IT Service Management Use Cases
A Fresh Perspective
Often a fresh pair of eyes can make all the difference.
In these three examples we quickly embedded ourselves in existing working groups and started demonstrating new, data-driven ways of addressing long-standing challenges.
Identifying repeat Incidents
Although many teams were tasked with reducing Incidents, their sheer volume and variety, coupled with the pace of technology change, posed challenges: it was hard to keep track of Incident resolution and reduction, and there was no visibility of the number of reoccurring issues.
To address this, we used statistical information retrieval methods to cluster large volumes of Incidents and reveal themes. This enabled us to identify repeat Incidents and highlight opportunities to improve resolution actions.
Revealing hidden Problems
Problem Management processes were in place, but it was difficult to identify, rank and prioritise the most time-consuming issues; important Problems were hidden.
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We addressed this by detecting and flagging Incident clusters to create missing Problem records. Furthermore, we quickly identified that
the organisation's 'Top 20' Problems were not in fact the most significant. This analysis led to process improvements and positive feedback from Service Management and support teams.
Creating insights from big data
We needed to increase confidence in system performance but there were obstacles: a huge volume of data to process; lots of variables to account for; a requirement to view both the detail and the long-term picture; and only one subject matter expert (SME).
We started examining the data and promptly introduced open-source software to enable large-scale data processing. Liaising daily with the SME and using a variety of graphical representations - such as the below box plot chart - we presented fortnightly insights to senior managers and drove the creation of fresh performance KPIs.
