Synopses & Reviews
The complete "best practices" guide to IT problem resolution!
No matter how professional your IT organization, if you can't resolve problems quickly and effectively, you'll lose your stakeholders' confidenceand fail. Nowadays, help desk s aren't enough: companies want true service centers capable of delivering complex, strategic solutions. IT Problem Management is the first single source for building world-class problem management processes. Drawing upon his extensive consulting e xperience, Gary Walker presents specific improvements you can make to achieve breakthrough results in any help desk or service centerin-house or out-sourced. Coverage includes:
- Problem identification, customer validation, problem lo gging, service delivery, knowledge capture and sharing, and management oversight
- The Immediate Response Model: accounting for problem variability, complexity, and volume
- Detailed metrics for measuring your responsiveness
- Bett er ways to create and use service level agreements
- State-of-the-art tools for customer interaction, service delivery, and proactive monitoring
- New Internet and knowledge base systems: empowering users to solve their own problems
- The human side: staffing, retention, and motivation
IT Problem Management isn't just theory: it delivers real-world case studies, detailed benchmarks, and practical solutions for turning your help desk into a high-performance I T service center, starting today.
About the Author
GARY WALKER is a leading IT consultant, helping Fortune 500 and emerging growth companies focus on the people, processes, and technology required to operate a highly reliable and cost effective infrastructure.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to Problem Management.
Help Desk. Internal and External Service Centers. Building a Successful Service Center. Problem Management Process Overview. Management Review and Oversight.
2. Service Center Organization.
Immediate Response Model. Managed Response Model.
3. Maintaining a Service Catalog.
Add a New Service. Remove a Service.
4. Problem Identification.
Problem Discovery. Problem Reporting Access. The Proactive Service Center. Implementation Considerations.
5. Customer Validation.
Typical Validation. Formal Validation. Validation Process Description. Validation Implementation.
6. Problem Logging.
Current Problem Logging Approaches. Future Problem Logging Methods. Service Request Categories Overview. Prioritizing Requests Overview.
7. Service Delivery.
Problem Determination. Work Restoration. Service Center Organization Overview. Escalation. Tier 1, 2, and 3 Problem Management Responsibilities. Service Request (Ticket) Ownership.
8. Knowledge Capture and Sharing.
Knowledge Capture and Sharing Overview. Knowledge Capture Process. Implementation.
9. Management, Review, and Oversight.
Building Your Plan: Strategic Objectives and Metrics. Using Metrics to Measure Your Progress. Formal Review of Metrics. Key Roles and Management Teams. Reports.
10. Service Level Agreements.
SLA Content. Using the SLA.
11. Service Center Tools.
Access Tools. Service Delivery Tools. Proactive Monitoring Tools. Customer-Enabling Tools.
12. Motivation.
Motivation Through Reward. Motivation Through Incentives. Other Motivation Techniques. The Manager's Role in Motivation.
Index.