I was recently speaking with a service management practitioner who was looking to revisit a service management improvement strategy. When I asked her what she was working with she indicated that her organization was looking to build out its service management capability regarding the following processes: Change, Incident and Request to start with.
The initial component of the project, which was completed was performing the gap analysis from where they are today and where they need to be. The company had outlined several roles which needed to be filled but like any company these days identified that money is an object and that they need to be selective with the overall operational cost of the newly rebuilt service management team.
My advice to her was simple. Quality vs Quantity.
You want to position yourself to have the people filling these roles as agents for change for the ITSM project. The reason is simple, you need to have people who can not only manage the work but be advocates for the work being completed. In many cases their skills will need to allow them to train material, be able to market the processes to those who do not understand them as well taking metrics and translating them into something tangible for lasting improvements.
I suggested that her efforts in the initial component of the improvement phase would be best served having these types of people compared with more warm bodies occupying seats. I went on to state that rather than hiring 5 people of average skill if they were to have one all-star in each of the three roles you would have a better shot at not only delivering value but sharing the success that goes along with it.
After all, when it comes right down to it being able to show tangible results will allow to further grow this improvement initiative in future phases over the long run. In cases where you do not have these advocates you may run the risk of implementing processes with process managers which will keep the business operating but not enable them to take service to the next level.
Clear guidelines are always needed. Having them perform their activities within specific constraints will make them more effective.