Consulting - [kuh n-suhl-ting] – adjective - employed or involved in giving professional advice to the public or to those practicing the profession.
Consult - [v. kuh n-suhlt] – verb - to seek advice or information from; ask guidance from.
Customers rely on the experience, knowledge, and professionalism of consultants for various needs, including:
Best Practices
Process Review/Design
Guidance/Advice
Relevant Experience
Things Lurking in the Shadows
Best Practices
I often get asked about best practices for ITIL and the tool for which I consult. I'm always willing to provide the best practice information and knowledge I have received over my career. I try to provide information that is helpful to the specific organization and industry, when relevant and possible. At times my best practice information may conflict with the customer's desires, requirements, or capabilities, even. Using the customer feedback I can tailor that advice to be more relevant and efficient for the customer.
For example, working with Incident Management, I get asked a lot about categorization, or how to create an effective Incident Catalog. Many of the catalogs I see usually focus on the symptom. Since there can be many different types symptoms it would be nearly impossible to identify them properly and use it for reporting. The best recommendation I can give, is base it off a Category and Subcategory. In more detail, the Category is domain expertise related, meaning Hardware, Software, Network, Security, etc. Then the Subcategory is based on the specific group of expertise, such as, Hardware would contain Workstation, Printer, Monitor, etc. The description provided in the Incident contains the symptom information.Using other areas of the Incident Management process I can use the categorization, description, SLA, Impact, and Urgency to route to the proper group, establish a prioritization level, and an expectation for the customer to receive assistance.
While this information may work for a majority of my customers, it may not work for all of them. I've provided my input for best practices. I also need to be prepared for the customer to reject that information. There could be many reasons why. It's my job to ask those questions if the customer does not accept it. Why doesn't this best practice method work for you? What challenges does it not solve? What requirements does it not meet for you? Based on the responses from my customer I can help tailor a best practice approach that works for their organization.
What tools and methods do you use to establish best practices?
The next post will discuss Process Review and Design.
