When implementing Enterprise Service Management (ESM) or IT Service Management (ITSM), it’s important to consider your project management tools and processes – especially if you’re working with limited resources. By bringing ESM/ITSM and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) together – you can gain a 360-degree view of your entire organization. Every project, problem and service request is all there at your fingertips allowing you to engage in true resource capacity planning.
With resource capacity planning you can balance workloads across projects and IT support, using your ITSM/ESM platform to see the different types of work that need to be done at any given time and the resources available to work on those projects and tickets.
For example, if you have three IT technicians that need to cover three functional areas of business – like service, projects and operations – you can use resource capacity planning to optimize each technician’s workload based on their skill set and their availability. As a result, the work can be completed more effectively and efficiently as each technician is focused on work that plays to their strengths. And because you have a full view of the work and the time it will take to complete; you can avoid overcommitting or underutilizing your resources.
This approach is beneficial when you have limited resources, but an increase in demand for the support of remote learning and remote workforces – as many organizations do.
Recently, the City of Goodyear took steps to increase the maturity of its IT operations by bringing together ITSM and PPM and giving leaders a holistic view of the work employees are doing.
With TeamDynamix now in place, the city is well-positioned to grow its IT maturity.
On the IT service side, the platform has allowed the city to set up a service catalog and a self-service portal that routs tickets to the correct staff members for fulfillment automatically, reducing the number of times that service tickets bounce around from one person to another. This has helped speed up incident response times significantly.
“We did a training roadshow,” Faison said, whereby IT staff met with various departments and showed them how to use the self-service portal. They also handed out pens with the link to the portal etched on the side. This internal marketing campaign has contributed to widespread adoption, with about three-fourths of service requests now being submitted through the portal— and this is leading to faster resolution for employees.
Automated workflows have also helped streamline key processes and improve the delivery of IT services. For instance, the IT team established an automated workflow within TeamDynamix for purchasing hardware and software, with requests being routed automatically to the appropriate people for approvals.
“It’s a nice, fully automated workflow,” Faison said. “We’d like to implement automated workflows in other areas moving forward as well.”
On the project side, TeamDynamix gives the city’s IT department a simple way to evaluate, approve and manage projects of all sizes. Managing IT projects and service requests within the same platform gives leaders a holistic view of the work that team members are doing.
“It helps us evaluate whether we can take on new projects based on the people we have available,” said Remi Nunez, senior IT project manager. And this is critical for reducing resource drain.