Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind

Change your focus from satisfying auditors to driving process optimization, consistent IT operations, and effective knowledge transfer.

Project Outline

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

Do your SOPs drive process optimization?

"Most organizations struggle to document and maintain SOPs as required, leading to process inconsistencies and inefficiencies. These breakdowns directly impact the performance of IT operations. Effective SOPs streamline training and knowledge transfer, improve transparency and compliance, enable automation, and ultimately decrease costs as processes improve and expensive breakdowns are avoided. Documenting SOPs is not just good practice; it directly impacts IT efficiency and your bottom line."

Frank Trovato, Senior Manager, Infrastructure Research Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• IT Process Owners
• IT Infrastructure Managers
• IT Service Managers
• System Administrators
• And more…

This Research Will Help You:

• Identify, prioritize, and document SOPs for critical business processes.
• Discover opportunities for overall process optimization by documenting SOPs.
• Develop documentation best practices that support ongoing maintenance and review.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• CTOs
• Business unit leaders

This Research Will Help Them:

• Understand the need for and value of documenting SOPs in a usable format.
• Help set expectations around documentation best practices.
• Extend IT best practices to other parts of the business.

Executive summary

Situation

• Most organizations know it is good practice to have SOPs as it improves consistency, facilitates process improvement, and contributes to efficient operations.
• Though the benefits are understood, many organizations don't have SOPs and those that do don't maintain them.

Complication

• Writing SOPs is the last thing most people want to do, so the work gets pushed down the priority list and the documents become dated.
• Promoting the use of SOPs can also face staff resistance as the documentation is seen as time consuming to develop and maintain, too convoluted to be useful, and generally out of date.

Resolution

• Overcome staff resistance while implementing a sustainable SOP documentation approach by doing the following:
• Create visual documents that can be scanned. Flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams are quicker to create, take less time to update, and are ultimately more usable than a dense manual.
• Use simple, but effective document management practices.
• Make SOPs part of your project deliverables rather than an afterthought. That includes checking documentation status as part of your change management process.
• Extend these principles to other areas of IT and business processes. The survey data and examples in this report include application development and business processes as well as IT operations.

Info-Tech Insight

1. Create visual documents, not dense SOP manuals.
2. Start with high-impact SOPs. Identify the most critical undocumented SOPs and document them first.
3. Integrate SOP creation into project requirements and create SOP approval steps to ensure documentation is reviewed and completed in a timely fashion.

Most organizations struggle to create and maintain SOP documents, especially in North America, despite the benefits

North American companies are traditionally more technology focused than process focused, and that is reflected in the approach to documenting SOPs.

• An ad hoc approach to SOPs almost certainly means documents will be out of date and ineffective. The same is also true when updating SOPs as part of periodic concerted efforts to prepare for an audit, annual review, or certification process, and this makes the task more imposing.
• Incorporating SOP updates as part of regular change management processes ensures documents are up to date and usable. This can also make reviews and audits much more manageable.

'It isn’t unusual for us to see infrastructure or operations documentation that is wildly out of date. We’re talking months, even years. Often it was produced as one big effort and then not reliably maintained.'

– Gary Patterson, Consultant, Quorum Resources

Organizations are most likely to update documents on an ad hoc basis or via periodic formal reviews. Less than 25% keep SOPs updated as needed.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N=104

Document SOPs to improve knowledge transfer, optimize processes, and ultimately save money

COBIT, ISO, and ITIL aren’t a complete solution

"Being ITIL and ISO compliant hasn’t solved our documentation problem. We’re still struggling."

– Vendor Relationship Manager, Financial Services Industry

• Adopting a framework such as ITIL, COBIT, or ISO doesn’t always mean that SOP documents are accurate, effective, or up to date.
• Although these frameworks emphasize the importance of documenting processes, they tend to focus more on process development and requirements than on actual documentation. In other words, they deal more with what needs to be done than with how to do it.
• This research will focus more on the documentation process itself – so how to go about creating, updating, optimizing, managing, and distributing SOP documents.

Inadequate SOPs lead to major data loss and over $99,000 in recovery costs

CASE STUDY 1

Company A mid-sized US organization with over 1,000 employees

Source Info-Tech Interview

Situation

• IT supports storage nodes replicated across two data centers. SOPs for backup procedures did not include an escalation procedure for failed backups or a step to communicate successful backups. Management was not aware of the issue and therefore could not address it before a failure occurred.

Incident

• Primary storage had a catastrophic failure, and that put pressure on the secondary storage, which then also failed. All active storage failed and the data corrupted. Daily backups were failing due to lack of disk space on the backup device. The organization had to resort to monthly tape backups.

Impact

• Lost 1 month of data (had to go back to the last tape backup).
• Recovery also took much longer because recovery procedures were also not documented.
• Key steps such as notifying impacted customers were overlooked. Customers were left unhappy not only with the outage and data loss but also the lack of communication.

Intangible costs

High “goodwill” impact for internal staff and customers.

"The data loss pointed out a glaring hole in our processes – the lack of an escalation procedure. If I knew backups weren’t being completed, I would have done something about that immediately."

– Senior Division Manager, Information Technology Division

IT services company optimizes its SOPs using “Lean” approach

CASE STUDY 2

Company Atrion

SourceInfo-Tech Interview

Lean and SOPs

• Standardized work is important to Lean’s philosophy of continuous improvement. SOPs allow for replication of the current best practices and become the baseline standard for member collaboration toward further improvements.
• For more on Lean’s approach to SOPs, see “Lean Six Sigma Quality Transformation Toolkit (LSSQTT) Tool #17.”

Atrion’s approach

• Atrion is focused on documenting high-level processes that improve the client and employee experience or which can be used for training.
• Cross-functional teams collaborate to document a process and find ways to optimize that SOP.
• Atrion leverages visual documentation as much as possible: flowcharts, illustrations, video screen captures, etc.

Outcomes

• Large increase in usable, up-to-date documentation.
• Process and efficiency improvements realized and made repeatable.
• Success has been so significant that Atrion is planning to offer SOP optimization training and support as a service for its clients in the future.

Atrion

• Atrion provides IT services, solutions, and leadership to clients in the 250+ user range.
• After adopting the Lean framework for its organization, it has deliberately focussed on optimizing its documentation.

When we initiated a formal process efficiency program a little over a year ago and began striving towards a culture of continuous improvement, documenting our SOPs became key. We capture how we do things today and how to make that process more efficient. We call it current state and future state mapping of any process.

– Michelle Pope, COO, Atrion Networking Corp.

Strategies to overcome common documentation challenges

Use Info-Tech’s methodology to streamline the SOP documentation process.

Use this blueprint as a building block to complete these other Info-Tech projects

Improve IT-Business Alignment Through an Internal SLA

Understand business requirements, clarify capabilities, and close gaps.

Standardize the Service Desk – Module 2 & 3

Improve reporting and management of incidents and build service request workflows.

Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan

Define appropriate objectives for DR, build a roadmap to close gaps, and document your incident response plan.

Extend the Service Desk to the Enterprise

Position IT as an innovator.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Create Visual SOP Documents – project overview

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Measured value for Guided Implementations (GIs)

Engaging in GIs doesn’t just offer valuable project advice, it also results in significant cost savings.

Note: Documenting SOPs provides additional benefits that are more difficult to quantify: reducing the time spent by staff to find or execute processes, improving transparency and accountability, presenting opportunities for automation, etc.

Phase 1

Prioritize, Optimize, and Document Critical SOPs

Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind

Phase 1 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 1: Prioritize, optimize, and document critical SOPs

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 2 weeks

Step 1.1: Prioritize SOPs

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Apply a client focus to critical IT services.
• Identify undocumented, critical SOPs.

Then complete these activities…

• Rank and prioritize your SOP documentation needs.

With this template:

Standard Operating Procedures Workbook

Step 1.2: Develop visual documentation

Review findings with analyst:

• Understand the benefits of a visual approach.
• Review possibilities for visual documentation.

Then complete these activities…

• Identify formats that can improve your SOP documentation.

With these templates:

• Example DRP Process Flows
• Example App Dev Process And more…

Step 1.3: Optimize and document critical processes

Finalize phase deliverable:

• Two visual SOP documents, mapped using a tabletop exercise.

Then complete these activities…

• Create the visual SOP.
• Review and optimize the process.

With this tool:

SOP Project Roadmap Tool

Phase 1 Results & Insights:

Identify opportunities to deploy visual documentation, and follow Info-Tech’s process to capture steps, gaps, and opportunities to improve IT processes.

Focus first on client-facing and high-impact SOPs

IT’s number one obligation to internal and external customers is to keep critical services running – that points to mission-critical operations, service management, and disaster recovery.

Understand what makes an application or service mission critical

When email or a shared drive goes down, it may impact productivity, but may not be a significant impact to the business. Ask these questions when assessing whether an application or service is mission critical.

"Email and other Windows-based applications are important for our day-to-day operations, but they aren’t critical. We can still manufacture and ship clothing without them. However, our manufacturing systems, those are absolutely critical"

– Bob James, Technical Architect, Carhartt, Inc.

Create a high-level risk and benefit scale

1.1a

15 minutes

Define criteria for high, medium, and low risks and benefits, as shown in the example below. These criteria will be used in the upcoming exercises to rank SOPs.

Note: The goal in this section is to provide high-level indicators of which SOPs should be documented first, so a high-level set of criteria is used. To conduct a detailed business impact analysis, see Info-Tech’s Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan.

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Identify and prioritize undocumented mission-critical operations

1.1b

15 minutes

1. To navigate to this exercise, open Info-Tech’s Standard Operating Procedures Workbook.
2. List your top three–five mission critical applications or services.
3. Identify relevant SOPs that support those applications or services.
4. Indicate SOP status: Green = up to date and complete, Yellow = out-of-date or incomplete, Red = undocumented.
5. Assign risk and benefit scores (3=high, 1=low) to Yellow and Red SOPs based on potential impact if those processes failed (risk) and opportunity for process improvement (benefit).

OUTPUT

• Analysis of SOPs supporting mission-critical operations

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Identify and prioritize undocumented service management procedures

1.1c

15 minutes

1. To navigate to this exercise, open Info-Tech’s Standard Operating Procedures Workbook.
2. Identify service management SOPs.
3. Indicate SOP status: Green = up to date and complete, Yellow = out-of-date or incomplete, Red = undocumented.
4. Assign risk and benefit scores (3=high, 1=low) to Yellow and Red SOPs based on potential impact if those processes failed (risk) and opportunity for process improvement (benefit).

OUTPUT

• Analysis of SOPs supporting service management

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Identify and prioritize undocumented DR procedures

1.1d

20 minutes

1. To navigate to this exercise, open Info-Tech’s Standard Operating Procedures Workbook.
2. Identify DR SOPs.
3. Indicate SOP status: Green = up to date and complete, Yellow = out-of-date or incomplete, Red = undocumented.
4. Assign risk and benefit scores (3=high, 1=low) to Yellow and Red SOPs based on potential impact if those processes failed (risk) and opportunity for process improvement (benefit).

OUTPUT

• Analysis of SOPs supporting DR

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Select the SOPs to focus on for the first round of documentation

1.1e

20 minutes

1. Identify two significantly different priority 1 SOPs to document during this workshop. It’s important to get a sense of how the Info-Tech templates and methodology can be applied to different types of SOPs.
2. Rank the remaining SOPs that you still need to address post-workshop by priority level within each topic area.

INPUT

• SOP analysis from activities 1.1 and 1.2

OUTPUT

• A shortlist of critical, undocumented SOPs to review later in this phase

Materials

• Whiteboard

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Change the format of your documentation

Which document is more effective? Which is more likely to be used?

"The end result for most SOPs is a 100-page document that makes anyone but the author want to stab themselves rather than read it. Even worse is when you finally decide to waste an hour of your life reading it only to be told afterwards that it might not be quite right because Bob or Stan needed to make some changes last year but never got around to it."

– Peter Church, Solutions Architect

Create visual-based documentation to improve usability and effectiveness

"Without question, 300-page DRPs are not effective. I mean, auditors love them because of the detail, but give me a 10-page DRP with contact lists, process flows, diagrams, and recovery checklists that are easy to follow."

– Bernard Jones, MBCI, CBCP, CORP, Manager Disaster Recovery/BCP, ActiveHealth Management

SOPs, including those that support your disaster recovery plan (DRP), are often created to meet certification requirements. However, this often leads to lengthy overly detailed documentation that is geared to auditors and business leaders, not IT staff trying to execute a procedure in a high-pressure, time-sensitive scenario.

Staff don’t have time to flip through a 300-page manual, let alone read lengthy instructions, so organizations are transforming monster manuals into shorter, visual-based documentation. Benefits include:

• Quicker to create than lengthy manuals.
• Easier to be absorb, so they are more usable.
• More likely to stay up to date because they are easier to maintain.

Example: DRPs that include visual SOPs are easier to use — that leads to shorter recovery times and fewer mistakes.

Use flowcharts for process flows or a high-level view of more detailed procedures

• Flowcharts depict who does what and when; they provide an at-a-glance view that is easy to follow and makes task ownership clear.
• Use swim lanes, as in this example, to indicate process stages and task ownership.
• For experienced staff, a high-level reminder of process flows or key steps is sufficient.
• Where more detail is required, include links to supporting documentation (which could include checklists, vendor documentation, other flowcharts, etc.).

See Info-Tech’s Incident and Service Management Procedures – Service Desk Example.

"Flowcharts are more effective when you have to explain status and next steps to upper management."

– Assistant Director-IT Operations, Healthcare Industry

Example: SOP in flowchart format

Review your options for diagramming software

Many organizations look for an option that easily integrates with the MS Office suite. The default option is often Microsoft Visio.

Pros:

• Easy to learn and use.
• Has a wide range of features and capabilities.
• Comes equipped with a large collection of stencils and templates.
• Offers the convenience of fluid integration with the MS Office Suite.

Cons:

• Isn’t included in any version of the MS Office Suite and can be quite expensive to license.
• Not available for Mac or Linux environments.

Consider the options below if you’re looking for an alternative to Microsoft Visio:

Desktop Solutions

• Dia Diagram Editor
• Diagram Designer
• LibreOffice Draw
• Pencil Project
• yEd Graph Editor

• Draw.io
• Creately
• Gliffy
• LucidChart

Note: No preference or recommendation is implied from the ordering of the options above.

This list is not intended to be comprehensive.

Evaluate different solutions to identify one that works for you

Use the criteria below to identify a flowchart software that fits your needs.

Use checklists to streamline step-by-step procedures

• Checklists are ideal when staff just need a reminder of what to do, not how to do it.
• Remember your audience. You aren’t pulling in a novice to run a complex procedure, so all you really need here are a series of reminders.
• Where more detail is required, include links to supporting documentation.
• Note that a flowchart can often be used instead of a checklist, depending on preference.

For two different examples of a checklist template, see:

• Employee Termination Process Checklist – IT Security Example
• System Recovery Procedures Template

Use topology diagrams to capture network layout, integrations, and system information

• Organizations commonly have network topology diagrams for reference purposes, so this is just a re-use of existing resources.
• Physically label real world equipment to correspond to topology diagrams. While these labels will be redundant for most IT employees, they help give clarity and confidence when changes are being made.
• If your topology diagrams are housed in a tool such as a systems management product, then export the diagrams so they can be included in your SOP documentation suite.

"Our network engineers came to me and said our standard SOP template didn't work for them. They're now using a lot of diagrams and flowcharts, and that has worked out better for them."

