Establishing service management practices

Welcome to the service management show from the team here at effic code I'm Gary blower itm practice lead for EIC code and in this episode we're going to be talking about establishing service management practices I'm pleased to uh introduce my guest I actually let them introduce themselves so would you like to introduce yourself and what do you do where are you what did you get up to uh I'm hindan um I have over 20 years of experience in various roles um around software development life cycle and uh service management I'm quite passionate about this domain so I'm quite excited to join you today for this um podcast thank you very much yes and I should say um we've met indirectly through my colleague Zara who also met you indirectly through a group called the women of IT service management I don't know if you want to sort of talk about that event and what it was all about absolutely um it was uh the first Meetup of um this group the new community that was established this summer uh and um as you could imagine many you us passionate about the itm will take any opportunity to meet our colleagues um hear each other discuss what's happening in the market um and that's how I met Zar Zara uh we both um directly connected and um discussed our various interest um and she shared with me what your company does and uh I was really happy to hear that you have a podcast and I took the opportunity to join when possible yes it was great to have you and um uh actually uh as well as talking to yourself um uh Dar and I spoke to the uh the two ladies that that that established that community and it's sort of fascinating history and uh really really great that that that Community now exists and obviously yourself and I know a couple of um couple of my clients I believe were at that session as well and I've heard good things from them as well so so yeah um it's on LinkedIn isn't it I think it's LinkedIn group yes absolutely and it's for men and women so so women them anyone can join um it's um I think it's a small group of individual who do service management in general in a company depends on the maturity so when we find each other all excited to hear how do you do this um how do you challenge the or how do you navigate the various challenges um we try to learn from each other and I think what you find each of us has a very unique uh pathway a very unique career and I think each of us will have a unique story of how we ended up in these roles it's not really a career that you you would uh pick up based on a specific skill set you do at University um I think it's something that people uh grow into naturally yeah I think that could bring us nicely to the next topic is um for me personally service management um is more about soft skill which is um communication and bringing the various Department together in the company to achieve the goal whether it's um delivering a product or running a service or maintaining a service um functional and the service management function I think while there is it which defines clearly what we do service management is about making sure all these teams run smoothly and operate well understand each other and communicate um and the word I used the other day we had an informal chat I think service management is the glue that brings the various Department together not only from it or Service delivery but also with the customer we're somewhere in the middle making sure the customer uh is heard in in their requirement uh that the development team the project team and the support team have a clear understanding of that and we take away somewhere those um when things don't go well or when things are not clear and we try to bridge the gap and we take um we do postmortem for example when there's an incident we do Lessons Learned um we do continuous Improvement and we try to take the information from all the sides the feedback we investigate and there's no really prescriptive way of doing that it's more a soft skill of understanding whether are gaps hearing what people are trying to say taking note of that and then most importantly communicating it back as well as reporting on it absolutely yeah and I love that phrase It's the glue that brings everything you know holds everything together because I think that's that's so true and I think you hit you know really important thing that it's also bringing the customer together because you hear about okay it brings Dev you know Dev and operations uh together but it it does bring every everything together uh as you say um now I know um you've worked in quite a number of sort of immature organizations where you've helped establish kind of service management practices within those those organizations what would you say were the the biggest challenges that you you faced um first of all if you don't mind me just to um make a slight adjustment to the wording so I worked in various organizations and there were a different level of maturity oh yeah you have organization very mature in a certain aspect but there might be gaps in certain other areas and this is where the service management skill set is to identify where we could add value or we could uh for instance um create growth and create further Improvement even at mature organization I think that's even harder when you find a mature organization is what else could you do continuous Improvement is one of our responsibility so the skill is where to find the area that needs further Improvement or needs more attention um and I think that's where perhaps the challenges and again the skin set is where how do you bring people on the journey because it's people it's teams it's Department stakeholders