IT Best Practices. Service Operations Recommendations

Transcription

1 IT Best Practices Service Operations Recommendations IT Best Practices Service Operations Sub-Group Last Updated: August 29th, 2014

2 Objectives The Service operations subgroup of the IT Best Practices project was charged with making recommendations around improvements to service operations procedures and functionality. Best practices guided by ITIL principles will increase process efficiency; increase competence, capability, and productivity of IT staff; improve collaboration and communication between IT groups. Recommendations 1. Ensure ticket ownership and coverage (see Section D for recommendations of responsibilities of queue owner) In order to avoid situations where submitted tickets are left unhandled, two people should be named as the queue owner (both of whom should not be away at the same time): One person to become the owner of tickets that are un-owned and >1 business day old; One person to become the CC of tickets that are un-owned and >1 business day old (this will ensure if the new owner is on vacation, the CC will still receive any sent in from the requestor. The person(s) named above should be auto-assigned to tickets as owners. 2. Resolving Tickets In recognition of the fact that tickets can be closed without the underlying issue being resolved, the recommendation here is to change the ticket resolved template that is sent to requestors to (a) use the term closed instead of resolved (see Appendix A), and (b) provide a link to re-open the ticket if necessary. 3. New assessment of ticket priority A priority matrix can be very useful in the handling of tickets. Submitters have a more direct way of indicating the importance of their tickets, and with that information, Service Desk staff can appropriately manage and route those tickets deemed highly important. Priority = Impact + Urgency. Use 1-5 for Priority (only when submitting via form) using the ITIL matrix based on Impact (1-3) and Urgency (1-3): Page 1

3 Impact: The Priority is set automatically based on what is filled out by requestor. The Priority field would be editable. The default Priority of tickets submitted via would be 3. Affected: person (3), group (2), department (2), campus (1), `I don t know (3) Urgency: Severity: low (3), moderate (2), critical (1) For some forms, the priority would be set according to the `Required by <date> field that is set by the requestor, e.g. 24 hours (1), 36 hours (2), >36 hours (3). Not all forms will ask for the `required by date. 4. Adopt queue owner responsibilities and practices Ensure all tickets are assigned to the appropriate person. Ensure tickets are closed in a timely manner (to be determined depending on area). Re-assign tickets if necessary. Ensure queue is covered for vacations or extended absences. Respond to overdue requests. Recommend setting up a dashboard to monitor the queue (nightly reminder). Follow up on stale requests (requests in the queue for longer than a week and not commented on or responded to). If you have to redirect a request, redirect to the general queue adding the reason why it doesn t belong to your queue. Page 2

4 The following responsibilities would take effect upon the introduction of Request Tracker 4: Ensure all tickets have a priority assigned (if different from the default 3 ). Promote use of knowledge articles and other RT tools. 5. Training plan for identified service operations improvements We suggest that training for these recommendations be incorporated into the training session offer with the rollout of RT4. Page 3

5 Appendix A: New template for resolving tickets Subject: [UW-RT #290048] Ticket Closed: Request for YouTube playlist admin rights Your Request has been closed. We would like your feedback to help us improve our services: To re-open this ticket please visit:. ( need URL) Ticket Summary Subject: Request for YouTube playlist admin rights Queue: CPA-Web Owner: a2miller Ticket Details Page 4

6 Appendix B: Service Desk workflow Page 5