Use screen captures and tutorials to facilitate training for applications and SOPs

• Screen capture tutorials or videos are effective for training staff on applications. For example, create a screen capture tutorial to train staff on the use of a help desk application and your company’s specific process for using that tool.
• Similarly, create tutorials to train end users on straightforward “technical” tasks (e.g. setting up their VPN connection) to reduce the demand on IT staff.
• Tutorials can be created quickly and easily with affordable software such as Snag-It, ScreenHunter Pro, HyperSnap, PicPick, FastStone, Ashampoo Snap 6, and many others.

"When contractors come onboard, they usually don't have a lot of time to learn about the organization, and we have a lot of unique requirements. Creating SOP documents with screenshots has made the process quicker and more accurate."

– Susan Bellamore, Business Analyst, Public Guardian and Trustee of British Columbia

Example: Disaster recovery notification and declaration procedure

1. Swim lanes indicate task ownership and process stages.
2. Links to supporting documentation (which could include checklists, vendor documentation, other flowcharts, etc.) are included where necessary.
3. Additional DR SOPs are captured within the same spreadsheet for convenient, centralized access.

Review Info-Tech’s Incident Response and Recovery Process Flows – DRP Example.

Example: DRP flowchart with links to supporting documents

Establish flowcharting standards

If you don’t have existing flowchart standards, then keep it simple and stick to basic flowcharting conventions as described below.

Start, End, and Connector. Traditional flowcharting standards reserve this shape for connectors to other flowcharts or other points in the existing flowchart. Unified Modeling Language (UML) also uses the circle for start and end points.

Start, End. Traditional flowcharting standards use this for start and end. However, Info-Tech recommends using the circle shape to reduce the number of shapes and avoid confusion with other similar shapes.

Process Step. Individual process steps or activities (e.g. create ticket or escalate ticket). If it’s a series of steps, then use the sub-process symbol and flowchart the sub-process separately.

Sub-Process. A series of steps. For example, a critical incident SOP might reference a recovery process as one of the possible actions. Marking it as a sub-process, rather than listing each step within the critical incident SOP, streamlines the flowchart and avoids overlap with other flowcharts (e.g. the recovery process).

Decision. Represents decision points, typically with Yes/No branches, but you could have other branches depending on the question (e.g. a “Priority?” question could branch into separate streams for Priority 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 issues).

Document/Report Output. For example, the output from a backup process might include an error log.

Conduct a tabletop planning exercise to build an SOP

1.3a

20 minutes

Tabletop planning is a paper-based exercise where your team walks through a particular process and maps out what happens at each stage.

1. For this exercise, choose one particular process to document.
2. Document each step of the process using cue cards, which can be arranged on the table in sequence.
3. Be sure to include task ownership in your steps.
4. Map out the process as it currently happens – we’ll think about how to improve it later.
5. Keep focused. Stay on task and on time.

OUTPUT

• Steps in the current process for one SOP

Materials

• Tabletop, pen, and cue cards

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Info-Tech Insight

Don’t get weighed down by tools. Relying on software or other technological tools can detract from the exercise. Use simple tools such as cue cards to record steps so that you can easily rearrange steps or insert steps based on input from the group.

Collaborate to optimize the SOP

1.3b

20 minutes

Review the tabletop exercise. What gaps exist in current processes?

How can the process be made better? What are the outputs and checkpoints?

OUTPUT

• Identify steps to optimize the SOP

Materials

• Tabletop, pen, and cue cards

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

A note on colors: Use white cards to record steps. Record gaps on yellow cards (e.g. a process step not documented) and risks on red cards (e.g. only one person knows how to execute a step) to highlight your gaps/to-dos and risks to be mitigated or accepted.

If it’s necessary to clarify complex process flows during the exercise, also use green cards for decision diamonds, purple for document/report outputs, and blue for sub-processes.

Capture opportunities to improve processes in the Standard Operating Procedures Project Roadmap Tool

1.3

Rank and track projects to close gaps you discover in your processes.

1. As a group, identify potential solutions to close the gaps in your processes that you’ve uncovered through the tabletop mapping exercise.
2. Add these project names to the Standard Operating Procedures Project Roadmap Tool on the “Project Scoring” tab.
3. Review and adjust the criteria for evaluating the benefits and costs of different projects on the “Scoring Criteria” tab.
4. Return to the “Project Scoring” tab, and assign weights at the top of each scoring column. Use the drop-down menus to adjust the scores for each project category. The tool will automatically rank the projects based on your input, but you can adjust the ranks as needed.
5. Assign dates and descriptions to the projects on the “Implementation Schedule” tab, below.

Identify gaps to improve process performance and make SOP documentation a priority

CASE STUDY

Challenge

• Tabletop planning revealed a 77-hour gap between current and desired RTO for critical systems.
• Similarly, the current achievable RPO gap was up to one week, but the desired RPO was one hour.
• A DR site was available but not yet set up with the necessary equipment.
• Lack of documented standard operating procedures (SOPs) was identified as a risk since that increased the dependence on two or three key SMEs.

Solution

• Potential projects to close RTO/RPO gaps were identified, including:
• Deploy servers that were decommissioned (as a result of a server refresh) to the DR site as warm standby servers.
• Implement site-to-site data replication.
• Document SOPs to enable tasks to be delegated and minimize resourcing risks.

Results

• A DR project implementation schedule was defined.
• Many of the projects required no further investment, but rather deployment of existing equipment that could function as standby equipment at the DR site.
• The DR risk from a lack of SOPs enabled SOPs to be made a priority. An expected side benefit is the ability to review and optimize processes and improve consistency in IT operations.

Document the SOPs from the tabletop exercise

1.3c

20 minutes

Document the results from the tabletop exercise in the appropriate format.

1. Identify an appropriate visual format for the high-level SOP as well as for any sub-processes or supporting documentation.
2. Break into groups of two or three.
3. Each group will be responsible for creating part of the SOP. Include both the high-level SOP itself and any supporting documentation such as checklists, sign-off forms, sub-processes, etc.
4. Once your document is complete, exchange it with that of another group. Review each other’s documents to check for clarity and completeness.

OUTPUT

• Output from activities 1.4 and 1.5

Materials

• Flowcharting software, laptops

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Repeat the tabletop exercise for the second process

Come back together as a large group. Choose a process that is significantly different from the one you’ve just documented, and repeat the tabletop exercise.

As a reminder, the steps are:

1. Use the tabletop exercise to map out a current SOP.
2. Collaborate to optimize the SOP.
3. Decide on appropriate formats for the SOP and its supporting documents.
4. Divide into small groups to create the SOP and its supporting documents.
5. Repeat the steps above as needed for your initial review of critical processes.

Info-Tech Insight

If you plan to document more than two or three SOPs at once, consider making it an SOP “party” to add momentum and levity to an otherwise dry process. Review section 2.3 to find out how.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

1.1a-e

Get started by prioritizing SOPs

Ensure the SOP project remains business focused, and kick off the project by analyzing critical business services. Identify key IT services that support the relevant business services. Conduct a benefit/risk analysis to prioritize which SOPs should become the focus of the workshop.

1.3a-c

Document the SOPs from the tabletop exercise

Leverage a tabletop planning exercise to walk the team through the SOP. During the exercise, focus on identifying timelines, current gaps, and potential risks. Document the steps via que cards first and transpose the hard copies to an electronic version.

Phase 2

Establish a Sustainable Documentation Process

Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind

Phase 2 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 2: Establish a sustainable SOP documentation process

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 4 weeks

Step 2.1: Establish guidelines for identifying and organizing SOPs

Start with an analyst call:

• Establish documentation information guidelines.
• Review version control best practices.

Then complete these activities…

• Implement best practices to identify and organize your SOPs.

With these tools & templates:

• SOP Workbook

Step 2.2: Define a process to document and maintain SOPs

Review findings with analyst:

• Identify opportunities to create a culture that fosters SOP creation.

Then complete these activities…

• Create a plan to address SOP documentation gaps.

With these tools & templates:

• Document Management Checklist

Step 2.3: Plan time with experts to put a dent in your documentation backlog

Finalize phase deliverable:

• Address outstanding undocumented SOPs by working through process issues together.

Then complete these activities…

• Organize and run a working session to document and optimize processes.

With these tools & templates:

• SOP Workbook
• SOP Project Roadmap Tool

Phase 2 Results & Insights:

Improve the process for documenting and maintaining your SOPs, while putting a dent in your documentation backlog and gaining buy-in with staff.

Identify current content management practices and opportunities for improvement

DISCUSS

What is the current state of your content management practices?

Are you using a content management system? If not, where are documents kept?

Are your organizational or departmental SOPs easy to find?

Is version control a problem? What about file naming standards?

Get everyone on the same page on the current state of your SOP document management system, using the questions above as the starting point.

Keep document management simple for better adoption and consistency

If there is too much complexity and staff can’t easily find what they need, you won’t get buy-in and you won’t get consistency.

Whether you store SOPs in a sophisticated content management system (CMS) or on a shared network drive, keep it simple and focus on these primary goals:

• Enable staff to find the right document.
• Know if a document is the latest, approved version.
• Minimize document management effort to encourage buy-in and consistency.

If users can’t easily find what they need, it leads to bad practices. For example:

• Users maintain their own local copies of commonly used documents to avoid searching for them. The risk is that local copies will not be automatically updated when the SOP changes.
• Separate teams will implement their own document management system and repository. Now you have duplication of effort and company resources, multiple copies of documents (where each group needs their own version), and no centralized control over potentially sensitive documents.
• Users will ignore documented SOPs or ask a colleague who might also be following the above bad practices.

Insert a document information block on the first page of every document to identify key attributes

Include a document information block on the first page of every document to identify key attributes. This strategy is as much about minimizing resistance as it is ensuring key attributes are captured.

• A consistent document information block saves time (e.g. vs. customized approaches per document). If some fields don’t apply, enter “n/a.”
• It provides key information about the document without having to check soft copy metadata, especially if you work with hard copies.
• It’s a built-in reminder of what to capture and easier than updating document properties or header/footer information or entering metadata into a CMS.

Note: The Info-Tech templates in this blueprint include a copy of the document information block shown in this example. Add more fields if necessary for your organization’s needs.

For an example of a completed document information block, see Network Backup for Atlanta Data Center – Backups Example

Info-Tech Insight

For organizations with more advanced document management requirements, consider more sophisticated strategies (e.g. using metadata) as described in Info-Tech’s Use SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management and Reintroduce the Information Lifecycle to the Content Management Strategy. However, the basic concepts above still apply: establish standard attributes you need to capture and do so in a consistent manner.

Modify the Info-Tech document information block to meet your requirements

2.1a

15 minutes

1. Review “Guidelines and Template for the Document Information Block” in the Standard Operating Procedures Workbook. Determine if any changes are required, such as additional fields.
2. Identify which fields you want to standardize and then establish standard terms. Balance the needs for simplicity and consistency – don’t force consistency where it isn’t a good fit.
3. Pre-fill the document information block with standard terms and examples and add it to an SOP template that’s stored in your content management system.

Educate staff by pre-filling the document

• Providing examples built into the templates provides in-context, just-in-time training which is far more effective and easier than formal education efforts.
• Focus your training on communicating when the template or standard terms change so that staff know to obtain the new version. Otherwise, the tendency for many staff will be to use one of their existing documents as their template.

OUTPUT

• Completed document information block

Materials

• Laptop
• Projector

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Leverage the document information block to create consistent filenames that facilitate searching

Use the following filename format to create consistent, searchable, and descriptive filenames:

Topic – Document Title – Document Type – Version Date

For example:

• ERP – System Administration Monthly Maintenance Tasks – Checklist – 2016-01-15.docx
• ERP – System Administration Monthly Maintenance Tasks – SOP – 2017-01-10.docx
• Backups – Network Backup Procedure for Atlanta Data Center – SOP – 2017-03-06.docx
• PROJ437 – CRM Business Requirements – BRD – 2017-02-01.xlsx
• DRP – Notification Procedures – SOP – 2016-09-14.docx
• DRP – Emergency Response Team Roles and Responsibilities – Reference – 2018-03-10.xlsx

Apply filename and document information block guidelines to existing SOPs

2.1b

15 minutes

1. Review the SOPs created during the earlier exercises.
2. Update the filenames and document information block based on guidelines in this section.
3. Apply these guidelines to other select existing SOPs to see if additional modifications are required (e.g. additional standard terms).

INPUT

• Document Information Block

OUTPUT

• Updated filenames and document information blocks

Materials

• Laptop and projector

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

Implement version control policies for local files as well as those in your content management system (CMS)

1. Version Control in Your CMS

Always keep one master version of a document:

• When uploading a new copy of an existing SOP (or any other document), ensure the filenames are identical so that you are just adding a new version rather than a separate new file.
• Do not include version information in the filename (which would create a new separate file in your CMS). Allow your CMS to handle version numbering.

Ideally, staff would never keep local copies of files. However, there are times when it is practical or preferable to work from a local copy: for example, when creating or updating an SOP, or when working remotely if the CMS is not easily accessible.

Implement the following policies to govern these circumstances:

• Add the version date to the end of the filename while the document is local, as shown in the slide on filenames.
• Remove the date when uploading it to a CMS that tracks date and version. If you leave the date in the filename, you will end up with multiple copies in your CMS.
• When distributing copies for review, upload a copy to the CMS and send the link. Do not attach a physical file.

Reduce the need for version updates by isolating volatile information in a separate, linked document. For example:

• Use Policy documents to establish high-level expectations and goals, and use SOPs to capture workflow, but put volatile details in a separate reference document. For example, for Backup procedures, put offsite storage vendor details such as contact information, pick up times, and approved couriers in a separate document.
• Similarly, for DRP Notification procedures, reference a separate contacts list.

Modify the Info-Tech Document Management Checklist to meet your requirements

2.1c

15 minutes

1. Review the Info-Tech Document Management Checklist.
2. Add or remove checklist items.
3. Update the document information block.

OUTPUT

• Completed document management checklist

Materials

• Laptop, projector

Participants

• Process Owners
• SMEs

See Info-Tech’s Document Management Checklist.

If you aren’t going to keep your SOPs current, then you’re potentially doing more harm than good

An outdated SOP can be just as dangerous as having no SOP at all. When a process is documented, it’s trusted to be accurate.

• Disaster recovery depends as much on supporting SOPs – such as backup and restore procedures – as it does on a master incident response plan.
• For disaster scenarios, the ability to meet recovery point objectives (i.e. minimize data loss) and recovery time objectives (i.e. minimize downtime) depends on smoothly executed recovery procedures and on having well-defined and up-to-date DR documentation and supporting SOPs. For example:
• Recovery point (data loss) objectives are directly impacted by your backup procedures.
• Recovery time is minimized by a well-defined restore procedure that reduces the risk of human error during recovery which could lead to data loss or a delay in the recovery.
• Similarly, a clearly documented configuration procedure will reduce the time to bring a standby system online.

Follow Info-Tech best practices to keep SOPs current and drive consistent, efficient IT operations

The following best practices were measured in this chart, and will be discussed further in this section:

1. Identify documentation requirements as part of project planning.
2. Require a manager or supervisor to review and approve SOPs.
3. Check documentation status as part of change management.
4. Hold staff accountable.

Higher adoption of Info-Tech best practices leads to more effective SOPs and greater benefits in areas such as training and process improvement.

