ITSM Requirement Gathering Techniques

In a previous discussion, we talked about the three levels of requirements in Service Design: Functional, Usability and Management and Operational. There is a range of techniques that can be used to actually obtain these services requirements. It is often difficult to get your customers to verbalize what they need. It has been my experience that the customers and the business are not completely sure of what their requirements actually are. They will need assistance and prompting from the designer or requirements gatherer. This must be done in a professional and sensitive manner to ensure that it is not seen as IT dictating the business requirement. We are all familiar with the most popular techniques, interviewing and workshops.

 

The following is a list of additional techniques which might aid you in the Service Design requirements gathering stage:

• Observation: Watch your customers perform a specific task
• Protocol Analysis: Ask your users to describe each step as they perform it
• Shadowing: Follow a user perform a task for a specific period
• Scenario Analysis: Trace a task from the initial business trigger to its successful outcome
• Prototyping: Show the users how the new service might work
• Questionnaires Forms: Document perspectives from many people
• Special Purpose Records: Allow users a way to record specific tasks
• Activity Sampling: Track how user spend their time on tasks

To be successful in requirements gathering, using only one of these techniques often is not enough. You may need to use several of the techniques to get the complete story from your customers. Also knowing from whom you need to get this information is a critical success factor. Hopefully, using some of these techniques, targeted toward the correct audience will contribute to the production of a complete Service Design Package.

Usability or "User-Ability" Requirements

Too often, IT professionals jump from strategy right into implementation without doing the proper due diligence in collecting, analyzing and recording detailed customer requirements.

The ITIL Service Design book defines three levels of requirements: Functional, Management / Operational and Usability. It gives us in-depth descriptions of Functional requirements and Management/Operational requirements but leaves me a bit empty when it comes to Usability requirements. The definition is as follows,

“The primary purpose of usability requirements is to ensure that the
service meets the expectations of its users with regard to its ease of use. To achieve this:

• Establish performance standards for usability evaluations
• Define test scenarios for usability test plans and usability testing.

I like to define this as “User-ability”. Service Design (Section 5.1.1) describes this as the ‘look and feel’ needs of the user that facilitates its ease of use. Usability requirements are often seen as a part of Management and Operational requirements. In truth, usability requirements are more about the interface that the customer actually uses to engage the service. Is it intuitive, easy to use, flow from one field another logically? Does this usability enhance the user/customers experience and will it create acceptability by the user community with a minimum of training?

The Service Design book (Section 5.1.3) provides you with a complete laundry list of investigation techniques to determine usability requirements. We will be discussing these techniques in an upcoming Blog.

Making the Case for Self-Help

HDI (formerly Help Desk Institute) recently released its 2009 Practices and Salary survey and reports that an incident resolved via the telephone costs $22, while an incident resolved via self-help costs $12. Furthermore, 11 percent of the organizations surveyed report that self-help tools are prompting a decrease in the number of incidents reported to the Service Desk. Having said that, these organizations also report that only three percent of incidents are resolved via self-help.

With the Baby Boomers retiring and technically savvy Gen Y joining the workforce – and, oh yeah, the economy – the time has come to get serious about self-help as a support channel.

Many think the solution lies in finding and installing the right technology; however, new technology projects often fail from a lack of preparation and management. Here’s where the four Ps come in to play. Introduced in the ITIL Service Design publication, the four Ps – in the context of self-help – include:

People – How can you incent people to capture and share their knowledge and to use self-help and Knowledge Management Systems?

Processes – How can you take a more formal approach to processes such as Request Fulfillment, Problem Management, and Knowledge Management?

Products – What tools can you use and how can you integrate those tools with existing technologies such as Incident Management Systems and web-based systems?

Partners – How can you convert partners’ knowledge and expertise into a capability?

In our busy society, people have become accustomed to using self-help and self-services. Our customers appreciate services that enhance their self-sufficiency and enable them to accomplish tasks at their own pace. Self-help can be as simple as a list of FAQs. Or, self-help services can provide customers the ability to search an online knowledge base, reset a password, or download approved software.

To make the most effective use of the four Ps when deploying self-help, you should first determine the roles of processes such as Request Fulfillment and Incident, Problem, and Knowledge Management. Then, determine the roles of the people who are stakeholders in those processes, including your customers. You can then determine your requirements, evaluate and implement the products required to automate those processes and enable people to fulfill their roles. Be sure you make the best possible use of partner (vendor, consultant, and contractor) resources along the way, whether by utilizing their self-help resources, or by adopting and adapting the experience and best practices offered by their staff.

Will all of your customers use self-help? No, and not always. You still need a great Service Desk on the front line. However, a well-trained Service Desk can encourage the use of self-help in a positive way, and promote its benefits. Benefits that go not only to your customers, but to your entire support organization as well.