Human-centred design for IT service management

By Katrina MacDermid

Human-centred design presents a practical approach to use human-centred design concepts to help create, deliver and support IT services. Full of examples, illustrations, stories, definitions and experiences, the author shows the importance of user-experience and presents a double-diamond model as a structure to design value streams.

• Language: English
• Publisher: KayJayEm
• Release date: Jun 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9780117094390

Katrina MacDermid

The author was co-chair and adviser of a board representing some 300 of the world’s airlines. For two years,she led the transformation of IT support models and service level agreements between the airlines and their service providers. The job enabled her to travel, meet leading experts in their fields, work in new and exciting industries, and immerse myself in varied workplace cultures.

Book preview

1IT service management culture and the challenges of today

In this chapter, we will:

•Discuss technology today

•Examine IT culture (or the lack thereof)

•Explore how business people view IT service management

•Take a look at what we really do in IT (it’s not just about machines and software)

•Start connecting IT culture with the human experience of those who use IT services

•Find a deeper purpose in IT service management.

Bridging the great divide

I am sure you will agree that technology has changed everything. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep – and every moment in between – technology permeates our lives. The smartwatch with built-in biomonitoring, the self-driving vehicles, the home devices that optimise lighting, climate control and security, and the evolving smart cities: technology is everywhere. It has changed how, when and where we work and learn and how we interact with each other.

As our technological reliance grows, the management of technology services becomes increasingly complex – from banking to health, to law enforcement, to government. The complexity of the technology landscape, combined with our changing expectations of what technology can do for us, is compelling IT service management professionals to take a different approach.

IT service management was historically designed for stability, cost-effectiveness and standardisation. It was not designed to support – or even consider – the human experience. However, for IT departments to stay relevant to their users, they can no longer support just the technology. They must support people.

In IT service management, the word ‘service’ is usually a noun. It’s about ‘a’ service. It isn’t about serving. Netflix, for example, is a ‘streaming service’. When referring to a ‘service outage’, we don’t mean ‘we’ve stopped serving you’. We mean the network is down. But what if we reimagined IT service management as ‘in the service of’? What if we thought about the framework and delivery of IT service management as being designed to serve? Then we must ask a potentially frightening question: who or what are we serving? The answer is: we are serving the users.

Why is that important? When we understand our users, we can design services to match their needs and enable them to serve their customers’ needs. And this needs to happen before we spend a thing on expensive prototyping, gratuitous consultancies, or convoluted service level agreements that few people can understand or bear to read.

This is a radical shift in thinking for IT service management. It turns the delivery and support of technology into a genuine customer-focused activity by putting the human experience at the centre of IT service management.

So, how do we do this? How do we change decades-old IT service management processes? How do we change tired and outdated IT support models? And how do we change the mindset and ways of working of the people responsible for IT service management?

The answer is Humanising IT.

Before we begin (we’ll talk about the end)

In ‘Who this book is for’, we extended an invitation to share the contents and learning from this book with management and the broader business as an IT professional. Why is that important? We believe there is a fundamental disconnect between many businesses and what is understood as the role of IT service management.

The reasons are varied, and it is necessary to examine some of them to ensure we can take steps to make a change. So, we will explore some of the reasons, including the historical foundations of the frameworks adopted in IT service management, and the skills and attributes of those traditionally drawn to work in this space. And we will look at the challenges of definitions – same words, different meaning – and perceptions or misconceptions.

Organisational theorists would posit that the presence of disconnect and/or absence of harmony is an outcome of the culture. This is now a perfect opportunity to introduce Mark Basham (see box); his view is that IT culture is separated from the business (and this needs to change).

The importance of meaning

If you are reading this, I assume you understand what IT service management is. But let’s spend some time discussing it, just to be sure we are all using the same meaning.

Many companies are service-based organisations, as opposed to being manufacturers (companies that create and ship goods). Service-based companies deliver services and include industries in the financial, aviation and healthcare sectors – to name but a few. IT service management is the sub-sector of these service-based industries that provides the IT resources.

Let’s look at Fly First Airlines, a fictitious story that I introduced in ‘About this book’. The airline is a service-based industry transporting passengers and cargo. Examples of IT resources are hardware, software, people, specialised buildings, networks, etc. These IT resources need to be managed and that’s where IT service management comes in.

It is important to note that there are many types of approaches – typically called frameworks – that are used to manage IT resources. IT service management covers the end-to-end delivery of IT services to customers, including all processes and activities to design and support IT services.¹ And, just to ensure a clear understanding (because it’s in the title of the book), I’ve given a definition of human-centred design.

Definition: Human-centred design

‘Human-centered design is an approach to problem-solving [commonly used in design and management frameworks] that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Human involvement typically takes place in observing the problem within context, brainstorming, conceptualising, developing, and implementing the solution.’²

IT culture: A discussion by Mark Basham

Mark Basham, former CEO of Axelos; founder and director of HIT Global

Strategy and culture are among the primary levers available to top leaders in their quest to drive business performance and create sustainable success.³ Strategy offers a formal logic for a company’s goals and orients people around them.⁴ Culture expresses goals through values, beliefs and ethics, and guides activity through shared assumptions, social norms and behaviours.⁵

Surveys consistently reinforce the importance of organisational culture to business performance and sustainable success. I fervently agree with whoever came up with the saying ‘Culture will eat strategy for breakfast.’⁶

If teams are not aligned around a common set of values, beliefs and behaviours (culture), even the best strategy will be difficult to execute and risks outright failure.

Given the importance of culture to business performance and the delivery of strategy, it is surprising that so little is written about what makes a successful IT service management culture. IT service management frameworks have started to mention value and value creation but remain light on human experience, people and culture.

As I talk to IT executives in organisations across the globe, I am struck by the number of IT teams who still feel separated from the business. This separation inevitably results in IT culture being defined by the values, beliefs and shared norms of the people working in IT, who in all likelihood see themselves as passive contributors to culture.

This highlights two opportunities. Firstly, how do we help the IT service management teams to understand what a successful IT service management culture looks like within an organisation? And secondly, how do we ensure that the IT service management culture is aligned and integrated with the wider organisational culture?

Getting this right has the potential to unlock a massive upside to businesses and to transform the internal perception and position of the IT service management team, from cost centre and service provider to strategic business partner.

Over to you

How would you describe the culture of your IT department?

Is that consistent with the overall organisation?

Do you see yourself as a passive or active contributor to your IT service management culture?

It’s time to talk

Mark provides an executive’s perspective of an IT department: do you know how the people in your business would describe your IT department?

Our research shows clear themes, in industries ranging from aviation to healthcare. Take a look at the word cloud in Figure 1 to see their answers. Can you relate to these responses? What stands out to you?

Figure 1 Word cloud – what does the business think of IT?

Over to you

Do you think you would receive the same responses if you asked your business what it thought of IT?

Complicated? Slow? Expensive?

These are words frequently used to describe how we think the business sees us as IT professionals. You may have even heard them used to describe us directly, in feedback surveys or messaged in a virtual meeting. So, if you think the business sees you negatively, you’re not alone. Surveys of hundreds of IT service management professionals support the negative sentiments expressed