Towards TQM in IT Services Review

This article written in 2007 by Xian Chen and Paul Sorenson from the Department of Computing Science, University of Alberta is based around the concept of introducing quality management and improvement approaches into IT services. 

The article begins with an introduction to the Deming cycle, describing each of the four steps that this iterative process goes through (Plan, Do, Check, Act). The article does not however refer to this as the Deming cycle rather it refers to it as the TQM or total quality management strategy.

Following this measures of quality are then described from four different perspectives, which are:

Conformance Quality

Measuring how well an IT service performs when related to the original design specifications.

Gap Quality:

Essentially how well the service meets the users expectations of the service.   

Value Quality:

Universal measure of the value which a service offers its customers.

Excellence Quality:

Measuring the features and characteristics of quality.

From this the authors outline how they will use a survey to measure and analyze the gap quality (Does the service meet the users expectations) of product and service support in IT services. I think this approach has merit as it allows customers to provide feedback about services however some of this feedback may be more subjective than factual due to the nature of some of the questions posed. For example:

How knowledgeable do you find employees providing the service support? In this case the employees in question may be well trained and knowledgeable but due to one or two bad experiences with service desks the customer may be of the opinion that the “Service desk monkeys don’t know what they are talking about”.

Other that this one minor issue over all I found this to be a good article, giving an interesting insight into the different measures of quality. 

Taming the Help Desk Paper Review

This paper written by Geoffrey Sperl of the Wayne State University is I think an excellent insight into the transformation process a “Computer Geek” needs to undertake when moving from an IT support position to a management type position. Although this paper was written a few years ago (2006) I think that it still offers a good range of information about the particulars of moving from geek to manager, starting with the basics such as a light hearted look at personal conduct before moving onto the main points.

These main points include planning ahead, staff training and leadership techniques, with each point being covered in a good level of detail. Following this the author finishes of with a conclusion which summaries the steps within the paper and describes how the content is based around lessons that he has learnt.  

I felt that the main points outlined within this paper offered a good deal of information and due to the fact that most of this content was at quite a high level I believe it could be applied in many different situations. Namely situations where a staff member with little leadership and management experience is to be placed in a position of responsibility, in this scenario an overview of how they are expected to behave and how they can be successful in their new position could be helpful and could go a long way to ensuring a smooth transition of roles and a good outcome for both new manager and staff. 

Overall I found this paper short and to the point, easy to read and I feel that it offers a good concise overview of the transition process from geek to manager.  

Service Managment in Operations Paper Review

I found this paper written by Sue Conger, MaryAnne Winniford and Lisa Erickson-Harris to be an interesting overview of how IT managers understand and practice IT service management within organizations and what this information shows about the overall understanding and implementation of service management. The paper begins by introducing IT service management and describing what its main focuses and benefits are.  After this a brief history of service management is outlined followed by a more in-depth overview of IT service management.

What I found interesting about the initial raw results from this paper is that from 364 individuals (Systems and network managers) surveyed from a potential pool of 5000 only 45% of these individuals where using IT service management and a further 15% where in the planning stages of implementing ITSM. From further analysis and cross tabulation of this raw data It was found that  the use of ITSM increased as company size increased with 60% of companies that had over 20,000 staff using ITSM whereas only 25% of  companies that had less that 20,000 staff where using ITSM. 

At the conclusion of this paper the authors outlined their take on the reasons for the level of ITSM uptake, particularly amongst smaller organisations. The main causes where in a nut shell confusion over exactly what service management was and confusion surrounding the management concepts within ITSM. IT was also noted that a number of managers where simply not aware that ITSM existed. I believe that the points made by the authors in this paper would have had some validity when the paper was first published (2008) however I think that if this research was re-visited today a different conclusion may be able to be made. 

Moving from ignorant anarchy to informed anarchy:

Despite being a few years old I still felt that this paper, written by Ken Dietel still offered an interesting insight into the process of implementing a change management system into a large organization. The problem being faced was introduced as “ignorant anarchy” with each group in the organization effectively operating independently of each other. New systems would be released into the production environment by system developers without notifying the helpdesk of any changes. When users complained to the helpdesk that a system was operating strangely, the help desk operator would research the situation, find no record of the indicated issue and file a report with the system developers. The system developers would then get back to the help desk and tell them that the system had been changed and what they were seeing was perfectly normal for this new system. 

