Service management beyond the IT department

Service management beyond IT starts with the team delivering the service. This guide explains how to adapt requests, ownership and workflow steps to that work.

Start with the service being delivered

An internal service team needs to understand a request, assign responsibility and keep the requester informed. Those needs appear in many departments, even when the work is very different from IT support.

A service management application can provide a common structure. The process inside it still needs to reflect the actual service.

Do not carry terminology over without checking it

In our Service Desk development, ITIL v3 practices provided a basis for handling incidents, problems and changes. These distinctions help structure IT service work, but another department may use different categories and decision points.

The useful starting question is what the team needs to distinguish. A request for planned work, a reported disruption and a proposal to alter an existing arrangement may follow different routes.

Define ownership at each handover

A task can pass through several people before it is complete. Without a clear ownership model, an assigned request may still leave everyone unsure who is responsible for the next action.

During process analysis, we examine how requests are received, which information is needed, who may assign work and what confirms completion. The application should reflect those decisions consistently.

Make exceptions part of the design

Consider what happens when a request is incomplete, assigned to the wrong team or dependent on another task. Discuss whether the requester can provide more information and who decides that a task is complete.

These are ordinary operational situations. Addressing them early avoids a process that works only when every request follows the expected route.

Adapt an established approach

Our team’s K2 Service Desk experience includes more than 150 forms and 30 workflows across task, incident, problem and change management. This provides a basis for discussing complex service processes, including services outside IT.

A new implementation begins with your requirements. We define the required scope and adapt the solution rather than assuming an existing configuration will suit every team.

Talk to Web CheckIn about the requests and tasks your service team needs to manage.