Info-Tech Insight

Audits for compliance requirements have little impact on getting SOPs done in a timely manner or the actual usefulness of those SOPs, because the focus is on passing the audit instead of creating SOPs that improve operations. The frantic annual push to complete SOPs in time for an audit is also typically a much greater effort than maintaining documents as part of ongoing change management.

Identify documentation requirements as part of project planning

DISCUSS

When are documentation requirements captured, including required changes to SOPs?

Make documentation requirements a clearly defined deliverable. As with any other task, this should include:

• Owner: The person ultimately responsible for the documentation.
• Assigned resource: The person who will actually put pen to paper. This could be the same person as the owner, or the owner could be a reviewer.
• Deadlines: Include documentation deliverables in project milestones.
• Verification process: Validate completion and accuracy. This could be a peer review or management review.

Example: Implement a new service desk application.

• Service desk SOP documentation requirements: SOP for monitoring and managing tickets will require changes to leverage new automation features.
• Owner: Service Desk Lead.
• Assigned resource: John Smith (service desk technician).
• Deadline: Align with “ready for QA testing.”
• Verification process: Service Desk Lead document review and signoff.

Info-Tech Insight

Realistically, documentation will typically be a far less urgent task than the actual application or system changes. However, if you want the necessary documentation to be ultimately completed, even if it’s done after more urgent tasks, it must be tracked.

Implement document approval steps at the individual and project level

DISCUSS

How do you currently review and validate SOP documents?

Require a manager or supervisor to review and approve SOPs.

• Avoid a bureaucratic review process involving multiple parties. The goal is to ensure accuracy and not just provide administrative protection.
• A review by the immediate supervisor or manager is often sufficient. Their feedback and the implied accountability improve the quality and usefulness of the SOPs.

Check documentation status as part of change management.

• Including a documentation status check holds the project leaders and management accountable.
• If SOPs are not critical to the project deliverable, then realistically the deliverable is not held back. However, keep the project open until relevant documents are updated so those tasks can’t be swept under the rug until the next audit.

SOP reviews, change management, and identifying requirements led to benefits such as training and process improvement.

"Our directors and our CIO have tied SOP work to performance evaluations and SOP status is reviewed during management meetings. People have now found time to get this work done."

– Assistant Director-IT Operations, Healthcare Industry

Review SOPs regularly and assign a process owner to avoid reinforcing silos

CASE STUDY

Industry

Public service organization

Source

Info-Tech client engagement

Situation

• The organization’s IT department consists of five heavily siloed units.
• Without communication or workflow accountability across units, each had developed incompatible workflows, making estimates of “time to resolution” for service requests difficult.
• The IT service manager purchases a new service desk tool, attempting to standardize requests across IT to improve efficiency, accountability, and transparency.

Complication

• The IT service manager implements the tool and creates standardized workflows without consulting stakeholders in the different service units.
• The separate units immediately rebel against the service manager and try to undermine the implementation of the new tool.

Results

• Info-Tech analysts helped to facilitate a solution between experts in the different units.
• In order to develop a common workflow and ticket categorization scheme, Info-Tech recommended that each service process should have a single approver.

The bottom line: ensure that there’s one approver per process to drive process efficiency and accountability and avoid problems down the road.

Hold staff accountable to encourage SOP work to be completed in a timely manner

DISCUSS

Are SOP updates treated as optional or “when I have time” work?

Hold staff directly accountable for SOP work.

Holding staff accountable is really about emphasizing the importance of ensuring SOPs stay current. If management doesn’t treat SOPs as a priority, then neither will your staff. Strategies include:

• Include SOP work in performance appraisals.
• Keep relevant tickets open until documentation is completed.
• Ensure documents are reviewed, as discussed earlier.
• Identify and assign documentation tasks as part of project planning efforts, as discussed earlier.

Holding staff accountable minimizes procrastination and therefore maintenance effort.

Info-Tech Insight

Holding staff accountable does not by itself make a significant impact on SOP quality (and therefore the typical benefits of SOPs), but it minimizes procrastination, so the work is ultimately done in a more timely manner. This ensures SOPs are current and usable, so they can drive benefits such as consistent operations, improved training, and so on.

Assign action items to address SOP documentation process challenges

2.2

1. Discuss the challenges mentioned at the start of this section, and other challenges highlighted by the strategies discussed in this section. For example:

• Are documentation requirements included in project planning?
• Are SOPs and other documentation deliverables reviewed?
• Are staff held accountable for documentation?

An “SOP party” fosters a collaborative approach and can add some levity to an otherwise dry exercise

What is an SOP party?

• An SOP party is a working session, bringing together process owners and key staff to define current SOPs and collaborate to identify optimization opportunities.
• The party aspect is really just about how you market the event. Order in food or build in a cooking contest (e.g. a chilli cook-off or dessert bake-off) to add some fun to what can be a dry activity.

Why does this work?

• Process owners become so familiar with their tasks that many of the steps essentially live in their heads. Questions from colleagues draw out those unwritten steps and get them down on paper so another sufficiently qualified employee could carry out the same steps.
• Once the processes are defined (e.g. via a tabletop exercise), input from colleagues can help identify risks and optimization opportunities, and process questions can be quickly answered because the key people are all present.
• The group approach also promotes consistency and enables you to set expectations (e.g. visual-based approach, standards, level of detail, etc.).

When is collaboration necessary (e.g. via tabletop planning)?

• Tabletop planning is ideal for complex processes as well as processes that span multiple tasks, people, and/or systems.
• For processes with a narrow focus (e.g. recovery steps for a specific server), assign these to the SME to document. Then ensure the SOP is reviewed to draw out the unwritten steps as described above.
• For example, if you use tabletop planning to document a high-level DR plan, sub-processes might include recovery procedures for individual systems; those SOPs can then be assigned to individual SMEs.

Schedule SOP working sessions until critical processes are documented

Ultimately, it’s more efficient to create and update SOPs as needed but dedicated working sessions will help address immediate critical needs.

Organize the working session:

1. Book a full-day meeting in an out of the way meeting room, invite key staff (system and process owners who ultimately need to be SOP owners), and order in lunch so no one has to leave.
2. Prioritize SOPs (see Phase 1) and set goals (e.g. complete the top 6 SOPs during this session).
3. Alternate between collaborative efforts and documenting the SOPs. For example:
1. Tabletop or flowchart the current SOP. Take a picture of the current state for reference purposes.
2. Look for process improvements. If you have the authority in the room to enable process changes, then modify the tabletop/flowchart accordingly and capture this desired future state (e.g. take a picture). Otherwise, identify action items to follow up on proposed changes.
3. Identify all related documentation deliverables (e.g. sub-processes, checklists, approval forms, etc.).
4. Create the identified documentation deliverables (divide the work among the team). Then repeat the above.
4. Repeat these working sessions on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on your requirements, until critical SOPs are completed.
5. When the SOP backlog is cleared, conduct quarterly or semi-annual refreshers for ongoing review and optimization of key processes.

Assign action items to capture next steps after SOP working sessions

2.3

1. Review the SOPs documented during this workshop. Identify action items to complete and validate those SOPs and related documents. For example, do the SOPs require further approval or testing?
2. Similarly, review the document management checklist and identify action items to complete, expand, and/or validate proposed standards.
3. For SOP working sessions, decide on a date, time, and who should be there based on the guidelines in this section. If the SOP party approach does not meet your requirements, then at the very least assign owners for the identified critical SOPs and set deadlines for completing those SOPs. Document these extra action items in your copy of the Standard Operating Procedures Workbook.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with out Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

2.1

Identify current content management practices

As a group, identify current pain points and opportunities for improvement in your current content management practices.

2.2

Assign action items to address documentation process challenges

Develop a list of action items to address gaps in the SOP documentation and maintenance process.

Phase 3

Identify a Content Management Solution

Create Visual SOP Documents that Drive Process Optimization, Not Just Peace of Mind

Phase 3 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 3: Decide on a content management solution for your SOPs

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1 week

Step 3.1: Understand the options for CM solutions

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Review your current approach to content management and discuss possible alternatives.

Then complete these activities…

• Evaluate the pros and cons of different approaches to content management.
• Discuss approaches for fit with your team.

Step 3.2: Identify the right solution for you

Review findings with analyst:

• Identify 2–3 possible options for a content management strategy.

Then complete these activities…

• Identify the best solution based on portability, maintainability, cost, and implementation effort.

With these tools & templates:

• Publishing and Document Management Solution Evaluation Tool
• SOP Project Roadmap
• SOP Workbook

Phase 3 Results & Insights:

Choose an approach to content management that will best support your organization’s SOP documentation and maintenance process.

Decide on an appropriate publishing and document management strategy for your organization

Publishing and document management considerations:

• Portability/External Access: At the best of times, portability is nice because it enables flexibility, but at the worst of times (such as in a disaster recovery situation) it is absolutely essential. If your primary site is down, can you still access your documentation? As shown in this chart, traditional storage strategies still dominate DRP documentation, but these aren’t necessarily the best options.
• Maintainability/Usability: How easy is it to create, update, and use the documentation? Is it easy to link to other documents? Is there version control? The easier the system is to use, the easier it is to get employees to use it.
• Cost/Effort: Is the cost and effort appropriate? For example, a large enterprise may need a formal solution like SharePoint or a Content Management System. For smaller organizations, the cost of these tools might be harder to justify.

Consider these approaches:

This section reviews the following approaches, their pros and cons, and how they meet publishing and document management requirements:

• SOP tools.
• Cloud-based content management software.
• In-house solutions combining SharePoint and MS Office (or equivalent).
• Wiki site.
• “Manual” approaches such as storing documents on a USB drive.

Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N=118

Note: Percentages total more than 100% due to respondents using more than one portability strategy.

Develop a content management strategy and process to reduce organizational risk

CASE STUDY

Segment

Mid-market company

Source

Info-Tech Interview

Situation

• A mid-sized company hired a technical consultancy to manage its network.
• As part of this move, the company’s network administrator was fired.
• Over time, this administrator had become a “go-to” person for several other IT functions.

Complication

• The consulting team realizes that the network administrator kept critical documentation on his local hard drive.
• This includes configs, IP addresses, passwords, logins to vendor accounts, and more.
• It becomes clear the administrator was able to delete some of this information before leaving, which the consultants are required to retrieve and re-document.

Result

• Failing to implement effective SOPs for document management and terminating key IT staff exposed the organization to unnecessary risk and additional costs.
• Allowing a local content management system to develop created a serious security risk.
• The bottom line: create a secure, centralized, and backed-up location and establish SOPs around using it to help keep the company’s data safe.

Info-Tech offers a web-based policy management solution with process management capabilities

About this Approach:

myPolicies is a web-based solution to create, distribute, and manage corporate policies, procedures, and forms, built around best practices identified by our research.

Contact your Account Manager today to find out if myPolicies is right for you.

SOP software and DR planning tools can help, but they aren’t a silver bullet

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Typically have a SaaS option, providing built-in external access with appropriate security and user administration to vary access rights.
• Cons: Dependent on the vendor to ensure external access, but this is typically not an issue.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in templates encourage consistency as well as guide initial content development by indicating what details need to be captured.
• Pros: Built-in document management (e.g. version control, metadata support, etc.), centralized access/navigation to required documents, and some automation (e.g. update contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Not a silver bullet. You still have to do the work to define and capture your processes.
• Cons: Requires end-user and administrator training.
• Cons: Often modules of larger software suites. If you use the entire suite, it may make sense to use the SOP tool, but otherwise probably not.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: For large enterprises, the convenience of built-in document management and templates can outweigh the cost.
• Cons: SOP tools can be costly. Expect to pay at least $3,000-7,000 for software licensing, plus additional per user and hosting fees.

About this Approach:

SOP tools such as Princeton Center’s SOP ExpressTM and SOP Tracks or MasterControl’s SOP Management and eSOP allow organizations to create, manage, and access SOPs. These programs typically offer a range of SOP templates and formats, electronic signatures, version control, and review options and training features such as quizzes and monitoring.

Similarly, DR planning solutions (e.g. eBRP, Recovery Planner, LDRPS, etc.) provide templates, tools, and document management to create DR documentation including SOPs.

Consider leveraging SharePoint to provide document management capabilities

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: SharePoint is commonly web-enabled and supports external access with appropriate security and user administration.
• Cons: Must be installed at redundant sites or be cloud-based to be effective in the event of a worst-case scenario disaster recovery situation in which the primary data center is down.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in document management (e.g. version control, metadata support, etc.) as well as centralized access to required documents.
• Pros: No tool learning curve – SharePoint and MS Office would be existing solutions already used on a daily basis.
• Cons: No built-in automated updates (e.g. automated updates to contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Consistency depends on creating templates and implementing processes for document updates, review, and approval.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: Using existing tools, so this is a sunk cost in terms of capex.
• Cons: Additional effort required to create templates and manage the documentation library.

For more information on SharePoint as a content management solution, see Info-Tech’s Use SharePoint for Enterprise Content Management.

About this Approach:

Most SOP documents start as MS Office documents, even if there is an SOP tool available (some SOP tools actually run within MS Office on the desktop). For organizations that decide to bypass a formal SOP tool, the biggest gap they have to overcome is document management.

Many organizations are turning to SharePoint to meet this need. For those that already have SharePoint in place, it makes sense to further leverage SharePoint for SOP documentation.

For SharePoint to be a practical solution, the documentation must still be accessible if the primary data center is down, e.g. by having redundant SharePoint instance at multiple in-house locations or using a cloud-based SharePoint solution.

As an alternative to SharePoint, SaaS tools such as Power DMS, NetDocuments, Xythos on Demand, Knowledge Tree, Spring CM, and Zoho Docs offer cloud-based document management, authoring, and distribution services that can work well for SOPs. Some of these, such as Power DMS and Spring CM, are geared specifically toward workflows.

A wiki may be all you need

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Wiki sites can support external access as with any web solution.
• Cons: May lack more sophisticated content management features.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Built-in document management (e.g. version control, metadata support, etc.) as well as centralized access to required information.
• Pros: Authorized users can make updates dynamically, depending on how much restriction you have on the site.
• Cons: No built-in automation (e.g. automated updates to contacts throughout the system).
• Cons: Consistency depends on creating templates and implementing processes for document updates, review, and approval.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: An inexpensive option compared to traditional content management solutions such as SharePoint.
• Cons: Learning curve if wikis are new to your organization.

About this Approach:

Wiki sites are websites where users collaborate to create and edit the content. Wikipedia is an example.

While wiki sites are typically used for collaboration and dynamic content development, the traditional collaborative authoring model can be restricted to provide structure and an approval process.

Several tools are available to create and manage wiki sites (and other collaboration solutions), as outlined in the following research:

• Implement a Collaboration Platform
• Vendor Landscape: Collaboration Platforms

An approach that I’ve seen work well is to consult the wiki for any task, activity, job, etc. Is it documented? If not, then document it there and then. Sure, this led to 6-8 weeks of huge effort, but the documentation grew in terms of volume and quality at an alarming but pleasantly surprising rate. Providing an environment to create the documentation is important and a wiki is ideal. Fast, lightweight, in-browser editing leads to little resistance in creating documents.

- Lee Blackwell, Global IT Operation Services Manager, Avid Technology

Managing SOPs on a shared network drive involves major challenges and limitations

Portability/External Access:

• Cons: Must be hosted at redundant sites in order to be effective in a worst-case scenario that takes down your data center.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: Easy to implement and no learning curve.
• Pros: Access can be easily managed.
• Cons: Version control, standardization, and document management can be significant challenges.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: Little to no cost and no tool management required.
• Cons: Managing documents on a shared network drive requires strict attention to process for version control, updates, approvals, and distribution.