The author then goes on to describe how management responded to this issue by creating a new job position to carry out the task of implementing the new change management process and then forming a process improvement team, to oversee any new changes.

The next step outlined was the process definition. It described how the process improvement team created a standard change management process flow and its associated procedures and paths that changes followed dependant on their urgency. He then steps through the remaining steps in the approval of a new process including submission of the request change, Approval of the request, review of the request, notification of pending change, implementation and then release of the new process.

What I found interesting about this is that initially the reps from the various IT support groups were reluctant to attend change review meetings as they considered it to be keeping them from their “real work” However I would suggest that attending these meetings may actually improve their workload as they are preventing change related problems from occurring in the first place. Overall I found this paper to be short and to the point and a good overview of implementing a change management process into an IT organization.

You want us to support what?

 This paper by Nathan Carpenter and Ryan Tucker describes the importance of communication and collaboration between the help desk and service managers.

The paper is mainly written from the perspective of the help desk and is based around improving what is quite probably a common issue for numerous help desk and IT support departments.

The crux of the problem that this paper outlines is that the help desk is often the very last stop on a project's journey before it goes out to the public. This lack of communication puts the help desk in a bad position to support the new service and often the quality of customer service suffers as a result. To resolve this issue the “Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)” Help Desk at the University of Illinois began to take a more active role in offering support for the services provided by CITES. In short this revolved around a help desk representative being present at “The Table” for all the stages of a projects development. The six main points outlined in this paper “The six steps to success” cover this in more detail and are I think a good example of how simply and easily something that often presents major issue to IT and supporting departments can be improved upon by simply listening, being involved and planning during the course of any service changes.

Overall I think that the ideas being put forward by the authors of this paper have merit and could go a long way to improving the quality of help desk and other related services, not just for IT but for many other industries that often find themselves in a similar position.  

Developing a service catalogue for higher education information technology services:

I found this paper to be an interesting insight into the process and end result of implementing ITIL best practices into a customer service website. I liked the logical progression of the paper as it stepped through the process that was undertaken to improve this website. It clearly described the problems with the old website and then stepped through the proposal to fix it, the action plan and finally the creation and execution of the new system. I felt that the use of illustrations and examples throughout this paper helped to communicate what the problem was and how it was going to be fixed. Without reading into any great depth it could be determined what the authors where attempting to improve apron and how they planned to do this. The only downside to the process under taken in this paper was the apparent lack of customer research undertaken. Initially a “Select group” was surveyed to determine what worked and what didn’t with the old site. I believe that this process could have been done a bit more thoroughly to gain a better understanding of the problems that they were trying to correct and to gather feedback on their new design from a wider audience. i.e a campus wide survey etc. Overall despite a few minor issues I enjoyed reading this paper and despite not having a huge grasp of the ITIL framework still found it relatively easy to comprehend  and gain a good perception of the ideas that the authors where communicating .  

What Determines IT Spending Priorities?

Despite initially finding this article a little difficult to comprehend, I felt that it offered an interesting insight into the IT spending habits of different sized firms and how each of these firms prioritized their IT spending . Overall I found the data on how respondents IT expenditures over the past 3 years had changed the cost and quality of their products / services and the revenues of that firm of most interest. Namely that 71% of the firms surveyed found that IT expenditures led to improvements in product and service quality whereas only 51% of the firms reported that increased IT expenditures lead to higher overall revenues. I found this interesting as it shows that whilst increased IT spending may lead to an increase in product quality and a decrease in cost to the end consumer it can have a detrimental effect on a business’s overheads.  I also found it interesting that the data showed that smaller firms often spend less on IT security that larger firms which in my view is a mistake as targets for security attacks are not usually chosen on firm size. Overall I felt that this article offered an interesting look into IT related spending habits, even if it was a bit hard to understand in places.