Entry Software Corporation

Entry

Archives for September 2017

How SLAs Solve Business Issues

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We’re working together with a long-time user of TeamHeadquarters, who will be using SLAs to solve business issues and who has recently developed a business strategy that establishes IT as a core organizational competency.

The Business Issues

Internal business issues

The strategy of the company has software, databases, and processes that heavily rely on systems and IT personnel for high availability and accuracy.

Not all systems, software, processes and staff are equal — some are more critical than others. Applying an SLA to these essential services provides helpdesk operators and personnel the information they require to prioritize support activities and service requests.

Customer business issues

As I said, not all systems, software, processes, and staff are equally essential. Customers service requests receive a priority based on their essential nature and assigned the appropriate SLA. Now the client expectations are set. Providing the customer with the measurements, and access to their service request progress through the TeamHeadquarters portal aids in understanding the level of service they’re receiving and whether the SLA is being satisfied.

SLA Measures and KPIs

By setting SLAs on all services based on their essential nature, the client can focus the efforts of IT on high priority, strategy enabling activities.

For each SLA Measurements and KPIs have been declared and agreed upon by both customers and IT. The primary measure is time: time to resolve, and average time to close.

Factoring in weekends and off-hours into the SLA time measures was critical to the success of the strategy. If the “ball” is in the client’s court, the SLA clock stops; if the request arrives after hours, the clock doesn’t start until the beginning of the next business day. These types of rules are critical to the development of realistic expectations.

IT support staff are measured on their average time to close, the total time to close support requests, SLA violations. These statistics become tools to improve service delivery and train staff.

Customer Engagement through a Self-Serve Portal

Customers become aware of KPIs and the real measurement of support. Clients have access to Service Level KPIs which provides a perspective of the service they’re receiving.

The customer and their executive team determined that TeamHeadquarters is a critical system that supports the IT strategy of their organization. SLAs support both the client and the IT helpdesk.

How to Measure Service Level Agreements

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As an IT Manager, you are tasked with developing to measure Service Level Agreements, (SLA), understanding compliance to the SLA and taking corrective action when violations occur. Help Desk systems create significant volumes of “dark data” that, when mined, provide insight critical to achieving organizational service and customer satisfaction objectives.

Let’s look at the types of information you can use to measure service level agreements.

We can consider that there are different reporting objectives when measuring SLAs.

  1. Customer specific – did we meet our goals?
  2. Staff centric – how are our team performing and are there any trends that are contributing to SLA violations?
  3. System-centric – are there patterns in your IT stack that are creating an abnormal trend in SLA violations?

Ideally, you will isolate six to twelve metrics that will help you answer the questions above.  Here are some examples for you:

Customer specific metrics:

  • reaction time,
  • resolution time,
  • compliance to agreed deadlines

Staff centric metrics:

  • Abandonment Rate: Percentage of calls abandoned while waiting to be answered.
  • ASA (Average Speed to Answer): Average time (usually in seconds) it takes for a call to be answered by the service desk.
  • TSF (Time Service Factor): Percentage of calls answered within a definite time frame, e.g., 80% in 20 seconds.
  • FCR (First-Call Resolution): Percentage of incoming calls that can be resolved without the use of a callback or without having the caller call back the help desk to finish resolving the case.
  • TAT (Turn-Around Time): Time taken to complete a certain task.
  • MTTR (Mean Time To Recover): Time taken to recover after an outage of service.

We have reviewed what to measure now let’s cover the how to measure aspect.

Of course, if you have a tool that will pull all this data together for you into a single view, then that is the ideal.  However, if not, then here are some critical considerations for you:

  1. Keep the number of metrics small, six to twelve, no more. If you have too much information, it will be difficult to wade through and challenging for anyone to assemble regularly.  Too many metrics could lead to the abandonment of this important process.
  2. Trend the data over a period. I suggest that you have thirteen weeks of data to compare and graph.
  3. Because you want to see how performance is comparing to the goal, make sure that you put the goal beside the metric.
  4. Incorporate this report into you weekly team Traction Meeting and use it to identify SLA, team or IT issues. See Six Ways to Strengthen your IT Organization.

Entry Software has been working with IT organizations since 1998 and can help you develop your Service Level Agreements, and provide you with the information you need to measure them.  Learn more about their integrated help desk and project management solution, TeamHeadquarters or get a demo of TeamHeadquarters today.

The Business Benefit of a Service Level Agreement

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Benefits of a Service Level Agreement

Recently I met with a client specializing in the service level agreement parameters of high-speed internet to residential and commercial customers. I was invited to help develop a customer retention and acquisition strategy.  The firm needed a way to differentiate their company from the competitors so that the clients wouldn’t jump ship when their contracts expired.  They also needed a way to attract new customers and felt that the service their company provided was superior to that of the competitors. They asked me my thoughts on this, and I recommended that we evaluate the use of Service Level Agreements to keep clients and attract new ones. [Read more…] about The Business Benefit of a Service Level Agreement

IT Management | Strategic Thinking

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An IT manager called me the other day and says, “What can you do to help me achieve my IT strategy?” Great question, says I; tell me your strategy, and I will see how I can help.

The next five minutes I had to endure metaphors, vaguenesses, and I saw it was coming, “I do not have a defined and written down strategy” (aka, I have no idea what a strategy is but it sounded impressive didn’t it), realization moment.  Can you say, “Awkward?”