About this Approach:

With this strategy, SOP documents are stored and managed locally on a shared network drive. Only process owners and administrators have read-write permissions on documents on the shared drive.

The administrator grants access and manages security permissions.

Info-Tech Insight

For small organizations, the shared network drive approach can work, but this is ultimately a short-term solution. Move to an online library by creating a wiki site. Start slow by beginning with a particular department or project, then evaluate how well your staff adapt to this technology as well as its potential effectiveness in your organization. Refer to the Info-Tech collaboration strategy research cited on the previous slide for additional guidance.

Avoid extensive use of paper copies of SOP documentation

SOP documents need to be easy to update, accessible from anywhere, and searchable. Paper doesn’t meet these needs.

Portability/External Access:

• Pros: Does not rely on technology or power.
• Cons: Not adequate for disaster recovery situations; would require all staff to have a copy and to have it with them at all times.

Maintainability/Usability:

• Pros: In terms of usability, again there is no dependence on technology.
• Cons: Updates need to be printed and distributed to all relevant staff every time there is a change to ensure staff have access to the latest most accurate documentation.
• Cons: Navigation to other information is manual – flipping through pages etc. No searching or hyperlinks.

Cost/Effort:

• Pros: No technology system to maintain, aside from what you use for printing.
• Cons: Printing expenses are actually among the highest incurred by organizations and this adds to it.
• Cons: Labor-intensive due to need to print and physically distribute documentation updates.

About this Approach

Traditionally, SOPs were printed and kept somewhere in a large binder (or several large binders). This isn’t adequate to the needs of most organizations and typically results in documents that aren’t up to date or effective.

Use Info-Tech’s solution evaluation tool to decide on a publishing and document management strategy

All organizations have existing document management methodologies, even if it’s simply storing documents on a network drive.

Use Info-Tech’s solution evaluation tool to decide whether your existing solution meets the portability/external access, maintainability/usability, and cost/effort criteria, or whether you need to explore a different option.

Note: This tool was originally built to evaluate DRP publishing options, so the tool name and terminology refers to DR. However, the same tool can be used to evaluate general SOP publishing and document management solutions.

Consider using Info-Tech’s DRP Publishing and Document Management Solution Evaluation Tool.

Info-Tech Insight

There is no absolute ranking for possible solutions. The right choice will depend on factors such as current in-house tools, maturity around document management, the size of your IT department, and so on. For example, a small shop may do very well with the USB drive strategy, whereas a multi-national company will need a more formal strategy to ensure consistent application of corporate guidelines.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

3.1

Decide on a publishing and document management strategy

Review the pros and cons of different strategies for publishing and document management. Identify needs, priorities, and limitations of your environment. Create a shortlist of options that can meet your organization’s needs and priorities.

3.2

Complete the solution evaluation tool

Evaluate solutions on the shortlist to identify the strongest option for your organization, based on the criteria of maintainability, affordability, effort to implement, and accessibility/portability.

Insight breakdown

Create visual documents, not dense SOP manuals.

• Visual documents that can be scanned are more usable and easier to update.
• Flowcharts, checklists, and diagrams all have their place in visual documentation.

Start with high-impact SOPs.

• It can be difficult to decide where to start when faced with a major documentation backlog.
• Focus first on client facing and high-impact SOPs, i.e. mission-critical operations, service management, and disaster recovery procedures.

Integrate SOP creation into project requirements and hold staff accountable.

• Holding staff accountable does not provide all the benefits of a well documented and maintained SOP, but it minimizes procrastination, so the work is ultimately done in a more timely manner.

Summary of accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

SOPs may not be exciting, but they’re very important to organizational consistency, efficiency, and improvement.

This blueprint outlined how to:

• Prioritize and execute SOP documentation work.
• Establish a sustainable process for creating and maintaining SOP documentation.
• Choose a content management solution for best fit.

Processes Optimized

• Multiple processes supporting mission-critical operations, service management, and disaster recovery were documented. Gaps in those processes were uncovered and addressed.
• In addition, your process for maintaining process documents was improved, including adding documentation requirements and steps requiring documentation approval.

Deliverables Completed

As part of completing this project, the following deliverables were completed:

• Standard Operating Procedures Workbook
• Standard Operating Procedures Project Roadmap Tool
• Document Management Checklist
• Publishing and Document Management Solution Evaluation Tool

Project step summary

Client Project: Create and maintain visual SOP documentation.

1. Prioritize undocumented SOPs.
2. Develop visual SOP documentation.
3. Optimize and document critical processes.
4. Establish guidelines for identifying and organizing SOPs.
5. Define a process for documenting and maintaining SOPs.
6. Plan time with experts to put a dent in your documentation backlog.
7. Understand the options for content management solutions.
8. Identify the right content management solution for your organization.

Info-Tech Insight

This project has the ability to fit the following formats:

• Onsite workshop by Info-Tech Research Group consulting analysts.
• Do-it-yourself with your team.
• Remote delivery (Info-Tech Guided Implementation).

Bibliography

Anderson, Chris. “What is a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)?” Bizmanualz, Inc. No date. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. https://www.bizmanualz.com/save-time-writing-procedures/what-are-policies-and-procedures-sop.html

Grusenmeyer, David. “Developing Effective Standard Operating Procedures.” Dairy Business Management. 1 Feb. 2003. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/36910

Mosaic. “The Value of Standard Operating Procedures.” 22 Oct. 2012. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. ttp://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1086_Standard_Operating_Procedures.pdf

Sinn, John W. “Lean, Six Sigma, Quality Transformation Toolkit (LSSQTT) Tool #17 Courseware Content – Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) For Lean and Six Sigma: Infrastructure for Understanding Process.” Summer 2006. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. https://www.bgsu.edu/content/dam/BGSU/college-of-technology/documents/LSSQTT/LSSQTT%20Toolkit/toolkit3/LSSQTT-Tool-17.pdf

United States Environmental Protection Agency. “Guidance for Preparing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).” April 2007. Web. 25 Jan. 2016. http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/g6-final.pdf

Document Your Cloud Strategy

Get ready for the cloudy future with a consistent, proven strategy.

Analyst perspective

Any approach is better than no approach

Moving to the cloud is a big, scary transition, like moving from gas-powered to electric cars, or from cable to streaming, or even from the office to working from home. There are some undeniable benefits, but we must reorient our lives a bit to accommodate those changes, and the results aren’t always one-for-one. A strategy helps you make decisions about your future direction and how you should respond to changes and challenges. In Document Your Cloud Strategy we hope to help you accomplish just that: clarifying your overall mission and vision (as it relates to the cloud) and helping you develop an approach to changes in technology, people management, and, of course, governance. The cloud is not a panacea. Taken on its own, it will not solve your problems. But it can be an important tool in your IT toolkit, and you should aim to make the best use of it – whatever “best” happens to mean for you.

Jeremy Roberts

Research Director, Infrastructure and Operations

Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

The cloud is multifaceted. It can be complicated. It can be expensive. Everyone has an opinion on the best way to proceed – and in many cases has already begun the process without bothering to get clearance from IT. The core challenge is creating a coherent strategy to facilitate your overall goals while making the best use of cloud technology, your financial resources, and your people.

Common Obstacles

Despite the universally agreed-upon benefit of formulating a coherent strategy, several obstacles make execution difficult:

• Inconsistent understanding of what the cloud means
• Inability to come to a consensus on key decisions
• Ungoverned decision making
• Unclear understanding of cloud roles and responsibilities

Info-Tech’s Approach

A cloud strategy might seem like a big project, but it’s just a series of smaller conversations. The methodology presented here is designed to facilitate those conversations, using a curated list of topics, prompts, participant lists, and sample outcomes. We have divided the strategy into four key areas:

1. Vision and alignment
2. People
3. Governance
4. Technology

The answers might be different, but the questions are the same

Every organization will approach the cloud differently, but they all need to ask the same questions: When will we use the cloud? What forms will our cloud usage take? How will we manage governance? What will we do about people? How will we incorporate new technology into our environment? The answers to these questions are as numerous as there are people to answer them, but the questions must be asked.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that are facing these challenges or looking to:

• Ensure that the cloud strategy is complete and accurately reflects organizational goals and priorities.
• Develop a consistent and coherent approach to adopting cloud services.
• Design an approach to mitigate risks and challenges associated with adopting cloud services.
• Create a shared understanding of the expected benefits of cloud services and the steps required to realize those benefits.

Grappling with a cloud strategy is a top initiative: 43% of respondents report progressing on a cloud-first strategy as a top cloud initiative.

Source: Flexera, 2021.

Definition: Cloud strategy

A document providing a systematic overview of cloud services, their appropriate use, and the steps that an organization will take to maximize value and minimize risk.

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• The cloud means different things to different people, and creating a strategy that is comprehensive enough to cover a multitude of use cases while also being written to be consumable by all stakeholders is difficult.
• The incentives to adopt the cloud differ based on the expected benefit for the individual customer. User-led decision making and historically ungoverned deployments can make it difficult to reset expectation and align with a formal strategy.
• Getting all the right people in a room together to agree on the key components of the strategy and the direction undertaken for each one is often difficult.

Info-Tech’s approach

Info-Tech’s approach

Your cloud strategy will comprise the elements listed under “vision and alignment,” “technology,” “governance,” and “people.” The Info-Tech methodology involves breaking the strategy down into subcomponents and going through a three-step process for each one. Start by reviewing a standard set of questions and understanding the goal of the exercise: What do we need to know? What are some common considerations and best practices? Once you’ve had a chance to review, discuss your current state and any gaps: What has been done? What still needs to be done? Finally, outline how you plan to go forward: What are your next steps? Who needs to be involved?

Review

• What questions do we need to answer to complete the discussion of this strategy component? What does the decision look like?
• What are some key terms and best practices we must understand before deciding?

Discuss

• What steps have we already taken to address this component?
• Does anything still need to be done?
• Is there anything we’re not sure about or need further guidance on?

Go forward

• What are the next steps?
• Who needs to be involved?
• What questions still need to be asked/answered?
• What should the document’s wording look like?

Info-Tech’s methodology for documenting your cloud strategy

Insight summary

Separate strategy from tactics

Separate strategy from tactics! A strategy requires building out the framework for ongoing decision making. It is meant to be high level and achieve a large goal. The outcome of a strategy is often a sense of commitment to the goal and better communication on the topic.

The cloud does not exist in a vacuum

Your cloud strategy flows from your cloud vision and should align with the broader IT strategy. It is also part of a pantheon of strategies and should exist harmoniously with other strategies – data, security, etc.

People problems needn’t preponderate

The cloud doesn’t have to be a great disruptor. If you handle the transition well, you can focus your people on doing more valuable work – and this is generally engaging.

Governance is a means to an end

Governing your deployment for its own sake will only frustrate your end users. Articulate the benefits users and the organization can expect to see and you’re more likely to receive the necessary buy-in.

Technology isn’t a panacea

Technology won’t solve all your problems. Technology is a force multiplier, but you will still have to design processes and train your people to fully leverage it.

Key deliverable

Cloud Strategy Document template

Inconsistency and informality are the enemies of efficiency. Capture the results of the cloud strategy generation exercises in the Cloud Strategy Document template.

• Record the results of the exercises undertaken as part of this blueprint in the Cloud Strategy Document template.
• It is important to remember that not every cloud strategy will look exactly the same, but this template represents an amalgamation of best practices and cloud strategy creation honed over several years of advisory service in the space.
• You know your audience better than anyone. If you would prefer a strategy delivered in a different way (e.g. presentation format) feel free to adapt the Cloud Vision Executive Presentation into a longer strategy presentation.
• Emphasis is an area where you should exercise discretion as well. A cost-oriented cloud strategy, or one that prioritizes one type of cloud (e.g. SaaS) at the exclusion of others, may benefit from more focus on some areas than others, or the introduction of relevant subcategories. Include as many of these as you think will be relevant.
• Parsimony is king – if you can distill a concept to its essence, start there. Include additional detail only as needed. You want your cloud strategy document to be read. If it’s too long or overly detailed, you’ll encounter readability issues.

Blueprint benefits

Measure the value of this blueprint

Don’t take our word for it:

• Document Your Cloud Strategy has been available for several years in various forms as both a workshop and as an analyst-led guided implementation.
• After each engagement, we send a survey that asks members how they benefited from the experience. Those who have worked through Info-Tech’s cloud strategy material have given overwhelmingly positive feedback.
• Additionally, members reported saving between 10 and 20 days and an average of $46,499.
• Measure the value by calculating the time saved as a result of using Info-Tech’s framework vs. a home-brewed cloud strategy alternative and by comparing the overall cost of a guided implementation or workshop with the equivalent offering from another firm. We’re confident you’ll come out ahead.

8.8/10 Average reported satisfaction

13 Days Average reported time savings

$46,499 Average cost savings

Executive Brief Case Study

INDUSTRY: Pharmaceuticals

SOURCE: Info-Tech workshop

Pharmaceutical company

The unnamed pharmaceutical company that is the subject of this case study was looking to make the transition to the cloud. In the absence of a coherent strategy, the organization had a few cloud deployments with no easily discernable overall approach. Representatives of several distinct functions (legal, infrastructure, data, etc.) all had opinions on the uses and abuses of cloud services, but it had been difficult to round everyone up and have the necessary conversations. As a result, the strategy exercise had not proceeded in a speedy or well-governed way. This lack of strategic readiness presented a roadblock to moving forward with the cloud strategy and to work with the cloud implementation partner, tasked with execution.

Results

The company engaged Info-Tech for a four-day workshop on cloud strategy documentation. Over the course of four days, participants drawn from across the organization discussed the strategic components and generated consensus statements and next steps. The team was able to formalize the cloud strategy and described the experience as saving 10 days.

Example output: Document your cloud strategy workshop exercise

Anything in green, the team was reasonably sure they had good alignment and next steps. Those yellow flags warranted more discussion and were not ready for documentation.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is 4 to 6 calls over the course of 1 to 3 months

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Document Your Vision and Alignment

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

1. Record your cloud mission and vision
2. Document your cloud strategy’s alignment with other strategic plans
3. Record your cloud guiding principles
4. Define success

This phase has the following outcome:

• Documented strategy: vision and alignment

Record your mission and vision

Build on the work you’ve already done

Before formally documenting your cloud strategy, you should ensure that you have a good understanding of your overall cloud vision. How do you plan to leverage the cloud? What goals are you looking to accomplish? How will you distribute your workloads between different cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)? What will your preferred delivery model be (public, private, hybrid)? Will you support your cloud deployment internally or use the services of various consultants or managed service providers?

The answers to these questions will inform the first section of your cloud strategy. If you haven’t put much thought into this or think you could use a deep dive on the fundamentals of your cloud vision and cloud archetypes, consider reviewing Define Your Cloud Vision, the companion blueprint to this one.

Once you understand your cloud vision and what you’re trying to accomplish with your cloud strategy, this phase will walk you through aligning the strategy with other strategic initiatives. What decisions have others made that will impact the cloud strategy (or that the cloud strategy will impact)? Who must be involved/informed? What callouts must be involved at what point? Do users have access to the appropriate strategic documentation (and would they understand it if they did)?

You must also capture some guiding principles. A strategy by its nature provides direction, helping readers understand the decisions they should make and why those decisions align with organizational interests. Creating some top-level principles is a useful exercise because those principles facilitate comprehension and ensure the strategy’s applicability.

