This is one of the most important questions for continual improvement. This question helps to define measurable targets for the IT service provider that will help to reach the vision of the company in the long-term. At this stage, we look at the identified key performance indicators from the previous step and determine what values we want to target for each of these indicators. This decision must be made with the business’s vision in mind, but also with a sense of what is practically possible.
There are many ways in which practices and services can be optimized. Regardless of the specific techniques, the path to optimization follows these high-level steps:
Understand and agree the context in which the proposed optimization exists
Assess the current state of the proposed optimization
Agree what the future state and priorities of the organization should be, focusing on simplification and value
Ensure the optimization has the appropriate level of stakeholder engagement and commitment
Effective incident management often requires a high level of collaboration within and between teams as this can facilitate information-sharing and learning, as well as helping to solve the incident more efficiently and effectively. There may also be a need for good collaboration tools so that people working on an incident can work together effectively. One technique that takes advantage of collaboration is termed swarming. This brings many different stakeholders together to work on the issue. Management of incidents may require frequent interaction with third party suppliers, and routine management of this aspect of supplier contracts is often part of the incident management practice.