as well as processes how do you take them forward and it's very important that we also listen that it's not a one way it's not One Direction it's not a one solution it'sit all we need to also identify the right way to all as a group as a community to achieve that movement and this is where the service manager needs to embed themselves within the team work with them understand their challenges and bring them on board and I think uh perhaps that is the challenge but that's the beauty of it as well is where you bring people on the journey even if we could see the solution there's no point of um implementing it because we do not Implement in reality we guide we support facilitate but uh we support the team to achieve that Improvement themselves yeah I think sometimes we're guilty within it of just seeing like technology is an answer and it's very rarely the answer it might be the enabler but it's always people that's the actual answer that's right um totally agree with that now um one of the things I was interested that we talked before um I'm interested in is you've worked in risk and control as well haven't you or establishing risk and controls yeah and and and again you said that um you know in a particularly can be quite a difficult thing to to establish so what sort of challenges and blockers do you face when you're looking to introduce those sorts of practices um so part of the day job is ensuring stability and restoring Services if they fail but what we should aim to do is learn from those mistakes and avoid them in the future even better when we have the bandwidth and the maturity is foresee these issues before they happen so I call it being a step ahead or a few steps ahead and this is where identifying the risks and controls or the threats before they happen or if they happen classify them understand them mitigate them and then present them to the various departments and have a plan so this is where it's part of continuous Improvement and looking ahead what's coming and having a a a clear action plan or at least an understanding of the threat and the risk and pry as much as possible to understand it and this is where for me um the risk and control was a Natural Evolution and actually goes hand inand uh with service management the boundary is very um uh gray um because part of learning from the past and planning for the future that risk and control is key yeah totally because you basically you're dealing with risk and impact um I know when I've worked with sort of operational risks in in a large organization sometimes the difficulty is when you identify the mitigations you're looking for it's actually getting commitment from the business to actually invoke those mitigations you know I remember once I won't name anything but I remember once we identifi quite significant operational risk and then we were challenged on it because we only classified it as a kind of one in 10 year event but one in 10 year event is not that uncommon so you you come across anything like that during your career yes of course um this is Again part of the skills that are important is um having the PRI right prioritization so you need to understand the context um most often organization are challenged for time or resource or cost so the day job is to make sure what we have works so to have a bandwidth to work ahead of that and avoid or mitigate risks which are not real yet that is already going out of our way so which risks do you focus on again this is where classification of the risk understanding our priorities understanding what is at stake is key and that's where you see do I have the bandw to do that is it important what are the implication if that risk happen and this is where the risk acceptance It's All a balance of finding the right answer to the risk that is real um the other thing also a reality we have to understand and accept you have different Industries some are regulated where uh the risks um have to be mitigated based on um certain um regulations in other industry maybe it's cost maybe it's customer expectation maybe Le consumers so we need to understand what what is the cont context of the organization to to make the right prioritization yeah yeah exactly sometimes refer to as risk appetite isn't it so it's yeah understanding the risk appetite now I know something else you're really passionate about and I think it's worth touching on this because this is this is quite new I feel for service management but you're really passionate aren't you about introducing sustainability you want to sort of um just give an outline as of how we can be more sustainable within the service management community so for me it's a longwinded answer first of all um to um to to highlight the case for sustainability is there it's real it's big it's relevant for pretty much all the industries um all the organization um have that challenge ahead of them of how to embrace um sustainability for some Industries it is um it will be driven by regulation it will be mandated so it's not optional for other organization or Industries um it is a matter of also keeping up with the demand of their customers who are more rigorous uh it's keeping up with uh profitability also because there's huge huge um um market share there to be taken this huge opportunity to embrace it's also the mindset these are the values you want to do doing the right thing so sustainability is here it's not going away it is the biggest strategic driver in the next few years so the level of maturity of organization how far they are into this journey is various um but most of the big names big companies have already established their own road map agenda have started taking um um taking