Finally, this phase will walk you through the process of measuring success. Once you know where you’d like to go, the principles that underpin your direction, and how your cloud strategy figures into the broader strategic pantheon, you should record what success actually means. If you’re looking to save money, overall cost should be a metric you track. If the cloud is all about productivity, generate appropriate productivity metrics. If you’re looking to expand into new technology or close a datacenter, you will need to track output specific to those overall goals.

Review: mission and vision

The overall organizational mission is a key foundational element of the cloud strategy. If you don’t understand where you’re going, how can you begin the journey to get there? This section of the strategy has four key parts that you should understand and incorporate into the beginning of the strategy document. If you haven’t already, review Define Your Cloud Vision for instructions on how to generate these elements.

Understand key cloud concepts: Archetype

Once you understand the value of the cloud, your workloads’ general suitability for the cloud, and your proposed risks and mitigations, the next step is to define your cloud archetype. Your organization’s cloud archetype is the strategic posture that IT adopts to best support the organization’s goals. Info-Tech’s model recognizes seven archetypes, divided into three high-level archetypes. After consultation with your stakeholders, and based on the results of the suitability and risk assessment activities, define your archetype. The archetype feeds into the overall cloud vision and provides simple insight into the cloud future state for all stakeholders. The cloud vision itself is captured in a “vision statement,” a short summary of the overall approach that includes the overall cloud archetype.

INFO-TECH RESEARCH GROUP

Analyze Your Service Desk Ticket Data

Take a data-driven approach to service desk optimization.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Benedict Chang Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations Info-Tech Research Group

Ken Weston ITIL MP, PMP, Cert.APM, SMC Research Director, Infrastructure & Operations Info-Tech Research Group

The perfect time to start analyzing your ticket data is now

Service desks improve their services by leveraging ticket data to inform their actions. However, many organizations don’t know where to start. It’s tempting to wait for perfect data, but there’s a lot of value in analyzing your ticket data as it exists today.

Start small. Track key tension metrics based on the out-of-the-box functionality in your tool. Review the metrics regularly to stay on track.

By reviewing your ticket data, you’re going to get better organically. You’re going to learn about the state of your environment, the health of your processes, and the quality of your services. Regularly analyze your data to drive improvements.

Make ticket analysis a weekly habit. Every week, you should be evaluating how the past week went. Every month, you should be looking for patterns and trends.

Executive Summary

Your Situation

Leverage your service desk ticket data to gain insights for improving your operations:

1. Use a data-based approach to allocate service desk resources.
2. Design appropriate SLOs and SLAs to better service end users.
3. Gain efficiencies for your shift-left strategy.
4. Communicate the current and future value of the service desk to the business.

Common Obstacles

Properly analyzing ticket data is challenging for the following reasons:

• Poor ticket hygiene and unclear ticket handling guidelines can lead to untrustworthy results.
• Undocumented tickets from various intake channels prevents you from seeing the whole picture.
• Service desk personnel are not sure where to start with analysis and are too busy to find time.
• Too many metrics are tracked to parse actionable insights from the noise.

Info-Tech’s Approach

Info-Tech’s approach to improvement:

• To reduce the noise, standardize your ticket data in a format that will ease analysis.
• Start with common analyses using the cleaned data set.
• Identify action items based on your ticket data.

Analyze your ticket data to help continually improve your service desk.

Slow down. Give yourself time.

Give yourself time to observe the new metrics and draw enough insights to make recommendations for improvement. Then, execute on those recommendations. Slow and steady improvement of the service desk only adds business value and will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help service desk managers analyze their ticket data

Analyzing ticket data involves:

• Collecting ticket data and keeping it clean. Based on the metrics you’re analyzing, define ticket expectations and keep the data up to date.
• Showing the value of the service desk. SLAs are meaningless if they are not met consistently. The prerequisite to implementing proper SLAs is fully understanding the workload of the service desk.
• Understanding – and improving – the user experience. You cannot improve the user experience without meaningful metrics that allow you to understand the user experience. Different user groups will have different needs and different expectations of the level of service. Your metrics should reflect those needs and expectations.

36% of organizations are prioritizing ticket handling in IT for 2021 (Source: SDI, 2021)

12% of organizations are focusing directly on service desk improvement (Source: SDI, 2021)

Common obstacles

Many organizations face these barriers to analyzing their ticket data:

• Finding time to properly analyze ticket data is a challenge. Not knowing where to start can lead to not analyzing the proper data. Service desks end up either tracking too much data or not tracking the proper metrics.
• Data, even if clean, can be housed in various tools and databases. It’s difficult to aggregate data if the data is stored throughout various tools. Comparisons may also be difficult if the data sets aren’t consistent.
• Shifting left to move tickets toward self-service is difficult when there is no visibility into which tickets should be shifted left.

What your peers are saying about why they can’t start analyzing their ticket data:

• “My technicians do not consistently update and close tickets.”
• “My ITSM doesn’t have the capabilities I need to make informed decisions on shifting tickets left.”
• “My tickets are always missing data”
• “I’m constantly firefighting. I have no time for ticket data analysis.”
• “I have no idea where to start with the amount of data I have.”

Common obstacles that prevent effective ticket analysis

We asked IT service desk managers and teams about their biggest hurdles

Info-Tech’s approach

Repeat this analysis every business cycle:

• Gather Your Data
  Collect your ticket data OR start measuring the right metrics.
• Extract & Analyze
  Organize and visualize your data to extract insights
• Action the Results
  Implement low-effort improvements and celebrate quick successes.
• Implement Larger Changes
  Reference your ticket data while implementing process, tooling, and other changes.
• Communicate the Results
  Use your data to show the value of your effort.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Track these metrics as you improve

Use the data to tell you which aspects of IT need to be shifted left and which need to be automated

Your data will show you where you can improve.

As you act on your data, you should see:

• Lower costs per ticket
• Decreased average time to resolve
• Increased end-user satisfaction
• Fewer tickets escalated beyond Tier 1

See Info-Tech’s blueprint Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy.

Info-Tech’s methodology for analyzing service desk tickets

Insight summary

Slow down. Give yourself time.

Give yourself time to observe the new metrics and draw enough insights to make recommendations for improvement. Then, execute on those recommendations. Slow and steady improvement of the service desk only adds business value and will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction.

Iterate on what to track rather than trying to get it right the first time.

Tracking the right data in your ticket can be challenging if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Start with standardized fields and iterate on your data analysis to figure out your gaps and needs.

If you don’t know where to go, ticket data can point you in the right direction.

If you have service desk challenges, you will need to allocate time to process improvement. However, prioritizing your initiatives is easier if you have the ticket data to point you in the right direction.

Start with data from one business cycle.

Service desks don’t need three years’ worth of data. Focus on gathering data for one business cycle (e.g. three months). That will give you enough information to start generating value.

Let the data do the talking.

Leverage the data to drive organizational and process change in your organization by tracking meaningful metrics. Choose those metrics using business-aligned goals.

Paint the whole picture.

Single metrics in isolation, even if measured over time, may not tell the whole story. Make sure you design tension metrics where necessary to get a holistic view of your service desk.

Blueprint deliverables

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• Discover and implement the proper metrics to improve your service desk
• Use a data-based approach to improve your customer service and operational goals
• Increase visibility with the business and other IT departments using a structured presentation

Business Benefits

• Quicker resolutions to incidents and service requests
• Better expectations for the service desk and IT
• Better visibility into the current state, challenges, and goals of the service desk
• More effective support when contacting the service desk

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 3-4 calls over the course of 2-3 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

• Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges. Enter your data into the tool.

Phase 2

• Call #2: Assess the current state across the different dashboards.

Phase 3

• Call #3: Identify improvements and insights to include in the communication report.
• Call #4: Review the service desk ticket analysis report.

PHASE 1

Import Your Ticket Data

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 1.1.1 Define your objectives for analyzing ticket data
• 1.1.2 Identify success metrics
• 1.1.3 Import your ticket data into the tool
• 1.1.4 Update your ticket fields for future analysis

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• ITSM Manager
• Service Desk Technician

1.1.1 Define your objectives for analyzing ticket data

Input: Understanding of current service desk process and ticket routing

Output: Defined objectives for the project

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Ticket Analysis Report

Participants: Service Desk Staff, Service Desk Manager, IT Director, CIO

Use the discussion questions below as a guide

1. Identify your main objective for analyzing ticket data. Use these three sample objectives as a starting point:
   • Demonstrate value to the business by improving customer service.
   • Improve service desk operations.
   • Reduce the number of recurring incidents.
2. Answer the following questions as a group:
   • What challenges do you have getting accurate data for this objective?
   • What data is missing for supporting this objective?
   • What kind of issues must be solved for us to make progress on achieving this objective?
   • What decisions are held up from a lack of data?
   • How can better ticket data help us to more effectively manage our services and operations?

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

1.1.2 Identify success metrics

Select metrics that will track your progress on meeting the objective identified in Activity 1.1.1.

Input: Understanding of current service desk process and ticket routing

Output: Defined objectives for the project

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Ticket Analysis Report

Participants: Service Desk Manager, IT Director, CIO

Use these sample metrics as a starting point:

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Inefficient ticket-handling processes lead to SLA breaches and unplanned downtime

Analyze the ticket data to catch mismanaged or lost tickets that lead to unnecessary escalations and impact business profitability

• Ticket Category – Are your tickets categorized by type of asset? By service?
• Average Ticket Times – How long does it take to resolve or fulfill tickets?
• Ticket Priority – What is the impact and urgency of the ticket?
• SLA/OLA Violations – Did we meet our SLA objectives? If not, why?
• Ticket Channel – How was the issue reported or ticket received?
• Response and Fulfillment – Did we complete first contact resolution? How many times was it transferred?
• Associated Tasks and Tickets – Is this incident associated with any other tasks like change tickets or problem tickets?

Encourage proper ticket-handling procedures to enable data quality

Ensure everyone understands the expectations and the value created from having ticket data that follows these expectations

• Create and update tickets, but not at the expense of good customer service. Agents can start the ticket but shouldn’t spend five minutes creating the ticket when they should be troubleshooting the problem.
• Update the ticket when the issue is resolved or needs to be escalated. If agents are escalating, they should make sure all relevant information is passed along within the ticket to the next technician.
• Update user of ETA if issue cannot be resolved quickly.
• Ticket templates for common incidents can lead to fast creation, data input, and categorizations. Templates can reduce the time it takes to create tickets from two minutes to 30 seconds.
• Update categories to reflect the actual issue and resolution.
• Reference or link to the knowledgebase article as the documented steps taken to resolve the incident.
• Validate with the client that the incident is resolved; automate this process with ticket closure after a certain time.
• Close or resolve the ticket on time.

Info-Tech Insight

Ticket handling ensures clean handovers, whether it is to higher tiers or back to the customer. When filling the ticket out with information intended for another party, ensure the information is written for their benefit and from their point of view.

Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool overview

The Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool will help you standardize your ticket data in a meaningful format that will allow you to apply common analyses to identify the actions you need to take to improve service desk operations

TABS 1 & 2 INSTRUCTIONS & DATA ENTRY	TAB 3 : TICKET SUMMARY TICKET SUMMARY DASHBOARDS	TABS 4 to 8: DASHBOARDS INCIDENT SERVICE REQUEST CATEGORY
Input at least three months of your exported ticket data into the corresponding columns in the tool to feed into the common analysis graphs in the other tabs.	This tab contains multiple dashboards analyzing how tickets come in, who requests them, who resolves them, and how long it takes to resolve them.	These tabs each have dashboards outlining analysis on incidents and service requests. The category tab will allow you to dive deeper on commonly reported issues.

1.1.3 Import your data into our Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

You can still leverage your current data, but use this opportunity to improve your service desk ticket fields down the line

Input: ITSM data log

Output: Populated Service Desk Ticket Data Analysis Tool

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

Participants: Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Technicians

Start here:

• Extract your ticket data from your ITSM tool in an Excel or text format.
• Look at the fields on the data entry tab of the Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool.
• Fill the fields with your ticket data by copying and pasting relevant sections. It is okay if you don’t have all the fields, but take note of the fields you are missing.
• With the list of the fields you are missing, run through the following activity to decide if you will need to adopt or add fields to your own service desk ticket tool.

When entering your data, pay close attention to the following fields:

• Time to Resolve: This is automatically calculated using data in the Open Date, Open Time, Close Date, and Close Time fields. You have three options for entering your data in these fields:
  1. Enter your data as the fields describe. Ensure your data contain only the field description (e.g. Open Date separated from Open Time). If your data contain Open Date AND Open Time, Excel will not show both.
  2. Enter your data only in Open Date and Close Date. If your ITSM does not separate date and time, you can keep the data in a single cell and enter it in the column. The formula in Time to Resolve will still be accurate.
  3. If your ITSM outputs Time to Resolve, overwrite the formula in the Time to Resolve column.
• SLA: If your ITSM outputs SLA fulfilled: Y/N, enter that directly into the SLA Fulfilled column.
• Blank Columns: If you do not have data for all the columns, that is okay. Continue with the following activity. Note that some stock dashboards will be empty if that is the case.
• Incidents vs. Service Requests: If you separate incidents and service requests, be sure to capture that in the SR/Incident for Tabs 4 and 5. If you do not separate the two, then you will only need to analyze Tab 3.

Use Info-Tech’s tool instead of building your own. Download the Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool.

1.1.4 Update your ticket fields for future analysis

Input: Populated Service Desk Ticket Data Analysis Tool

Output: New ticket fields to track

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Service Desk Ticket Analysis Tool

Participants: Service Desk Manager, Service Desk Technicians

As a group, pay attention to the ticket fields populated in the tool as well as the ticket fields that you were not able to populate. Use the example “Fields Captured” table to the right, which lists all fields present in the ticket analysis tool.

Discuss the following questions:

1. Consider the fields not captured. Would it be valuable to start capturing that data for future analysis?
2. If so, does your ITSM support that field?
3. Can you make the change in-house or do you have to bring in an external ITSM administrator to make the change?
4. Capture the results in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Document in the Ticket Analysis Report.

Info-Tech Insight

Don’t wait for your ticket quality to be perfect. You can still draw actions from your ticket data. They will likely be process improvements initially, but the exercise of pulling the data is a necessary first step.

Common ticket fields tracked by your peers

Which of these metrics do you track and action?

• Remember you don’t have to track every metric. Only track metrics that are actionable.

For each metric that you end up tracking:

• Look for trends over time.
• Brainstorm reasons why the metric could rise or fall.

Associate a metric with each improvement you execute.

• Performing this step will allow you to better see the value from your team’s efforts.
• It will also give you a quicker response than waiting for spikes in your data.

(Source: Info-Tech survey, 2021; N=20)

PHASE 2

Analyze Your Ticket Data

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 2.1.1 Review high-level ticket dashboards
• 2.2.1 Review incident, service request, and ticket category dashboards

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Visualize your ticket data as a first step to analysis

Identifying trends is easier when looking at diagrams, graphs, and figures

Start your analysis with common visuals employed by other service desk professionals

• Phase 2 will walk you through visualizing your data to get a better understanding of your ticket intake, incident management, and service request management.
• Each step will walk you through:
  • Common visualizations used by service desks
  • Patterns to look for in your visualizations
  • Actions to take to address negative patterns and to continue positive trends
• Share diagrams that underscore both the value being provided by the service desk as well as the scope of the pain points. Use Info-Tech’s Ticket Analysis Report template as a starting point.

