It’s All Change in the World of ITSM (and Me)

The last 12 months has seen a variety of refreshes in the IT service management (ITSM) industry: an updated COBIT, a new VeriSM book, changes to ISO/IEC 20000, and the launch of the latest version of ITIL – ITIL 4. And so it seemed like the perfect time for me to undertake a few refreshes of my own, treating myself to a little “makeover.”

“No way, you’re cute enough as you are” I hear you cry!

I know you’ve all probably been thinking it for the past ten years: “How does Joe stay so youthful looking?!” (Moisturizer and Botox are awesome by the way.) But time has finally caught up with me. After all, these are rapidly changing times that we’re living in! So, as cute as I may be (or so I’ve been told at numerous ITSM conferences), I figured it was time for a change. New look, new me, and all that jazz.

In all seriousness though, I’ve matured and with that maturity comes the need for a slightly different – less puppet-like – image. In 2019, I like to think of myself as slicker (although still huggable), wiser, and far more experienced in the world of ITSM. (Humble brag time, I’ve just been named as one of the top 25 thought leaders in technical support and service management for 2018 by HDI, alongside many of my ITSM heroes). So anyway, in short, I’ve had a little facelift, but in reality I’m still the same old Joe you’ve always known (and hopefully loved).

At this point I think it might be wise to post a photo of my snazzy new look so you don’t walk past me in the street without recognizing me:

For all my fans and stalkers out there, feel free to print this out to pin on your wall…

So that’s the big news, here’s the other news…

Ok, ok, BIGGER news.

As excited as I am about my new clothes and jawline, my marketing department keeps reminding me that my makeover is not the most important thing happening where I work right now (which I’m sure you all know is SysAid Technologies). As it happens, I’m not the only one that’s had a little refresh – our ITSM solution has undergone a little transformation of its own.

Today, we launched a refreshed user interface (UI) for our solution that offers a fresh and simpler user experience to help our customers work more effectively and improve their IT service delivery. And I have to give it up to our product team, this is some of their best work (although my repeated requests for little dancing robot icons were ignored, apparently “There’s no value in dancing robots Joe”).

After many, many consultations with our customers, it was apparent that incident management is still where our customers spend most of their time. In fact, a little study that some of my colleagues did (SysAid marketing call these people “data scientists” and I’m saying nothing because I don’t want to get fired) found that IT admins are spending 85% of their time on ticket resolution, and so the new UI is very much geared towards simplifying the user experience around the creation, handling, and closing of tickets.

Here are the details on just three of the UI changes for those of you familiar with the SysAid solution:

1. Individual incidents are now presented like news stories, descending from the broadest information to the most detailed. Up top, a bookmark-style tab displays the urgency, impact, status, and other big-picture data. The layout descends to ticket descriptions, notes, and messages, where only the latest information is displayed to prevent unnecessary scrolling and information overload. When needed, an admin can easily click to see the full documentation and conversation.
2. A personalized insights panel has been introduced on the right-hand side. The panel includes a selection of agent and departmental key performance indicators (KPIs) “at a glance,” so you have a visual representation of the statuses of all tickets. Examples of these KPIs include: # of tickets approaching a breach of SLA, # of tickets closed by admin today vs. assigned to admin, and software changes on users’ assets in the past 48 hours.
3. A new modernized admin dashboard has been introduced, which makes it easier for IT admins to gain immediate and valuable insights from their service desk data.

Now obviously I’m neither the product nor marketing brains behind all this, so if you want the full details I suggest you check out this video.

Right, back to business…

I know you’ve come to expect a little less “marketing noise’ from me, but sometimes I do have to do as I’m told and remember who pays the bills… You can of course still appreciate my new suave look regardless of who your ITSM provider is and, more importantly, continue to enjoy (and hopefully learn from) my blog content. Normal blogging will be resumed tomorrow…

And, after a few weeks of focusing on all that’s new in the world of ITSM best practice – with posts on ITIL 4, ISO 20000, and COBIT – I’m continuing the theme later this week with an A-Z of ITIL 4, followed the following week with a post on VeriSM and how to blend it into your existing ITSM capabilities. Then I’ll be staying on the same topic, with my hotly anticipated A-Z of VeriSM (I’m currently struggling with J and X, please feel free to post helpful suggestions either in the comments or on Twitter).

After that, I’m thinking about getting back to some good old process (or as we should now call them “practices”) posts. I’ve had quite a few requests for help with change management recently (or as we should now call it “change control” [sidenote: I wonder how long I’ll need to talk in both old ITIL vocabulary and new ITIL vocabulary until I feel confident enough that everyone knows what I’m talking about without referring to the retired terminology].

If there are any other topics you’d like to see me put pen to paper on (or fingers to keyboard), if you have questions about SysAid’s new UI, or you simply wish to shower me with compliments over my dapper new look, then please post below in the comments or reach out to me on Twitter.