measures have started taking reporting which will become mandatory at some point for certain industries um and this is where I think service management could be the right place where we could bring service management to the ground to uh the various Department it shouldn't be a department running on the side by itself um C numbers separately it needs to be really embedded in the core of every industry and I think technology is the right place and I personally feel service management is the right place as that's where we do continuous Improvement that's where we look for efficiency that's where we look for um um stability and sustainability is in line with that I don't have an answer of how to do it but it's the right group of people who are service managers are uh uh interacting with the various Department technology the various stakeholders understand the values of of the various changes and this is where we need to start quantifying that sustainability impact try to ures it if it's negative try to create a positive impact and most importantly the measurement that reporting is what we do it's part of service management skill set so I think we need to to start that um Journey yeah oh yeah and it makes sense to me we talked about it before in that you know if you're measuring value you could also measure impact of that value as well um and as you said a lot of service management is about capturing all these measures and metrics and it's the ideal opportunity to to kind of you know measure where there is you know sustained loss uh essentially um so yeah now you're doing a talk on this aren't you um is it next week or the week after I can't remember yes uh it's it's a closed um uh it's a closed group uh and I'm trying to stir the topic um I'm quite passionate about it and I'd like to uh I'd like to bring it to more tables there's a group of leaders from different um um companies uh mainly technology and I'd like again to be this disruptor who asks like how are you getting on with your uh sustainability journey in technology I know lots of companies have agendas well established but I'd like to ask and on the ground our fellow service managers and Teck leaders yeah it's not it's not like you say it's not joined up so like you said lot of businesses will have a sustain Target but this doesn't often those targets don't always make their way down to the service teams do they or the service design and and and other elements yeah I I must admit I mean I don't think I've ever seen um it it's never really been a core topic I don't think at any kind of service management I've been to so but it is so important yes if you think if you go back in history I think when the question about Information Security started becoming a reality inititive was one Department disjointed and then when the third has become real everyone's asking the question um I think it's the the value is cost it's time but it's also sustainability how does this change affect the company or the world around us in any way and I'd like also to flag up it's not just carbon emission there 17 uh sustainability goals as defined by the United Nation so it could be making so digital accessibility uh renewable energy energy it could be uh that the product can be recycled so the product life cyle management so it's a bit wider and I think um if we start asking the question we start The Learning Journey because it's not going to be an easy Journey so the soon we start thinking about it and having that in the back of our head say oh does my project have any impact or does this service has any impact on uh clean water access or um reducing poverty it's not obvious and this is where the challenge you might think of a HR Project R out that's where we could be making real impact could be accessibility the colors are accessible to people or you might have um U your website is accessible to people with um Vision issues so it could be anything yeah having um yeah I've worked in that previously I me things like you know having a websites compatible with screen readers and things like that it's really important and often people don't always think about that when they're designing the service or providing the service as well right well we could go on forever fascinating topic um where can people find out more about what you're up to you got like a LinkedIn profile I am on LinkedIn uh yes um and uh I love to uh talk about sustainability about service management uh I'd like to um I'm happy to take on um um more conversations when possible um so yeah reach out to me you wish um and I'd like to keep an eye on your podcast you have an amazing uh amazing um idea here and you're stirring quite a few good ideas thank you very much thank you yes and we so we'll include we'll put a link to your your LinkedIn in the uh in the description so thank you very much uh hin so um just to wrap things up so as hin said so if you if you do enjoy these podcast and do watch some of the other episodes you might find the other topics interesting uh do share these with your friends either the YouTube feed or on LinkedIn uh do give us comments as well we'd love to hear from you and we do read all your comments and that will be fascinating again either on YouTube or LinkedIn whichever is easiest for you uh always me to do is to thank him for joining me this month you and I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas how they brought already or think of bringing Ser uh sustainability into service management um any feedback critics are well uh it's just an idea that I'd like to uh explore further here we go there's a call to action uh and I hope you'll all join us uh again next month thank you [Music]