“Being able to tell stories with data is a skill that’s becoming ever more important in our world of increasing data and desire for data-driven decision making. An effective data visualization can mean the difference between success and failure when it comes to communicating the findings of your study, raising money for your nonprofit, presenting to your board, or simply getting your point across to your audience.” - Cole Knaflic, Founder and CEO, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Use the detailed dashboards to determine the next steps for improvement

A single number doesn’t tell the whole picture

Analyze trends over time:

• Analyze trends by day, by week, by month, and by year to determine:
  • When are the busy periods? (E.g. Do tickets tend to spike every morning, every Monday, or every September?)
  • When are the slow periods? (E.g. Do tickets drop at the end of the day, at midday, on Fridays, or over the summer?)
• Are spikes or drops in volume consistent trends or one-time anomalies?

Then build a plan to address them:

• How will you handle volume spikes, if they’re consistent?
• What can your resources work on during slow times, if they are consistent?
• If you assume no shrinkage, can you handle the peaks in volume if you make all FTEs available to work on tickets at a certain time of day?

Look for seasonal trends. In this example, we see high ticket volumes in May and January, with lower ticket volumes in June and July when many staff are taking holidays. However, also be careful to look at the big picture of how you pulled the data. August through October sees a high volume of open tickets because the data set is pulled in November, not because there’s a seasonal spike on tickets not closing at the end of the fiscal year.

Track ticket data over time

Make low-effort adjustments before major changes

Don’t rush to a decision based off the first numbers you see

Review ticket summary dashboard

Ideally, you should track ticket patterns over an entire year to get a full sense of trends within each month of the year. At minimum, track for 30 days, then 60, then 90, and see if anything changes. The longer you can track ticket patterns, the more accurate your picture will be.

Review additional dashboards

If you separate incidents and service requests, and you have accurate ticket categories, then you can use these dashboards to further break down the data to identify ticket trends.

The output of the ticket analysis will only be as accurate as its input.
To get the most accurate results, first ensure your data is accurate, then analyze it over as much time as possible. Aggregating with accurate data will give you a better picture of the trends in demand that your service desk sees.

Not separating incidents and service requests? Need to fix your ticket categories? Visit Standardize the Service Desk to get started.

Analyze incidents and requests separately

Each type has its own set of customer experiences and expectations

• Different ticket types are associated with radically different prioritization, routing, and service levels. For instance, most incidents are resolved within a business day, but requests take longer to implement.
• If you fail to distinguish between ticket types, your metrics will obscure service desk performance.
• From a ticket analysis standpoint, separating ticket types prior to analysis or, better yet, at intake allows for cleaner data. In turn, this means more structured analyses, better insights, and more meaningful actions. Not separating ticket types may still get you to the same conclusions, but it will be much more difficult to sift through the data.

Incident

An unanticipated interruption of a service.
The goal of incident management is to restore the service as soon as possible, even if the resolution involves a workaround.

Request

A generic description for a small change or service access.
Requests are small, frequent, and low risk. They are best handled by a process distinct from incident, change, and project management.

Not separating incidents and service requests? Need to fix your ticket categories? Visit Standardize the Service Desk to get started.

Step 2.1

Analyze Your High-Level Ticket Data

Dashboards

• Ticket Volume
• Ticket Intake
• Ticket Handling and Resolution
• Ticket Categorization

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Visualize the current state of your service desk.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Build your metrics baseline to compare with future metric results.

Dashboards: Ticket Volume

Analyze your data for insights

• Analyze volume trends by day, by week, by month, and by year to determine:
  • When are the busy periods? (E.g. Do tickets tend to spike every morning, every Monday, or every September?)
  • When are slow periods? (E.g. Do tickets drop at the end of the day, at midday, on Fridays, or over the summer?)
• Are spikes or drops in volume consistent trends or one-time anomalies?
• What can your resources be working on during slow times? Are you able to address ticket backlog?

Dashboards: Ticket Intake

Analyze your data for insights

• Determine how to drive intake to the most appropriate solution for your organization:
  • A web portal is the most efficient intake method, but it must be user friendly to increase its adoption.
  • The phone should be available for urgent requests or incidents. Encourage those who call with a request to submit a ticket through the portal.
  • Discourage use of email if it is unstructured, as users don’t provide enough detail, and often two or three transactions are required for triage.
  • If walk-ups are encouraged, structure and formalize the support so it can be resourced and managed rather than interrupt-driven.

Dashboard: Ticket Handling and Resolution

Analyze your data for insights

• Look at your ticket load by technician and by tier. This is an essential step to set your baseline to measure your shift-left initiatives. If you are focusing on self-service or Tier 1 training, the ticket load from higher tiers should decrease over time.
• If Tiers 2 and 3 are handling the majority of the tickets, this could be a red flag indicating tickets are inappropriately escalated or Tier 1 could use more training and support.
• For average time to resolve and average time to resolve by tier, are you meeting your SLAs? If not, are your SLAs too aggressive? Are tickets left open and not properly closed?

Dashboard: Ticket Categorization

Analyze your data for insights

• Ticket categorization is critical to clean data. Having a categorization scheme with categories that are miscellaneous, too specific, or too general easily leads to inaccurate reporting or confusing workflows for technicians.
• When looking at your ticket categories, first look for duplicate categories that could be collapsed into one.
• Also look at your top five to seven categories and see if they make sense. Are these good candidates in your organization for automation or shift-left?
• Compare your Tier 1 categories. The level of specificity for these categories should be comparable to easily run reports. If they are not, assess the need for a category redesign.

Step 2.2

Analyze Incidents, Service Requests, and Ticket Categories

Dashboards

• Incidents
• Service Requests
• Volume by Ticket Category
• Resolution Times by Priority and/or Category
• Tabs for More Granular Investigation and Reporting

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Visualize your incident and service request ticket load and analyze trends. Use this information and cross reference data sets to gain a holistic view of how the service desk interacts with IT and the business.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Gain actionable, data-driven improvements based on your incident and service request data. Show the value of the service desk and highlight improvements needed.

Incident and Service Requests Dashboard: Priority and SLA

Analyze your data for insights

• Your ticket priority distribution for overall load and time to resolve (TTR) should look something like above with low-priority tickets having higher load and TTR and high/critical-priority tickets having a lower load and lower TTR. If it is reversed, that is a good indication that the service desk is too reactive or isn’t properly prioritizing its work.
• If your SLA has a high failure rate, consider reassessing your targets with SLOs that you can meet before publishing them as achievable SLAs.

Incident and Service Requests Dashboard: Priority and SLA

Analyze your data for insights

• Examine your ticket handling by looking at ticket status and resolution codes.
  • If you have a lot of blanks, then tickets are not properly handled. Consider reinforcing your standards for close codes and statuses.
  • Alternatively, if tickets are left open, you may have to build follow-ups on stale tickets into your process or introduce proper auto-close processes.

Category, Resolution Time, and Resolution Code Dashboards

These PivotCharts allow you to dig deeper

Investigate whether there are trends in ticket volume and resolution times within specific categories and subcategories

Tab 6, Category Dashboard; tab 7, Resolution Time Dashboard; and tab 8, Resolution Code Dashboard are PivotCharts. Use these tabs to investigate whether there are trends in ticket volume, resolution times, and resolution codes within specific categories and subcategories.

Start with the charts that are available. The +/- buttons will allow you to show more granular information. By default, this granularity will be into the levels of the ticket categorization scheme.

For most categorization schemes, there will be too many categories to properly graph. You can apply a filter to investigate specific categories by clicking on the drop-down buttons.

Use these tabs for more granular investigation and reporting

TAB 6 CATEGORY DASHBOARD	TAB 7 RESOLUTION TIME DASHBOARD	TAB 8 RESOLUTION TIME DASHBOARD
Investigate ticket distributions in first, second, and third levels. Are certain categories overcrowded, suggesting they can be split? Are certain categories not being used?	Do average resolution times match your service level agreements? Do certain categories have significantly different resolution times? Are there areas that can benefit from shift-left?	Are resolution codes being accurately used? Are there trends in resolution codes? Are these codes providing sufficient information for problem management?

PHASE 3

Communicate Your Insights

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

• 3.1.1 Review common recommendations
• 3.2.1 Review ticket reports daily
• 3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team updates
• 3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders
• 3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

This phase involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Step 3.1

Build Recommendations Based on Your Ticket Data

Activities

• 3.1.1 Review common recommendations

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Review common recommendations as a first step to extracting insights from your own data.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians

Outcomes of this step

You will gain an understanding of the common challenges with service desks and ticket analysis in general. See which ones apply to you to inform your ticket data analysis moving forward.

Review these common recommendations

1. Fix your ticket categories
   Organize your ticket categorization scheme for proper routing and reporting.
2. Focus more on self-service
   Self-service is essential to enable shift-left strategies. Focus on knowledgebase processes and portal ease of use.
3. Update your service catalog
   Improve your service catalog, if necessary, to make it easy for end users to request services and for the service desk to provide those services.
4. Direct volume toward other channels
   Walk-ups make it more difficult to properly log tickets and assign service desk resources. Drive volume to other channels to improve your ticket quality.
5. Crosstrain Tier 1 on certain topics
   Tier 1 breadth of knowledge is essential to drive up first contact resolution.
6. Build more automation
   Identify bottlenecks and challenges with your ticket data to streamline ticket handling and resolution.
7. Revisit service level agreements
   Update your SLAs and/or SLOs to prioritize expectation management for your end users.
8. Improve your data quality
   You can only analyze data that exists. Revisit your ticket-handling guidelines and more regularly check tickets to ensure they comply with those standards.

Optimize your processes and look for opportunities for automation

Leverage Info-Tech research to improve service desk processes

Review your service desk processes and tools for optimization opportunities:

• Clearly establish ticket-handling guidelines.
• Use ticket templates to reduce time spent entering tickets.
• Document incident management and service request fulfillment workflows and eliminate any unnecessary steps.
• Automate manual tasks wherever possible.
• Build or improve a self-service portal with a knowledgebase to allow users to resolve their own issues, reducing incoming ticket volume to the service desk.
• Optimize your internal knowledgebase to reduce time spent troubleshooting recurring issues.
• Leverage AI capabilities to speed up ticket processing and resolution.

Standardize the Service Desk

This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes, including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management.

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

This project will help you build a strategy to shift service support left to optimize your service desk operations and increase end-user satisfaction.

Step 3.2

Action and Communicate Your Ticket Data

Activities

• 3.2.1 Review your ticket queues daily
• 3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team status updates
• 3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders
• 3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

This step will walk you through the following activities:

Organize your scrums to report on the metrics that will inform daily and monthly operations.

This step involves the following participants:

• Service Desk Manager
• Service Desk Technicians
• IT Managers

Outcomes of this step

Use the dashboards and data to inform your daily and monthly scrums.

3.2.1 Review your ticket queues daily

Clean data is still useless if not used properly

• The metrics you’ve chosen to measure and visualize in the previous step are useful for informing your day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month strategies for the service desk and IT. Conduct scrums daily to action your dashboard data to help clear ticket queues.
• Reference your dashboards daily with each IT team.
• You need to have a dashboard of open tickets assigned to each team.

Review Daily

• Ticket volume over the last day (look for spikes)
• SLA breach risks/SLA breaches
• Recurring incidents
• Tickets open
• Tickets handed over (confirmation of handover)

3.2.2 Incorporate ticket data into retrospectives and team status updates

Explain your metric spikes and trends

• Hold weekly or monthly meetings to review the ticket trends selected during Phases 1 and 2 of this blueprint.
• Review ticket spikes, identify seasonal trends, and discuss root causes (e.g. projects/changes going live, onboarding blitz).
• Discuss any actions associated with spikes and seasonal trends (e.g. resource allocation, hiring, training).
• You can incorporate other IT leaders or departments in this meeting as needed to discuss action items for improvement, quality assurance concerns, customer service concerns, and/or operating level agreement concerns.

Review Weekly/Monthly

• Ticket volume
• Ticket category by priority level over time
• Tickets from different business groups, VIP groups, and different vertical levels
• Tickets escalated, tickets that didn’t need to be escalated, tickets that were incorrectly escalated
• Ticket priority levels over time
• Most requested services
• Tickets resolved by which group over time
• Ability to meet SLAs and OLAs over time by different groups

3.2.3 Regularly review trends with business leaders

Use your data to help improve business relationships

Review the following with business leaders:

• Volume of work done this past time cycle for the leader’s group
• Trends and spikes in the data and possible explanations for them (note: get their input on the potential causes of trends)
• Improvements you plan to execute within the service desk
• Action items you need from the business leader

Use your data to show the value you provide to the group. Schedule quarterly meetings with the heads of different business groups to discuss the work that the service desk does for each group.

Show trends in incidents and service requests: “I see you have a spike in CRM tickets. I’ve been working with the CRM team to address this issue.”

3.2.4 Tell a story with your data

Effectively communicate with the business and leadership

• With your visualized metrics, organize your story into a presentation for different stakeholder groups. You can use the Ticket Analysis Report as a starting point to provide data about:
  • Value provided by the service desk
  • Successes
  • Opportunities for Improvements
  • Current state of KPIs
• Include information about the causes of data trends and actions you will take in response to the data.
• For each of these themes, look at the metrics you’ve chosen to track and see which ones fit to tell the story. Let the data do the talking.
• Consider supplementing the ticket data with data from other systems. For example, you can include data on transactional customer satisfaction surveys, knowledgebase utilization, and self-service utilization.

Download the Ticket Analysis Report.

Ticket Analysis Report

Include the following information as you build your ticket analysis report:

• Value Provided by the Service Desk
  Start with the value provided by the service desk to different areas of the business. Include information about first contact resolution, average resolution times, ticket volume (e.g. by category, priority, location, requestor).
• Successes
  Successes is a general field that can include how process improvements have impacted the service desk or how initiatives have enhanced shift-left opportunities. Highlight any positive trends over time.
• Opportunities for Improvement
  Let the data guide the conversation to where improvements can be made. Day-to-day ops, self-service tools, shifting work left from Tier 2, Tier 3, standardizing a non-standard service, and staffing adjustments are possibilities for this section.
• Current State of KPIs
  Mean time to resolve, FCR, ticket volume, and end-user satisfaction are great KPIs to include as a starting point.

Download the Ticket Analysis Report.

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

You now have a better understanding of how to action your service desk ticket data, including improvements to your current ticket templates for incidents and service requests.

You also have the data to craft a story to different stakeholder groups to celebrate the successes of the service desk and highlight possible improvements. Continue this exercise iteratively to continue improving the service desk.

Remember, ticket analysis is not a single event but an ongoing initiative. As you track, analyze, and action more data, you will find more improvements.

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Additional Support

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team. Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

Analyze your dashboards An analyst will walk through the ticket data and dashboards with you and your team to help interpret the data and tailor improvements	Populate your ticket data report Given the action items from this solution set, an analyst will help you craft a report to celebrate the successes and highlight needed improvements in the service desk.

Related Info-Tech Research

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

The best type of service desk ticket is the one that doesn’t exist.

Incident & Problem Management

Don’t let persistent problems govern your department.

Design & Build a User-Facing Service Catalog

Improve user satisfaction with IT with a convenient menu-like catalog.

Bibliography

Bayes, Scarlett. “ITSM: 2021 & Beyond.” Service Desk Institute, 2021. Web.

“Benchmarking Report v.9.” Service Desk Institute, 17 Jan. 2020. Web.

