Continual Improvement is a great idea – so why aren’t you doing it?

It is the core of ITIL4 and the realisation and delivery of value – so why aren’t you doing it?

It is hugely important for the user experience, customer satisfaction, stakeholder management and repeated business – so why aren’t you doing it?

Because its hard. Or are you making it hard?

• Focussing on big bang changes instead of being realistic?
• Introducing complex frameworks instead of starting where you are and incrementing?
• Buying fancy, unjustified toolsets because everyone else has it?

Try this instead:

Start small, really small, by stealth if you must – when dealing with user experience sometimes improvements can be a zero-budget activity such as changing a message on an automated call distribution system. Small changes tend to stick, and success encourages further success.

• Pick one thing – one failure is better than fifteen undelivered improvements
• Improve it – commit to and deliver the improvement
• Measure it – Do not measure everything! Focus on proving the improvement meets the expectation in terms of the detail and the value delivered.
• Publicise your success
• Repeat

It is not about global revolution. Its about ‘continual’ incremental change that quickly realise value and allow future success to be built upon previous efforts.

Throw some Cs at it:

• Considered
• Consistent
• Communicative
• Collaborative

Don’t forget its about people.  Make your programme accessible, visible, and easy to participate in. Take user suggestions and feedback – do not design improvements based on ‘what you want,’ design them on ‘what the business users need.’

What small improvement could you make today?

#ITSM #ITIL4 #ServiceManagement #ContinualImprovement