What’s nice about service management is you’re never really over the hill; we continue to give new life to proven techniques. Perhaps that’s one reason I still like rolling uphill.
Sometimes I feel like a kid in a candy store; new knowledge doesn’t have to be new, and so if you’re already familiar with some of the rant that follows feel free to skip ahead…this is going to be very much a midnight ramble.
Take innovation for example. Some time ago I came across the Fugle Innovation Model, and wound up dreaming about gate-free IT.
I’ve long been a fan of the Customer Expectation Management Method, ever since I ran into Terry Shurter and Don Smith years ago. CEMM leveraged an innovation toolkit that used Moments of Truth as a process diagnostic. Today’s interest in Jobs to be Done (JTBD) theory seems like a natural follow up to CEMM, but both can still be useful.
Today’s focus on the customer experience and human-centered design seems to give new life to these proven techniques, and I hope to finally get around to read Humanizing IT someday.
I recently came across one of Fred Nickols posts and a paper on Results Architecture. While it was dated 2016 and not ‘new’, I found it fascinating and definitely worth a read. It touched on several areas that have been getting new life in recent years— systems thinking along with human behavior and performance.
Of course, my current preoccupation with the Unified Service Management (USM) method (which is also based on architecture) has me thinking about how a service management architecture based on systems thinking can co-exist with the Results Architecture. While they take different perspectives, they do seem to think alike!
Simplifying service management with USM will enable more effective application of these and other techniques, as well as various practices and standards. As people apply new and old techniques at a more rapid pace, I believe this simplified management system increases in importance.
Then the kid in the candy store can have all the candy he/she wants.