Internal IT teams are often overwhelmed and have difficulty identifying the root causes of time wasters. The longer this situation persists, the more negative the impact on customer satisfaction and employee motivation becomes.

Lean management methods can help identify these time wasters. However, the practical application of Lean IT Service Management (ITSM) is not obvious. To help you get started, here are some simple, practical instructions for an application support team.

1. Define the team and area

Start with just one support team and one business application. Examples include the PIM (product information management) system, the DMS (document management system), and the IDM (identity management) system. Typically, the support team responsible can be identified via the support group in the ticket system.

2. Categorize and measure

The existing ticket system combines the process and measurement systems. This is also where the categories for support tickets are defined. The support team must select a category for each support ticket. This allows the types of errors (incidents) and service requests to be described. Then, the measurement period begins for a few weeks.

3. Evaluate and visualize

You can then evaluate the data and calculate coverage during the measurement period:

Coverage in % = (Number of categorized tickets / Total number of processed tickets) x 100

A Pareto chart, frequently used in quality management, best visualizes the results:

As you can see, the practical application of Lean ITSM is based on sound data collection, analysis, and visualization.

4. Derive measures

This provides the basis for developing and prioritizing improvement measures. These measures can usually be combined with known errors or defects/bugs.

5. Implement improvements

Calculating the costs strengthens the argument for implementing improvement measures and quantifies current time wasters and the value of possible optimization.

Involve employees and managers in the process, and communicate successes and benefits to all involved parties. We are happy to help you with this.

Enjoy your first Lean ITSM project!