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Incident starts

Incident detected

User impact mitigated

Service restored to pre incident level and set up

Root cause analysis

Identify root cause

Apply fix

Op

tion

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Op

tion

2

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IT’S NEVER GOING TO BE PERFECT

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely fool proof is to

underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools”

Douglas Adams

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PROBLEM MANAGEMENT EVOLUTION

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Severity 1 High SeverityA direct threat of damage to the image, reputation or credibility of the group. Multiple lines of business or locations critically affected.

Severity 2 High SeveritySignificant degradation or outage affecting a line of business key services or locations

Severity 3 Low SeverityMinor degradation to a key service, business process or location or a more severe degradation or outage to a non critical service, business process or location

Severity 4 Low SeveritySmall issue with localized scope typically affecting a single user. Can either be tolerated or worked around for an extended period of time due to its limited impact

Before We Go Any Further Lets Define Our Severities

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STEP 1 GETTING STARTED

•Problem records opened after every incident

•Problem records opened for all issues identified that needed to be improved

•Pride in the number of open problem records

MEASURES

•Focused around record updates and process adherence

•Processed policed by the problem management team

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STEP 2

•Split into low and high severity records

•Starting to focus on business impact

•Delivering business focused fixes when requested

•High volumes of problems still being opened

•Process still mainly policed not driven

MEASURES

Still focused on process adherence and compliance, and a drive to reduce the volume of records

Now they have two options if they are to evolve further

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Evolution Options

Fight the gatorsOr

Drain the swamp and find the gators a nice safe

home

THE CRITICAL POINT IN THE PROCESS DEVELOPMENT

This is the point of no return

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•Problem Validation

•Aggressive closure decisions

•Identify the issues that need addressing

•Evaluation to ensure cost effective fixes

•Logging repeat incidents to build business cases

MEASURES

Still focused on process adherence and compliance, and a drive to reduce the volume of records

STEP 3

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STEP 4

•Records prioritised with the business areas

•Fix dates were agreed with the technical teams

•New measures introduced

MEASURES

•Agreed dates for fix delivery

•Potential root cause notification

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The Next Steps

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STEP 5

•Faster delivery of fixes

•Blur the line between incident and problem

•Ownership from detection to fix

MEASURES

•End to end fix delivery agreements

•Provisional root cause accuracy

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Nothing wrong with any of the versions they were right for their time

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“Why should we change something that’s working ?”

many people in nearly every organisation

The process is doing what it always does

Look behind the process

•Are the processes delivering to the measures

•Are the measures really delivering the results we need

•Do we still want the same thing from the process

THE PROCESS IS WORKING WHY CHANGE

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• Keeps people focused

• Meet the changing needs of the business areas

THE PROCESS IS WORKING WHY WE MUST CHANGE

•To meet changing needs of the IT areas

• The drive to do things better

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WHY CHANGE? WHY NOT?

Continual service improvement ensures people don’t become complacent, and start to think they know things so well

they cut corners, or

they start to follow the process without thinking why.

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•Everyone must know more than the theoretical process

•They must understand •how it works•what it does •why it does what it does

•And most importantly what benefits it gives them

Without ownership the processes may look great on paper but they will fail to deliver

KEY PROCESS IMPLEMENTATION DANGER NON OWNERSHIP

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Processes bring their own dangers and perhaps the most significant is summed up here

“Process and Procedure are the last hiding place of people

without the wit and wisdom to do their job properly”

David Brent,The office (amongst others)

PROCESSES CAN BE DANGEROUS

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PROCESSES NEED PEOPLE

They need a special type of person to really deliver

What types do we have

•Those who the process owns

•Those who own the process

Don’t forget the process by-products'

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OUR PROCESSES ARE IN PLACE, THEIR EVOLVING CAN WE RELAX ?

Setting the targets to ensure the process delivers

•Every process needs its measures

•Every measure has a target

•Every target drives a behaviour

•Behaviours can hide the true facts

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USING YOUR PROCESSES TO IMPROVE YOUR PROCESSES

•Be proactive

•Use the processes to fix themselves

•Some times doing nothing is right

•When you think you’ve finished look again

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•Don’t hide behind the process

•If it doesn’t work, change the process

•Continue to grow and evolve even when its working

•Make continual process improvement the norm

•Ownership, Ownership its the key to success

•Remain focused on the business drivers

•The hidden dangers

•Treat your processes as a valuable asset.

•Processes are enablers not inhibitors

SUMMARY

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“An environment of continual challenge will add value across your organisation

not just to your processes”

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Clarification time

Question time

Quick coffee?

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Thank you very much

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Malcolm Gunn

malcolm.gunn@barclays.com