Bennett, Micah. “The 9 Help Desk Metrics That Should Guide Your Customer Support.” Zapier, 3 Dec. 2015. Web.

“Global State of Customer Service: The transformation of customer service from 2015 to present day.” Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft, 2020. Web.

Goodey, Ben. “How to Manually Analyze Support Tickets.” SentiSum, 26 July 2021. Web.

Jadhav, Megha. “Four Metrics to Analyze When Using Ticketing Software.” Vision Helpdesk Blog, 21 Mar. 2016. Web.

Knaflic, Cole Nussbaumer. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals. Wiley, 2015.

Li, Ta Hsin, et al. “Incident Ticket Analytics for IT Application Management Services.” 2014 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, 2014. Web.

Olson, Sarah. “10 Help Desk Metrics for Service Desks and Internal Help Desks.” Zendesk Blog, Sept. 2021. Web.

Paramesh, S.P., et al. “Classifying the Unstructured IT Service Desk Tickets Using Ensemble of Classifiers.” 2018 3rd International Conference on Computational Systems and Information Technology for Sustainable Solutions (CSITSS), 2018. Web.

Volini, Erica, et al. “2021 Global Human Capital Trends: Special Report.” Deloitte Insights, 21 July 2021. Web.

“What Kind of Analysis You Can Perform on a Ticket Management System.” Commence, 3 Dec. 2019. Web.

INFO-TECH RESEARCH GROUP

Master Organizational Change Management Practices

PMOs, if you don't know who is responsible for org change, it's you.

Analyst Perspective

Don’t leave change up to chance.

"Organizational change management has been a huge weakness for IT departments and business units, putting projects and programs at risk – especially large, complex, transformational projects.

During workshops with clients, I find that the root of this problem is twofold: project planning tends to fixate on technology and neglects the behavioral and cultural factors that inhibit user adoption; further, accountabilities for managing change and helping to realize the intended business outcomes post-project are not properly defined.

It makes sense for the PMO to be the org-change leader. In project ecosystems where no one seems willing to seize this opportunity, the PMO can take action and realize the benefits and accolades that will come from coordinating and consistently driving successful project outcomes."

Matt Burton,

Senior Manager, Project Portfolio Management

Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research is Designed For:

• PMO Directors who need to improve user adoption rates and maximize benefits on project and program activity.
• CIOs who are accountable for IT’s project spend and need to ensure an appropriate ROI on project investments.

This Research Will Help You:

• Define change management roles and accountabilities among project stakeholders.
• Prepare end users for change impacts in order to improve adoption rates.
• Ensure that the intended business outcomes of projects are more effectively realized.
• Develop an organizational change management toolkit and best practices playbook.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Project managers and change managers who need to plan and execute changes affecting people and processes.
• Project sponsors who want to improve benefits attainment.
• Business analysts who need to analyze the impact of change.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Develop communications and training plans tailored to specific audiences.
  • Identify strategies to manage cultural and behavioral change.
• Maximize project benefits by ensuring changes are adopted.
• Capitalize upon opportunities and mitigate risks.

Drive organizational change from the PMO

Situation

• As project management office (PMO) leader, you oversee a portfolio of projects that depend heavily on users and stakeholders adopting new tools, complying with new policies, following new processes, and learning new skills.
• You need to facilitate the organizational change resulting from these projects, ensuring that the intended business outcomes are realized.

Complication

• While IT takes accountability to deliver the change, accountability for the business outcomes is opaque with little or no allocated resourcing.
• Project management practices focus more on the timely implementation of projects than on the achievement of the desired outcomes thereafter or on the behavioral and cultural factors that inhibit change from taking hold in the long term.

Resolution

• Plan for human nature. To ensure project success and maximize benefits, plan and facilitate the non-technical aspects of organizational change by addressing the emotional, behavioral, and cultural factors that foster stakeholder resistance and inhibit user adoption.
• Make change management as ubiquitous as change itself. Foster a project culture that is proactive about OCM. Create a process where OCM considerations are factored in as early as project ideation and change is actively managed throughout the project lifecycle, including after the project has closed.
• Equip project leaders with the right tools to foster adoption. Effective OCM requires an actionable toolkit that will help plant the seeds for organizational change. With the right tools and templates, the PMO can function as a hub for change, helping business units and project teams to consistently achieve project and post-project success.

Info-Tech Insight

Make your PMO the change leader it’s already expected to be. Unless accountabilities for organizational change management (OCM) have been otherwise explicitly defined, you should accept that, to the rest of the organization – including its chief officers – the PMO is already assumed to be the change leader.

Don’t shy away from or neglect this role. It’s not just the business outcomes of the organization’s projects that will benefit; the long-term sustainability of the PMO itself will be significantly strengthened by making OCM a core competency.

Completed projects aren’t necessarily successful projects

The constraints that drive project management (time, scope, and budget) are insufficient for driving the overall success of project efforts.

For instance, a project may come in on time, on budget, and in scope, but…

• …if users and stakeholders fail to adopt…
• …and the intended benefits are not achieved…

…then that “successful project” represents a massive waste of the organization’s time and resources.

A supplement to project management is needed to ensure that the intended value is realized.

Mission (Not) Accomplished

50% Fifty percent of respondents in a KPMG survey indicated that projects fail to achieve what they originally intended. (Source: NZ Project management survey)

56% Only fifty-six percent of strategic projects meet their original business goals. (Source: PMI)

70% Lack of user adoption is the main cause for seventy percent of failed projects. (Source: Collins, 2013)

Improve project outcomes with organizational change management

Make “completed” synonymous with “successfully completed” by implementing an organizational change management strategy through the PMO.

Organizational change management is the practice through which the PMO can improve user adoption rates and maximize project benefits.

Why OCM effectiveness correlates to project success:

• IT projects are justified because they will make money, save money, or make people happier.
• Project benefits can only be realized when changes are successfully adopted or accommodated by the organization.

Without OCM, IT might finish the project but fail to realize the intended outcomes.

In the long term, a lack of OCM could erode IT’s ability to work with the business.

What is organizational change management?

OCM is a framework for managing the introduction of new business processes and technologies to ensure stakeholder adoption.

OCM involves tools, templates, and processes that are intended to help project leaders analyze the impacts of a change during the planning phase, engage stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle, as well as train and transition users towards the new technologies and processes being implemented.

OCM is a separate body of knowledge, but as a practice it is inseparable from both project management or business analysis.

WHEN IS OCM NEEDED?

Anytime you are starting a project or program that will depend on users and stakeholders to give up their old way of doing things, change will force people to become novices again, leading to lost productivity and added stress.

CM can help improve project outcomes on any project where you need people to adopt new tools and procedures, comply with new policies, learn new skills and behaviors, or understand and support new processes.

"What is the goal of change management? Getting people to adopt a new way of doing business." – BA, Natural Resources Company

The benefits of OCM range from more effective project execution to improved benefits attainment

82% of CEOs identify organizational change management as a priority. (D&B Consulting) But Only 18% of organizations characterize themselves as “Highly Effective” at OCM. (PMI)

On average, 95% percent of projects with excellent OCM meet or exceed their objectives. (Prosci) VS For projects with poor OCM, the number of projects that meet objectives drops to 15%. (Prosci)

82% of projects with excellent OCM practices are completed on budget. (Prosci) VS For projects with poor OCM, the number of projects that stay on budget drops to 51%. (Prosci)

71% of projects with excellent OCM practices stay on schedule. (Prosci) VS For projects with poor OCM practices, only 16% stay on schedule. (Prosci)

While critical to project success, OCM remains one of IT’s biggest weaknesses and process improvement gaps

IT Processes Ranked by Effectiveness:

27. Risk Management
28. Knowledge Management
29. Release Management
30. Innovation
31. IT Governance
32. Enterprise Architecture
33. Quality Management
34. Data Architecture
35. Application Development Quality
36. Data Quality
37. Portfolio Management
38. Configuration Management
39. Application Portfolio Management
40. Business Process Controls Internal Audit
41. Organizational Change Management
42. Application Development Throughput
43. Business Intelligence Reporting
44. Performance Measurement
45. Manage Service Catalog

IT Processes Ranked by Importance:

27. Enterprise Application Selection & Implementation
28. Organizational Change Management
29. Data Architecture
30. Quality Management
31. Enterprise Architecture
32. Business Intelligence Reporting
33. Release Management
34. Portfolio Management
35. Application Maintenance
36. Asset Management
37. Vendor Management
38. Application Portfolio Management
39. Innovation
40. Business Process Controls Internal Audit
41. Configuration Management
42. Performance Measurement
43. Application Development Quality
44. Application Development Throughput
45. Manage Service Catalog

Based on 3,884 responses to Info-Tech’s Management and Governance Diagnostic, June 2016

There’s no getting around it: change is hard

While the importance of change management is widely recognized across organizations, the statistics around change remain dismal.

Indeed, it’s an understatement to say that change is difficult.

People are generally – in the near-term at least – resistant to change, especially large, transformational changes that will impact the day-to-day way of doing things, or that involve changing personal values, social norms, and other deep-seated assumptions.

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." – Niccolo Machiavelli

70% - Change failure rates are extremely high. It is estimated that up to seventy percent of all change initiatives fail – a figure that has held steady since the 1990s. (McKinsey & Company)

25% - In a recent survey of 276 large and midsize organizations, only twenty-five percent of respondents felt that the gains from projects were sustained over time. (Towers Watson)

22% - While eighty-seven percent of survey respondents trained their managers to “manage change,” only 22% felt the training was truly effective. (Towers Watson)

While change is inherently difficult, the biggest obstacle to OCM success is a lack of accountability

Who is accountable for change success? …anyone?...

To its peril, OCM commonly falls into a grey area, somewhere in between project management and portfolio management, and somewhere in between being a concern of IT and a concern of the business.

While OCM is a separate discipline from project management, it is commonly thought that OCM is something that project managers and project teams do. While in some cases this might be true, it is far from a universal truth.

The end result: without a centralized approach, accountabilities for key OCM tasks are opaque at best – and the ball for these tasks is, more often than not, dropped altogether.

29% - Twenty-nine percent of change initiatives are launched without any formal OCM plan whatsoever.

"That’s 29 percent of leaders with blind faith in the power of prayer to Saint Jude, the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes." – Torben Rick

Bring accountability to org-change by facilitating the winds of change through the PMO

Lasting organizational change requires a leader. Make it the PMO.

#1 Organizational resistance to change is cited as the #1 challenge to project success that PMOs face. (Source: PM Solutions)

90% Companies with mature PMOs that effectively manage change meet expectations 90% of the time. (Source: Jacobs-Long)

Why the PMO?

A centralized approach to OCM is most effective, and the PMO is already a centralized project office and is already accountable for project outcomes.

What’s more, in organizations where accountabilities for OCM are not explicitly defined, the PMO will likely already be assumed to be the default change leader by the wider organization.

It makes sense for the PMO to accept this accountability – in the short term at least – and claim the benefits that will come from coordinating and consistently driving successful project outcomes.

In the long term, OCM leadership will help the PMO to become a strategic partner with the executive layer and the business side.

Short-term gains made by the PMO can be used to spark dialogues with those who authorize project spending and have the implicit fiduciary obligation to drive project benefits.

Ultimately, it’s their job to explicitly transfer that obligation, along with the commensurate resourcing and authority for OCM activities.

More than a value-added service, OCM competencies will soon determine the success of the PMO itself

Given the increasingly dynamic nature of market conditions, the need for PMOs to provide change leadership on projects large and small is becoming a necessity.

"With organizations demanding increasing value, PMOs will need to focus more and more on strategy, innovation, agility, and stakeholder engagement. And, in particular, developing expertise in organizational change management will be essential to their success." – PM Solutions, 2014

28% PMOs that are highly agile and able to respond quickly to changing conditions are 28% more likely to successfully complete strategic initiatives (69% vs. 41%). (PMI)

In other words, without heightened competencies around org-change, the PMO of tomorrow will surely sink like a stone in the face of increasingly unstable external factors and accelerated project demands.

Use Info-Tech’s road-tested OCM toolkit to transform your PMO into a hub of change management leadership

With the advice and tools in Info-Tech’s Drive Organizational Change from the PMO blueprint, the PMO can provide the right OCM expertise at each phase of a project.

Info-Tech’s approach to OCM is a practical/tactical adaptation of several successful models

Business strategy-oriented OCM models such as John Kotter’s 8-Step model assume the change agent is in a position of senior leadership, able to shape corporate vision, culture, and values.

• PMO leaders can work with business leaders, but ultimately can’t decide where to take the organization.
• Work with business leaders to ensure IT-enabled change helps reinforce the organization’s target vision and culture.

General-purpose OCM frameworks such as ACMP’s Standard for Change Management, CMI’s CMBoK, and Prosci’s ADKAR model are very comprehensive and need to be configured to PMO-specific initiatives.

• Tailoring a comprehensive, general-purpose framework to PMO-enabled change requires familiarity and experience.

References and Further Reading

• COBIT
• ADKAR (Prosci)
• Standard for Change Management (ACMP)
• CMBoK (CMI)
• Kotter’s 8 Principles
• Managing Transitions
• Kubler-Ross Curve
• The Classic Change Curve
• Switch and The Rider Elephant War

Info-Tech’s organizational change management model adapts the best practices from a wide range of proven models and distills it into a step-by-step process that can be applied to any IT-enabled project.

Info-Tech’s OCM research is COBIT aligned and a cornerstone in our IT Management & Governance Framework

COBIT 5 is the leading framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT.

Screenshot of Info-Tech’s IT Management & Governance Framework.

Consider Info-Tech’s additional key observations

Human behavior is largely a blind spot during the planning phase.

In IT especially, project planning tends to fixate on technology and underestimate the behavioral and cultural factors that inhibit user adoption. Whether change is project-specific or continuous, it’s more important to instill the desire to change than to apply specific tools and techniques. Accountability for instilling this desire should start with the project sponsor, with direct support from the PMO.

Don’t mistake change management for a “soft” skill.

Persuading people to change requires a “soft,” empathetic approach to keep them motivated and engaged. But don’t mistake “soft” for easy. Managing the people part of change is amongst the toughest work there is, and it requires a comfort and competency with uncertainty, ambiguity, and conflict. If a change initiative is going to be successful (especially a large, transformational change), this tough work needs to be done – and the more impactful the change, the earlier it is done, the better.

In “continuous change” environments, change still needs to be managed.

Transformation and change are increasingly becoming the new normal. While this normality may help make people more open to change in general, specific changes still need to be planned, communicated, and managed. Agility and continuous improvement are good, but can degenerate into volatility if change isn’t managed properly. People will perceive change to be volatile and undesirable if their expectations aren’t managed through communications and engagement planning.

Info-Tech’s centralized approach to OCM is cost effective, with a palpable impact on project ROI

Info-Tech’s Drive Organizational Change from the PMO blueprint can be implemented quickly and can usually be done with the PMO’s own authority, without the need for additional or dedicated change resources.

Implementation Timeline

• Info-Tech’s easy-to-navigate OCM tools can be employed right away, when your project is already in progress.
• A full-scale implementation of a PMO-driven OCM program can be accomplished in 3–4 weeks.

Implementation Personnel

• Primary: the PMO director (should budget 10%–15% of her/his project capacity for OCM activities).
• Secondary: other PMO staff (e.g. project managers, business analysts, etc.).

