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Service Improvement and Review

Technology services are never truly finished.

The College needs change. Technology changes. Security requirements change. Vendors change. Customers discover new needs. Incidents expose weaknesses. Employees identify better ways to work.

ISS therefore treats continual service improvement as part of operating every service.

Improvement does not always require a major project.

Many meaningful improvements are small, incremental changes made because we pay attention to what our services and customers are telling us.

Operate Creates Feedback

The Plan → Build → Operate model includes a feedback loop.

Operate produces information about how a service performs in the real world.

That information should feed back into Plan and Build.

Useful feedback may come from:

  • Tickets
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
  • Help Desk experience
  • Incidents
  • Outages and degradations
  • Problems
  • Monitoring
  • Retrospectives
  • Security reviews
  • Maintenance
  • Technical Leads
  • Backups
  • Service Owners
  • Vendors
  • Projects
  • College departments
  • Students, faculty, and employees

The goal is not simply to collect information.

The goal is to use it.

ISS should periodically review ticket activity to identify recurring needs and common support issues.

Repeated tickets may indicate the need to:

  • Fix an underlying problem.
  • Improve a service.
  • Provide training.
  • Create or improve documentation.
  • Improve self-service.
  • Automate a repetitive process.
  • Change configuration.
  • Improve communication.
  • Begin a larger project.

A ticket that appears simple by itself may become meaningful when viewed as part of a pattern.

Listen to the Help Desk

The Help Desk interacts directly with customers across many ISS services.

That perspective is valuable.

Help Desk employees may recognize:

  • Repeated customer confusion
  • Difficult processes
  • Missing documentation
  • Common failures
  • Opportunities for self-service
  • Training needs
  • Service behaviors that create unnecessary tickets

This feedback should be shared with Service Owners and Technical Leads rather than remaining only within the Help Desk.

Review Customer Feedback

Customer satisfaction information provides another view of service performance.

Positive feedback helps identify practices worth continuing.

Low scores and negative feedback should be reviewed with a focus on understanding:

  • What the customer experienced.
  • Whether expectations were clear.
  • Whether communication worked.
  • Whether the technical outcome was successful.
  • Whether a process should change.
  • Whether training or coaching is needed.

Feedback should be used for learning and improvement.

Service Owner Responsibility

The Service Owner is responsible for helping ensure that the service continues to meet College needs.

That includes periodically considering:

  • Service reliability
  • Customer experience
  • Ticket patterns
  • Recurring incidents
  • Known problems
  • Security
  • Documentation
  • Technical debt
  • Maintenance
  • Monitoring
  • Backup coverage
  • Vendor performance
  • Lifecycle
  • Capacity
  • Future College needs

A service that is currently working may still need improvement.

Improvement Can Take Different Forms

An improvement may become:

  • A documentation update
  • A training activity
  • A Help Desk procedure
  • A configuration change
  • Automation
  • Sustainment work
  • A maintenance activity
  • A corrective action for an underlying or recurring problem.
  • A project
  • Replacement of a service
  • Retirement of a service offering

The size of the solution should match the size of the problem.

Not every improvement needs to become a project.

Prioritize Improvement

Improvement opportunities compete with other work.

Managers and Service Owners should consider:

  • Benefit to customers
  • College priorities
  • Risk
  • Number of people affected
  • Frequency of the problem
  • Effort required
  • Security
  • Reliability
  • Cost
  • Available resources
  • Technical debt
  • Upcoming lifecycle needs

Some improvements can be completed quickly.

Others should be placed into Plan for further evaluation and eventual Build work.

Measure Whether the Improvement Helped

Whenever practical, ISS should determine whether an improvement produced the intended result.

Evidence may include:

  • Fewer tickets
  • Fewer incidents
  • Faster resolution
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Better performance
  • Reduced manual effort
  • Improved reliability
  • Better security
  • Improved documentation
  • Greater Help Desk resolution
  • Reduced dependence on one employee

Improvement should produce value, not simply activity.

Improvement Is Everyone's Responsibility

Service Owners coordinate service improvement, but good ideas may come from anyone.

Employees should raise opportunities when they see:

  • Repeated work
  • Frustrating processes
  • Unnecessary manual steps
  • Recurring customer confusion
  • Technical debt
  • Missing documentation
  • Preventable incidents
  • Better ways to accomplish the work

Employees closest to the work often see improvement opportunities first.

Close the Feedback Loop

When customer feedback, an incident, a ticket trend, or another observation leads to an improvement, communicate the result when appropriate.

This completes the cycle:

Operate → Feedback → Plan → Build → Operate

We observe.

We learn.

We improve.

Then we observe again.

Connection to Our Values

People Matter because service improvement starts by understanding how technology affects the people using it.

Inclusiveness Matters because useful ideas and perspectives can come from customers, Help Desk employees, Technical Leads, managers, and others throughout the College.

Communication Matters because feedback only creates value when it reaches the people who can act on it.

Integrity Matters because we should acknowledge weaknesses and follow through when improvement is needed.

Excellence Matters because good enough today does not mean good enough forever. Continual improvement helps ISS keep services useful, reliable, secure, and aligned with the mission of the College.

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