It used to be that if the request wasn't on a schedule or it wasn’t in a plan, the IT department just didn’t do it. But IT's job is to enable the business, not tell the business what to do. We're responsible for figuring out how to make the business more effective through the application of technology.
To do that, we transitioned the IT department from the “Department of No” to the “Department of How.” IT organizations should be focused on proactively delivering IT solutions and capabilities to the business – before the business itself knows it needs it.
To get there, we must be always looking into the future and identifying what the business needs. There's a lot of blocking and tackling involved. You’ve got to have a system in place to gather requirements in a way that's fluid, dynamic, and attractive. I can’t afford to be the “Department of Yes.” But I can afford “how” if we use our skills as technologists to deliver better services to enable the business.
The service desk
Here's a good example of what IT service looks like at many organizations. You’ve had to call the service desk on more than one occasion to have someone come fix your computer. The IT support arrives and sits down at your computer, ten magic digits come out, and all of a sudden it’s fixed and your IT help walks away. And you’re left thinking, “There might have been a lesson learned there for me. Is it something I did that caused the problem? Can I correct my behavior?”
Well, when the IT department brings that information to you, involves you in solving the problem and makes you a partner in service delivery, then you actually can learn the lesson and become part of the solution as opposed to wondering what happened. The result is a continually learning workforce enabled by technologists collaboratively working towards improved services.
My most important metric in the service desk isn’t the number of tickets, it is how many tickets are opened a second time for something that was not fixed properly the first time. Rework is exponentially more expensive than the original task, so doing it right the first time is critical. If you don't, it affects your brand, it affects the image you have within the company, and it affects the company’s feelings about how reliable their service support is. That’s why it was essential for us to become the “Department of How.”
Even as we move forward, we're still stuck in a legacy. I still get reports on how many service desk tickets are open, how old they are, and what the aging rate is. But I’m not really interested in that. I want to look at the tickets and identify what ticket number or what process yields the greatest amount of tickets, and what’s the root cause of why they’re coming in. Over time, it takes a lot of resources to resolve the same issue over and over again for users. This is where the leadership of the CIO comes in. If the problem originates because the solution is too difficult for workers to execute, then re-engineering the process with a different solution may be in order. The CIO can make that happen in the investment plan and invest in the improvement thereby becoming a department of “how” in a proactive IT response.
Focusing on the outcomes, rather than quantitative metrics helps determine whether you’re going to get to an outcome you desire. I always focus on outcomes that improve reliability, access, and ease of use for the people who do the work in the company. Achieving this outcome requires us to deliver “how” instead of “no.”