OCM Implementation Costs

15% - The average costs for effective OCM are 10%–15% of the overall project budget. (AMR Research)

Average OCM Return-on-Investment

200% - Small projects with excellent OCM practices report a 200% return-on-investment. (Change First)

650% - Large projects with excellent OCM practices report a 650% return-on-investment. (Change First)

Company saves 2–4 weeks of time and $10,000 in ERP implementation through responsible OCM

CASE STUDY

Industry Manufacturing

Source Info-Tech Client

Situation

A medium-sized manufacturing company with offices all over the world was going through a consolidation of processes and data by implementing a corporate-wide ERP system to replace the fragmented systems that were previously in place. The goal was to have consistency in process, expectations, and quality, as well as improve efficiency in interdepartmental processes.

Up to this point, every subsidiary was using their own system to track data and sharing information was complicated and slow. It was causing key business opportunities to be compromised or even lost.

Complication

The organization was not very good in closing out projects. Initiatives went on for too long, and the original business benefits were usually not realized.

The primary culprit was recognized as mismanaged organizational change. People weren’t aware early enough, and were often left out of the feedback process.

Employees often felt like changes were being dictated to them, and they didn’t understand the wider benefits of the changes. This led to an unnecessary number of resistors, adding to the complexity of successfully completing a project.

Resolution

Implementing an ERP worldwide was something that the company couldn’t gamble on, so proper organizational change management was a focus.

A thorough stakeholder analysis was done, and champions were identified for each stakeholder group throughout the organization.

Involving these champions early gave them the time to work within their groups and to manage expectations. The result was savings of 2–4 weeks of implementation time and $10,000.

Follow Info-Tech’s blueprint to transform your PMO into a hub for organizational change management

Prepare the PMO for Change Leadership

• Assess the organization’s readiness for change.
  • Perform an OCM capabilities assessment.
  • Chart an OCM roadmap for the PMO.
  • Undergo a change management SWOT analysis.
  • Define success criteria.
  • Org. Change Capabilities Assessment
• Define the structure and scope of the PMO’s pilot OCM initiative.
  • Determine pilot OCM project.
  • Estimate OCM effort.
  • Document high-level project details.
  • Establish a timeline for org-change activities.
  • Assess available resources to support the PMO’s OCM initiative.
  • Project Level Assessment

Plant the Seeds for Change During Project Planning and Initiation

• Foster OCM considerations during the ideation phase.
  • Assess leadership support for change
  • Highlight the goals and benefits of the change
  • Refine your change story
  • Define success criteria
  • Develop a sponsorship action plan
  • Transition Team Communications Template
• Perform an organizational change impact assessment.
  • Perform change impact survey.
  • Assess the depth of impact for the stakeholder group.
  • Determine overall adoptability of the OCM effort.
  • Review risks and opportunities.
  • Org. Change Management Impact Analysis Tool

Facilitate Change Adoption Throughout the Organization

• Ensure stakeholders are engaged and ready for change.
  • Involve the right people in change and define roles.
  • Define methods for obtaining stakeholder input.
  • Perform a stakeholder analysis.
  • Stakeholder Engagement Workbook
• Develop and execute the transition plan.
  • Establish a communications strategy for stakeholder groups.
  • Define the feedback and evaluation process.
  • Assess the full range of support and resistance to change.
  • Develop an objections handling process.
  • Transition Plan Template
• Establish HR and training plans.
  • Assess training needs. Develop training plan.
  • Training Plan

Establish a Post-Project Benefits Attainment Process

• Determine accountabilities for benefits attainment.
  • Conduct a post-implementation review of the pilot OCM project.
  • Assign ownership for realizing benefits after the project is closed.
  • Define a post-project benefits tracking process.
  • Implement a tool to help monitor and track benefits over the long term.
  • Project Benefits Tracking Tool

Solidify the PMO’s Role as Change Leader

• Institute an OCM playbook.
  • Review lessons learned to improve OCM as a core discipline of the PMO.
  • Monitor organizational capacity for change.
  • Define roles and responsibilities for OCM oversight.
  • Formalize the Organizational Change Management Playbook.
  • Assess the value and success of your practices relative to OCM effort and project outcomes.
  • Organizational Change Management Playbook

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Drive Organizational Change from the PMO

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Phase 1

Prepare the PMO for Change Leadership

Phase 1 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 1: Prepare the PMO for Change Leadership

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1 week

Step 1.1: Assess the organization’s readiness for change

Start with an analyst kick off call:

• Scoping call to discuss organizational change challenges and the PMO’s role in managing change.

Then complete these activities…

• Perform an assessment survey to define capability levels and chart an OCM roadmap.

With these tools & templates:

• Organizational Change Management Capabilities Assessment

Step 1.2: Define the structure and scope of the PMO’s pilot OCM initiative

Work with an analyst to:

• Determine the appropriate OCM initiative to pilot over this series of Guided Implementations from the PMO’s project list.

Then complete these activities…

• Rightsize your OCM planning efforts based on project size, timeline, and resource availability.

With these tools & templates:

• Project Level Assessment Tool

Step 1.1: Assess the organization’s readiness for change

Phase 1 - 1.1

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Perform an OCM capabilities assessment.
• Chart an OCM roadmap for the PMO.
• Undergo a change management SWOT analysis.
• Define success criteria.

This step involves the following participants:

• Required: PMO Director
• Recommended: PMO staff, project management staff, and other project stakeholders

Outcomes of this step

• An OCM roadmap for the PMO with specific recommendations.
• An assessment of strengths, weakness, challenges, and threats in terms of the PMO’s role as organizational change leader.
• Success metrics for the PMO’s OCM implementation.

Project leaders who successfully facilitate change are strategic assets in a world of increasing agility and uncertainty

As transformation and change become the new normal, it’s up to PMOs to provide stability and direction during times of transition and turbulence.

Continuous change and transition are increasingly common in organizations in 2016.

A state of constant change can make managing change more difficult in some ways, but easier in others.

• Inundation with communications and diversity of channels means the traditional “broadcast” approach to communicating change doesn’t work (i.e. you can’t expect every email to get everyone’s attention).
• People might be more open to change in general, but specific changes still need to be properly planned, communicated, and managed.

By managing organizational change more effectively, the PMO can build credibility to manage both business and IT projects.

"The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic." – Peter Drucker

In this phase, we will gauge your PMO’s abilities to effectively facilitate change based upon your change management capability levels and your wider organization’s responsiveness to change.

Evaluate your current capabilities for managing organizational change

Start off by ensuring that the PMO is sensitive to the particularities of the organization and that it manages change accordingly.

There are many moving parts involved in successfully realizing an organizational change.

For instance, even with an effective change toolkit and strong leadership support, you may still fail to achieve project benefits due to such factors as a staff environment resistant to change or poor process discipline.

Use Info-Tech’s Organizational Change Management Capabilities Assessment to assess your readiness for change across 7 categories:

• Cultural Readiness
• Leadership & Sponsorship
• Organizational Knowledge
• Change Management Skills
• Toolkit & Templates
• Process Discipline
• KPIs & Metrics

Download Info-Tech’s Organizational Change Management Capabilities Assessment.

• The survey can be completed quickly in 5 to 10 minutes; or, if being done as a group activity, it can take up to 60 minutes or more.
• Based upon your answers, you will get a report of your current change capabilities to help you prioritize your next steps.
• The tool also provides a customized list of Info-Tech recommendations across the seven categories.

Perform Info-Tech’s OCM capabilities questionnaire

1.1.1 Anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes (depending on number of participants)

• The questionnaire on Tab 2 of the Assessment consists of 21 questions across 7 categories.
• The survey can be completed individually, by the PMO director or manager, or – even more ideally – by a group of project and business stakeholders.
• While the questionnaire only takes a few minutes to complete, you may wish to survey a wider swath of business units, especially on such categories as “Cultural Readiness” and “Leadership Support.”

Use the drop downs to indicate the degree to which you agree or disagree with each of the statements in the survey.

Info-Tech Insight

Every organization has some change management capability.

Even if you find yourself in a fledgling or nascent PMO, with no formal change management tools or processes, you can still leverage other categories of change management effectiveness.

If you can, build upon people-related assets like “Organizational Knowledge” and “Cultural Readiness” as you start to hone your OCM toolkit and process.

Review your capability levels and chart an OCM roadmap for your PMO

Tab 3 of the Assessment tool shows your capabilities graph.

• The chart visualizes your capability levels across the seven categories of organization change covered in the questionnaire in order to show the areas that your organization is already strong in and the areas where you need to focus your efforts.

Focus on improving the first capability dimension (from left/front to right/back) that rates below 10.

Tab 4 of the Assessment tool reveals Info-Tech’s recommendations based upon your survey responses.

• Use these recommendations to structure your roadmap and bring concrete definitions to your next steps.

Use the red/yellow/green boxes to focus your efforts.

The content in the recommendations boxes is based around these categories and the advice therein is designed to help you to, in the near term, bring your capabilities up to the next level.

Use the steps in this blueprint to help build your capabilities

Each of Info-Tech’s seven OCM capabilities match up with different steps and phases in this blueprint.

We recommend that you consume this blueprint in a linear fashion, as each phase matches up to a different set of OCM activities to be executed at each phase of a project. However, you can use the legend below to locate how and where this blueprint will address each capability.

Info-Tech Insight

Organizational change must be planned in advance and managed through all phases of a project.

Organizational change management must be embedded as a key aspect throughout the project, not merely a set of tactics added to execution phases.

Perform a change management SWOT exercise

1.1.2 30 to 60 minutes

Now that you have a sense of your change management strengths and weaknesses, you can begin to formalize the organizational specifics of these.

Gather PMO and IT staff, as well as other key project and business stakeholders, and perform a SWOT analysis based on your Capabilities Assessment.

Follow these steps to complete the SWOT analysis:

1. Have participants discuss and identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
2. Spend roughly 60 minutes on this. Use a whiteboard, flip chart, or PowerPoint slide to document results of the discussion as points are made.
3. Make sure results are recorded and saved either using the template provided on the next slide or by taking a picture of the whiteboard or flip chart.

Use the SWOT Analysis Template on the next slide to document results.

Use the examples provided in the SWOT analysis to kick-start the discussion.

The purpose of the SWOT is to begin to define the goals of this implementation by assessing your change management capabilities and cultivating executive level, business unit, PMO, and IT alignment around the most critical opportunities and challenges.

Sample SWOT Analysis

Define the “how” and the “what” of change management success for your PMO

1.1.3 30 to 60 minutes

Before you move on to develop and implement your OCM processes, spend some time documenting how change management success will be defined for your organization and what conditions will be necessary for success to be achieved.

With the same group of individuals who participated in the SWOT exercise, discuss the below criteria. You can make this a sticky note or a whiteboard activity to help document discussion points.

OCM Measured Value Metrics Include:

• Estimate % of expected business benefits realized on the past 3–5 significant projects/programs.
  • Track business benefits (costs reduced, productivity increased, etc.).
• Estimate costs avoided/reduced (extensions, cancellations, delays, roll-backs, etc.).
  • Establish baseline by estimating average costs of projects extended to deal with change-related issues.

Document additional items that could impact an OCM implementation for your PMO

1.1.4 15 to 45 minutes

Use the table below to document any additional factors or uncertainties that could impact implementation success.

These could be external factors that may impact the PMO, or they could be logistical considerations pertaining to staffing or infrastructure that may be required to support additional change management processes and procedures.

"[A]ll bets are off when it comes to change. People scatter in all directions. Your past experiences may help in some way, but what you do today and how you do it are the new measures people will use to evaluate you." – Tres Roeder

Step 1.2: Define the structure and scope of the PMO’s pilot OCM initiative

Phase 1 - 1.2

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Determine pilot OCM project.
• Estimate OCM effort.
• Document high-level project details.
• Establish a timeline for org change activities.
• Assess available resources to support the PMO’s OCM initiative.

This step involves the following participants:

• Required: PMO Director
• Recommended: PMO staff, project management staff, and other project stakeholders

Outcomes of this step

• Project definition for the PMO’s pilot OCM initiative.
• A timeline that aligns the project schedule for key OCM activities.
• Definition of resource availability to support OCM activities through the PMO.

Organizational change discipline should align with project structure

Change management success is contingent on doing the right things at the right time.

In subsequent phases of this blueprint, we will help the PMO develop an OCM strategy that aligns with your organization’s project timelines.

In this step (1.2), we will do some pre-work for you by determining a change initiative to pilot during this process and defining some of the roles and responsibilities for the OCM activities that we’ll develop in this blueprint.

Get ready to develop and pilot your OCM competencies on a specific project

In keeping with the need to align organizational change management activities with the actual timeline of the project, the next three phases of this blueprint will move from discussing OCM in general to applying OCM considerations to a single project.

As you narrow your focus to the organizational change stemming from a specific initiative, review the below considerations to help inform the decisions that you make during the activities in this step.

Choose a pilot project that:

• Has an identifiable sponsor who will be willing and able to participate in the bulk of the activities during the workshop.
• Has an appropriate level of change associated with it in order to adequately develop a range of OCM capabilities.
• Has a reasonably well-defined scope and timeline – you don’t want the pilot initiative being dragged out unexpectedly.
• Has PMO/IT staff who will be assisting with OCM efforts and will be relatively familiar and comfortable with them in terms of technical requirements.

Select a specific project that involves significant organizational change

1.2.1 5 to 15 minutes

The need for OCM rigor will vary depending on project size and complexity.

While we recommend that every project has some aspect of change management to it, you can adjust OCM requirements accordingly, depending on the type of change being introduced.

Phases 2, 3, and 4 of this blueprint will guide you through the process of managing organizational change around a specific project. Select one now that is currently in your request or planning stages to pilot through the activities in this blueprint. We recommend choosing one that involves a large, transformational change.

Estimate the overall difficulty and effort required to manage organizational change

1.2.2 5 minutes

Use Info-Tech’s project levels to define the complexity of the project that you’ve chosen to pilot.

Defining your project level will help determine how much effort and detail is required to complete steps in this blueprint – and, beyond this, these levels can help you determine how much OCM rigor to apply across each of the projects in your portfolio.

For a more comprehensive assessment of project levels and degrees of risk, see Info-Tech’s Create Project Management Success blueprint – and in particular, our Project Level Assessment Tool.

Record the goals and scope of the pilot OCM initiative

1.2.3 15 to 30 minutes

Description

What is the project changing?

How will it work?

What are the implications of doing nothing?

What are the phases in execution?

Expected Benefits

What is the desired outcome?

What can be measured? How?

When should it be measured?

Goals

List the goals.

Align with business and IT goals.

Expected Costs

List the costs:

Software costs

Hardware costs

Implementation costs

Expected Risks

List the risks:

Business risks

Technology risks

Implementation risks

Know the “what” and “when” of org change activities

The key to change management success is ensuring that the right OCM activities are carried out at the right time. The below graphic serves as a quick view of what OCM activities entail and when they should be done.

Rough out a timeline for the org change activities associated with your pilot project’s timeline

1.2.4 20-30 minutes

With reference to the graphic on the previous slide, map out a high-level timeline for your pilot project’s milestones and the corresponding OCM activities.

• This is essentially a first draft of a timeline and will be refined as we develop your OCM discipline in the next phase of this blueprint.
• The purpose of roughing something out at this time is to help determine the scope of the implementation, the effort involved, and to help with resource planning.

Info-Tech Insight

Proactive change management is easier to execute and infinitely more effective than managing change reactively. A reactive approach to OCM is bound to fail. The better equipped the PMO is to plan OCM activities in advance of projects, the more effective those OCM efforts will be.