What is Flow Management, and why is it needed alongside ITIL and Experience Management?
85% of sector experts believe capabilities for Flow Management (FM) will be "must-haves" when switching ITSM tool. This 2-minute read explains why it is needed.
Summary
So, what is Flow Management?
"Flow Management is a set of tool-based capabilities for Support Lifecycle Management, aka ticket management - ITIL's missing practice. It is one of two Focus Framework practices, the other being Team Performance Management, together bringing twenty IT support high performance principles to life by continuously guiding teams in the best way possible. Enabled by advanced metrics, it is a modern service system of "true best practice" that covers all operational needs."
Why has Support Lifecycle Management been missing?
Few would disagree that for complex business operations such as IT support, a process is needed that makes sense of the complexity, to guide teams through it as effectively as possible.
ITIL is a framework though, not a methodology. Frameworks cannot be overly prescriptive, so where processes are present, only fundamental basic steps are included.
All ITSM tools are built on ITIL processes. This means that by proxy, IT organisations the world-over work in this basic way, limiting how successful an organisation can be.
ITIL processes must be built-upon to make them fit for purpose. Indeed, when moving to a new ITSM tool, this is what a good implementation will do.
But with it not previously being specified in any framework or methodology, good ticket management is neither targeted nor accomplished.
So, this is where you are:
ITXM's biggest challenge?
Other than to bring attention to the problem of frequent slow and failed support, ITXM cannot help much in this area.
In fact, when ageing tickets receive managerial focus and / or when use of "on-hold" is prohibited, a drive to meet SLA's and keep ticket volume down leads to substantially increased service failure where "my ticket was not solved". It's a fact shown in global benchmark data produced by HappySignals.
Equally as striking, benchmark data shows that timeliness falls short in 10% of all tickets. Over a quarter are not completed straight-away, so the balance is this...
The level of weak support has persisted over the years, so there is just one conclusion to be drawn.
To prevent slow, unresponsive and failed support, an improved process is necessary.
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