IT service management (ITSM) is the backbone of most enterprise IT organisations today. Service desk applications often de?ned IT support, with IT teams relying on ITSM to help manage almost every service they deliver to their colleagues and customers.
Delivering services shouldn’t be complex, but traditional ITSM tools aren’t keeping up with today’s pace of change. ITSM tools were developed in the 1980s when innovation was dictated by mainframes and 10Mbps networking speeds. Back then, enterprise organisations were simply trying to agree on common practices.
Today the pace of change has never been faster. Companies rise and fall based on their ability to deliver new technologies and services quickly, and Agile, Lean, and DevOps culture de?ned successful businesses.
New ITSM software solutions have emerged that improve collaboration, team communication, speed, and transparency. These software solutions not only support – but also foster DevOps processes. Today, Atlassian is a key enabler of transformation and modernisation efforts, with companies pushing to automate user-centric processes to improve customer, client, and employee satisfaction, while saving money and improving productivity with products like Jira Service Management.
The ITSM mindset is shifting
In this guide, you will learn an approach to ITSM that combines new IT industry standards and the principles of Agile and DevOps so you can focus on services that deliver business value. If you feel bogged down by heavy, old school ITSM tools, it may be time to switch.
We’ll deep dive into how Atlassian approaches modern ITSM with its suite of products.
ITSM and ITIL
ITIL is the most widely accepted framework for ITSM, focusing on practices for aligning IT services with business needs. ITIL can help organisations adapt to ongoing transformation and scale. The update to the ITIL standards, ITIL 4, represents a paradigm shift for IT teams.
It guides teams to a holistic, business and customer-value frame of reference, and encourages a more flexible approach based on how your team works. The ITIL 4 guiding principles promote collaboration, simplicity, feedback, and co-creation.
Value co-creation in ITIL 4 focuses on customer experience and interactive relationships. This notion allows and encourages a more active involvement from the customer in creating a value-rich experience. Previously, although providers could create services and deliver value, those organisations that only considered their own perspective would risk falling behind their competitors.
Instead, they need to understand the constantly shifting perspective of their customers.
Taking an agile and DevOps-oriented approach enables ITIL 4 practitioners to involve their customers throughout the process, from planning, designing and building to supporting and improving services through robust feedback mechanisms. This inclusive approach ensures the voice of the customer is present and involved throughout. Focusing on co-creating value makes sure that businesses concentrate on what their consumers really want, and the outcomes that their services support.
Convergence of DevOps and ITSM
In the IT industry, we often hear varying opinions around DevOps and ITSM. These concepts are typically pitched against each other as either/or decision, such as “we are either an ITIL or a DevOps house.”
The reality is that ITIL 4 is leading ITSM into the agile and DevOps era
The latest version of ITIL transitions from rigid policies and silos to transparency and communication. It removes walls between IT, coworkers, and customers.
ITIL helps teams work smarter and quicker, but also provides the required process and control. Modern, high-performing teams and organisations are starting to realise this and use elements of both.
Applying agile and DevOps principles to ITSM leads to collaborative service delivery and iterative service improvement. By harnessing the core principles of both ITIL and DevOps, your ITSM will transform from “doing things right” to “doing the right things.”
Check out my previous articles on ITIL certification training.
Atlassian modern ITSM software solutions
Atlassian has modernised ITSM to support DevOps organisations with changes in service desk, incident management, and stakeholder communication. Atlassian Jira Service Management, Opsgenie, and Statuspage are used by leading organisations to enable ITSM at DevOps speed.
Let’s take a look at these tools.
Jira Service Management
A collaborative service desk where you can easily receive, track, manage, and resolve requests from your team’s customers.
Jira Service Management has richer ITSM capabilities than its predecessor, enabling agile and DevOps processes with modern customer self-service and improved transparency.
IT and developer organisations can solve problems faster because they can link and track issues from inception to resolution across teams. Everyone has full visibility into the queue, and all the right experts can collaborate to solve issues faster. As a result, developers and IT staff have more time to focus on building better software and services.
Opsgenie
In addition to Jira Service Management’s key capabilities, OpsGenie’s functionality is now included by default within Jira Service Management Cloud. This cloud-based incident response platform empowers teams to plan for service disruptions and to stay in control during incidents.
By consolidating notification management into a single management system, Opsgenie improves communication by integrating applications such as Slack. Incident Status web pages can also be created automatically to fast-track stakeholder notifications about incident resolution progress and service health.
Statuspage
Statuspage provides a real-time online view of the current situation with all your services, alongside details on historic events, to help users grow their understanding of known problems during an incident in a self-service way.
As a result, Statuspage makes it easy for customers to understand what’s going on, with incidents prominently displayed at the top
of the page for visitors to see right when they arrive.
Unlocking high-velocity ITSM with Jira Service Management
As we well know, IT is in the midst of a transformation to build capabilities that enable the rapid delivery of high-quality services. Th