I teach the ITIL V3 Foundations Course at least monthly, and without fail a student will ask me a question like “So… How exactly do I set up the incident management process in my help desk system?” at which point I have a discussion with the class about the difference between process and workflow.

This is part 1 of a three part series discussing how to “Bridge the Gap” between Service Desks, IT Processes, and Workflow.  In Part 1, I will describe the role IT Processes have, as defined by ITIL, in relation to the service desk.

Processes, or better stated Business Processes, are the entire set of activities, people, tools, etc… that contributes to a specific business outcome.  ITIL describes a process as “…a set of coordinated activities combining and implementing resources and capabilities in order to produce an outcome, which directly or indirectly creates value for an external customer or stakeholder” (Service Strategy, 2007).

The processes that the Service Desk has the most frequent interaction with include Incident Management, Request Fulfillment, Problem Management, Change Management and others.  The confusion comes in when the people working within the process lose track of what a process really is; a set of inputs which are processed into outputs based on defined triggers.

So what’s the importance of designing & implementing a good process in that case?

To answer that question, I ask another, is it important for the rest of the organization to define the business processes that deliver products and services to your organization’s customers?  Of course it is, and IT Processes are the business processes of the IT Service Organization, providing the measureable outcomes whereby success of the IT Business can be understood.

Put another way… Processes identify the outcomes you need to measure to be successful in delivering the value of IT Services to the business.  Without a clear definition of success, the likelihood that you will define your work, policies, and procedures correctly is chancy at best.

Processes, as defined by ITIL have three factors that must be considered.

The Process Itself which is defined by the activities, procedures, work instructions, roles, and most importantly the measureable metrics for the process.  The activities are what we usually are discussing when talking about the workflow automation done in service desk tools, but those activities, do not make up the process.

More important than the activities are the process measures, for without a way to objectively measure success, any process is ultimately doomed.  Without measures, there is no way to reliably show the value in managing a process and, without value, IT enters the familiar death spiral of declining trust with the business; becoming viewed as overhead to be cut instead of a provider of valuable services.

The Process Controls “are the activities of planning and regulating a process, with the objective of performing a process in an efficient and consistent manner” (Service Design, 2007).   Processes need owners to be accountable for the success of the process, and to insure that the process is improved over time according to the results of the measures.  Policies also need to be in place to ensure that the process goals are achieved within an appropriate set of business rules.

Process Enablers are the resources (primarily people and technology), as well as process capabilities (Knowledge & Skills in the organization as an example) which define the constraints under which the process can be executed.  All processes should be designed with an understanding of the capabilities of the organization in terms of process enablers.

Bringing this all together, processes give definition to how the IT Organization in general and the Service Desk organization specifically can measure success.  So, as we consider the value of tools for our processes, their importance is in the ability to:

MEASURE the effectiveness of the process through the reporting of key metrics
CONTROL the process through the implementation of business rules
and
ENABLE the process through workflow automation

Remember, Processes are not the tools, and the tools are not the process.  But, a full understanding of the relationship between the processes in the organizations, and the tools that enable, measure, and control the processes is required to successfully manage the modern IT Service Organization effectively.

In Part 2 of this series, I will go into the value of workflow to the service desk, and how it differs from process.  Part 3 will bring it all together, and give some advice on how to bring process together with workflow, and increase the maturity and value delivered by Service Desks in the IT Organization.

Guest blogger, Vernon Palango is the Principle Consultant for InteQ’s On Demand Service Management Consulting and Training organization.  In addition, he acts as the primary advisor for InfraDesk, InteQ’s On Demand Service Desk, clients during the implementation stage. www.inteqnet.com