As regards ITIL’s technological dimension (Information & Technology), the various components of Freshservice have been customized to make the product fit for purpose. The migration of data and configurations from the old tools to Freshservice took place in two phases:
- migration of the Infrastructure department, which took place in March 2021;
- migration of Development department, which took place in April 2022.
Great attention was paid to the organizational dimension (Organizations & People) of ITIL and to the application of the practice of Organizational Change Management, aimed at correctly managing the human aspect of change.
The structure of the Infrastructure department has been revised, with the transition from a model based on 3 levels to a flat one, characterized by the centralization of levels L1 and L2 within the same team and the appointment of a Team Leader, capable of playing the role of coach and tutor for the various members of the working group. The internal escalation mechanism was removed, which has always been a particularly problematic element due to the difficulty in correctly assigning ownership of a specific activity, maintaining the only possibility of escalation to external L3 specialists, operating at the vendor or supplier level.
The responsibility of the single activity was transferred from the individual to the team and, to allow the resolution of complex problems, the possibility of creating temporary groups with interdisciplinary skills, composed of Technical Specialists and the Service Manager, has been introduced, adopting the practice of Swarming. Finally, to ensure better management of requests, a team division has been defined based on the type of service managed (helpdesk, NOC, SOC).
Always in relation to the human dimension, based on the practice of Workforce & Talent Management, the company strategies and values were shared with all the resources involved, to create a strong sense of belonging. The various resources have been assigned to the ITOps teams after a careful assessment of skills and aspirations (activities that involved the resources themselves, through direct interviews and self-assessment processes).
The various ITOps teams defined were then strengthened, through the inclusion of new resources capable of satisfying the expected needs. Individual training plans were defined, with their extension to all technical resources, without exception. There have been many efforts to strengthen internal training activities, through coaching, mentoring and the organization of company courses related to objectives (MBO), linked to the ability of the resource to operate as a trainee or, for the more experienced, as a trainer, a case that made it possible to strengthen the sense of individual responsibility.
Many activities then involved the practice of knowledge management. In the initial phase, all the existing documentation was collected and transferred to the Freshservice KB module. Subsequently, after analysis and identification of the shortcomings, particular attention was paid to the transformation of knowledge from tacit to explicit and to its transfer to colleagues and end users according to the SECI model.
The documentation has been integrated into the various Freshservice modules, to be put at the service of technicians and end users, through AI mechanisms capable of providing suggestions based on tags and keywords, aimed at proposing solutions that can allow the co-creation of value and the adoption of techniques such as shift-left.
For the correct maintenance of what has been produced, the periodic revision of the documentation is foreseen, consisting in confirmation or updating of the documents still valid and in the archiving of the obsolete ones.
After defining tools and human resources we focused on more operational aspects, implementing (or improving) a series of practices strictly linked to the activities carried out. Changes were made in the management of the Service Desk, an integrated function within the ITOps teams, with particular emphasis on reaction times and the quality of communication with end users, focusing on useful information and omitting those of a purely technical nature if not strictly necessary.
The communication methods defined are based on an omnichannel approach which consist in combining a web portal and a mobile application with traditional engagement channels (e-mail and telephone). New methods of communication have been introduced, direct (e-mail) and indirect (scheduled announcements displayed on Freshservice).
About the practice of managing incidents (Incident Management), particular emphasis was placed on reducing the time of detection and resolution of problems, thanks also to the integration via API with the Paessler PRTG monitoring system, to create and solve alerts and, through workflows, orchestrate the automatic opening, assignment, and resolution of tickets. Specific procedures have been defined for the management of Major Incidents, such as the creation of specific preferential communication channels (example: sending push notifications to Microsoft Teams via webhook). Graphic maps were then configured, depicting in real time the status of customer infrastructures, made available to the NOC team according to a Visual Management approach.
In addition, with the aim of reducing resolution times, automatic categorization and sorting mechanisms for tickets have been implemented. To correctly manage the available capacity, an automatic prioritization system has been defined, based on a matrix made up of different levels of impact and urgency. Finally, quarterly review activities were planned, with the aim of adopting a continuous improvement approach and a no-blame culture.
To facilitate the request for services by end users, a Service Catalogue has been defined that is functional to organizational needs and contains the services offered in the context of normal operations (Business As Usual), with a subdivision between those for internal use, rich in technical details and information necessary for the correct processing of the request, and those dedicated to the external users, more streamlined and configured to guide the requester during the various stages of ticket creation, through special forms consisting of various types of fields (text, numbers, multiple selections, etc.) of a mandatory or optional nature. To manage some specific cases, then, customized Service Items have been created with different level of visibility and access permissions assigned at group level.
With the aim of maintaining constant results over time, Measurement and Reporting Management practice has been implemented. These include:
- creation of interactive dashboards for monitoring the status of activities and the provision of services in general, based on scorecards and graphs;
- definition of quantitative and qualitative operational reports to measure the performance of ITOps teams in terms of effectiveness, productivity and compliance with standards and policies;
- periodic review of the reports to evaluate performance together with the individual resources involved and consequent application of corrective measures;
- preparation of analytical reports based on historical data;
- definition of estimates based on historical data;
- sharing of reports with end customers and verification of compliance with the agreed SLAs.