How do you help someone who knows they need help, yet is unclear about why and how?  You ask questions.

[Read more…] about IT Management | Strategic Thinking

Value in Integrating Change Management and Project Management

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Manage changes to projects or initiatives within an organization on both a technical and human level.

Project management is the process of supervising a project team through a series of tasks that ultimately reach completion of a defined goal with a specified target date for completion. On the other hand, change management is intended to support an organization’s adjustment to the changes due to either internal processes or external factors.

Often change management involves continuous efforts with no explicitly defined deliverables. This lack of clarity when companies are evolving to meet fluctuating market conditions and emerging technologies.

Perhaps the clearest distinction between project management and change management is the level of structure that is characteristic to each. At the enterprise level, project management involves defined phases, methodologies, and techniques.

Change management may share all those points; however, unlike project management, it is extremely unpredictable. While project managers can plan their whole project in detail before any actual work occurs, change managers must be prepared for unexpected developments and need to shift their approach and change their strategy as needed.

The integration of change management and project management creates value for a given project for many reasons

Singular but Shared Objective

With the integration of project management and change management, efforts can be focused towards a shared objective. This leads to a significant improvement in the performance of the organization through successful implementation of a change that will deliver the desired results.

Alignment and Buy-In

Through the integration of technical and people activities, there is a higher chance of employees embracing the change, ensuring majority buy-in, and resulting in the right outcomes for the project.

Flow of Information

The smooth flow of information ensures that affected employees are receiving the relevant information. Furthermore, it helps guarantee that the project team gains valuable feedback on adoption and response to the change on the back end.

Project Management and Change Management Training

The two roles tend to demand distinguishing methods of training and different areas of expertise, given the contrast in how project managers and change managers are expected to execute their work.

Project managers typically begin their careers developing expertise in a field. With gained knowledge and experience, they eventually start leading projects. Today, more and more project managers are earning professional certifications like PMP to sharpen their skills and increase their industry value.

It is common for change management experts to come from communications or management consulting backgrounds. They have acquired knowledge on how high functioning organizations make decisions and how the change management process inevitably affects employees, customers, and vendors.

But unlike project management, there is no widely-recognized change management certification for change management experts. They can, however, establish their level of expertise by gaining PMP and other recognized project management credentials.

To better appreciate the value of project management and change management, sign up for a free demo of TeamHeadquarters, the solution that gives you total control of project ticket queues, integrated email agents, sophisticated and comprehensive resource management, task scheduling, project groups, portfolio dashboards, integrated status reporting, integrated and customizable reporting, the inclusion of customers on project tasks and tickets and a Customer Self-Service Portal.

5 Key Steps to Successful Project Management

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The Key to Successful Project Management

Managing your first project can be daunting. To simplify things, here are five steps critical to successful project management of a project:

Step 1: Initiate the Project by Defining the Scope

This phase typically begins with a business case where you will examine whether the project is feasible and important stakeholders will do their due diligence to help decide to approve the project or not.

Build the project infrastructure based on the problem that needs solving. Put in writing what the expected changes are. What is the end goal? Define the criteria for how the project’s success will be defined. Determine if there are potential limitations like funding, resources, and time.

Step 2: Create the Project Plan

The project plan is the core of your project and needs to involve all of the stakeholders and gain their buy-in. The project plan should provide direction over the project’s lifespan. Review the plan with status updates.

The project plan should contain performance measures and any process changes that need to take place and who and what will these changes impact. Define how to address risks should they arise. Determine how your resources will be acquired and maintained and how to reward your team members for achieving milestones. Describe the training required for everyone involved in the project. State your expectations.

Step 3: Initiate the Project Plan

It is the project manager’s job to initiate the project plan and identify adjustments as demanded. When you launch the project, confirm the people who will complete the tasks in the project plan and ensure that everyone understands their role and is aware of the process for communication. Inform team members about beginning and end dates and how they will be affected, and keep them updated on the progress.

Manage the project team by providing sufficient training, monitoring resources, and resolving issues.
Use project management software to create, execute and control projects and facilitate communications.

Project management software like TeamHeadquarters gives project managers a full picture of resource availability across all work (not just projects) and trends before they assign them tasks.

Step 4: Evaluate and Document Progress

Your time will be spent monitoring and communicating to allow you to assess and document the project’s progress and limitations effectively. When you prepare the documents and reports, ensure they are accurate. Catalogue problems as they happen, and make certain the key stakeholders are informed about these issues. If a problem arises, consider the alternatives and the potential effects. Present the situation and the proposed solutions to your stakeholders. Document any new information you’ve learned to your and re-evaluate periodically.

Step 5: Reach Your Goal, Deliver and Close the Project

The final step in project management involves the evaluation of the project’s achievements and failures which are crucial for the success of future of projects. Deliver the results to the stakeholders and prepare a project closure report with input from the entire team involved in the project.

Include observations on how to improve on future projects through lessons learned. Distribute the valuable knowledge gained by the experience so that you can apply the positive actions to future projects while avoiding negative incidents. When a project is correctly concluded, team members are motivated and feel empowered to tackle future projects.

Project management, even for first-time project managers, can be challenging. That’s why project management software, TeamHeadquarters, was designed to help you build projects quickly, make status reports, and produce and disseminate project updates easier.

Click here for your free demo of TeamHeadquarters.