Unifying our Incident Management Process (Help Desk,NOC,etc)

[spitznerk]

Greetings All,

We are currently working to streamline (and make more transparent) three major areas involved with Incident Handling at my firm.

Our current infrastructure is as follows:

Help Desk
Service Calls and emails (Not only IT but HR and Facilities too) from Clients go to a help desk. The Help Desk categorizes the incident and assigns off to the proper team (if it is IT related it typically goes to our Client Support or Config/Setup folks who make desk visits or do phone support).

Client Support
Works off of Help Desk assigned tickets to their group by paying desk visits and performing phone support. There are two tiers of personnel in the Client Support team.

Config/Setup
This group gets assignments from the Help Desk that pertain specifically to new user setup/permissions/exchange requests.


NOC
System Alerts (from a suite of monitoring tools) go directly into our Network Operations Center for handling, escalation etc. In some cases the NOC acts as an escalation point from Client Support as well. There are two tiers of personnel in the NOC.


Issues
One of the issues is that the two major IT channels (Client based for the Help Desk and System/Network based for the NOC) have limited visibility to one another.

Another issue is that we have 4 physical teams that are performing aspects of incident management.

As noted the Help Desk entity fields calls for IT and Non-IT requests. They are non-technical and typically do not resolve any calls (they are an intelligent call router).

Questions

Should the NOC/Client/Config&Setup be the same group cross trained?
Does having a 'Non-IT' help desk fronting our IM process make sense?
What are firms with similar needs doing to staff the diverse areas of Incident Management needs?

[eisbergsk]

this might be too glib a suggestion without asking for more info, but instead of trying to change the people, what about trying to change the tools? You do not mention the tools used by your service desk to record calls and emails, or the tools used by the NOC to record system alerts. What if - it was the same tool? That would start the groups using a common language...
*trying to follow along in Sask*
/Sharon

[jpgilles]

hello,

What you describe just gives me the feeling that you are missinf a real Incident Management Process: how to handle and treat incidents. There should be only one process. Then you have to assess how to implement the process within your organization , based on the tools available (you are totally right Sharon), which means that, if differement teams are involved, their work and contribution to the process is coordinated.

To me, it makes no sense , for example, that system alerts go to one team where user calls go to another team... How do you want the people on the phone to be effective in dealing with the users' incidents , if they have no clue about what's happening in the infrastructure? Thay can't even relate a symtom described by the user with a technical incident and they may waste some valuable time just to find out what's going on.

Allowing Hep Desk people to see alerts in realtime is something I do recommend almost all the time... (based on ITIL and about 8 years in managing support organizations).
_________________
JP Gilles

[spitznerk]

Interesting Feedback...

Are their others out there that have implemented ITIL IM with a NOC and Client Support group? How do they interact?

[mafatee7]

Interesting topic. I would like to see other's comments, and especially the expertise.

[Fabien]

This is an interesting case indeed. I have the feeling that the place where you should go takes a difficult path across politics and change resistance.

In my experience, whenever you have groups that you need to make work together, your main challenge is not so much technology and process. It is people. Not that I don't agree with what was said earlier, don't get me wrong. My starting point might just be a little different.

First of all, I would be interested to understand the overall initiative. For instance, are you saying that the current way is not working? Are you saying it costs too much? Do you have a customer satisfaction issue? What is your main driver? It is important because if cost reduction is your main driver, you are not going to start with a tool.

Secondly, what is the state of the relationships between all those groups? Where is the point of Support Leadership? To be honest with you, I like to see my Service Desk on top of the Support organization. That is my single point of accountability and all support resources should be delivering services to it. In reality, however, it is difficult to get there because the Service Desk is usually the lower-level of the organization and elevating it is very difficult. You may need to take the strongest point of leadership across your groups, a Champion if you will, and feed it so it lays your changes for you and it gathers wider acceptance.

Thirdly, I assume that your objective is to make those people work together better and gain efficiency and effectiveness. Well, the first thing I would do is to figure out how to craft the message for those guys in a way that motivates them. Because that is going to be your most cherished resource: motivation. In order to do anything, you will need to bring them to the table and discuss future. Future needs to hold something that they want.

Don't underestimate the power of people...
_________________
BR,
Fabien Papleux

Accenture
Technology Consulting | Service Excellence
Red Badge Certified

Twitter @itilgeek