Design and implement some basic measures to show how IT is performing. Graph them, clearly indicate the trends you desire, put the graphs up on your walls or intranet and update them regularly. Common measures include customer satisfaction, major incident counts, support call response/resolution times and change success rates. Managing with facts is much easier than managing without them. Surprisingly, the very act of measuring performance often results in you getting what you wish for!

There is a wealth of studies that show that high performers are at least twice as productive than average performers. One study of software developers found that high performing developers were up to 28 times more productive than their underperforming counterparts. The lesson is, take great care to hire great people, do whatever it takes to retain your top performers, dedicate time to coaching and developing the high potentials and take decisive action when it comes to underperformers.

Changing IT infrastructure is risky - an estimated 80% of all outages are caused by human error when changes (e.g. bug fixes and enhancements) are implemented. Replacing a cowboy/reactive/just-do-it approach to change with a sound change management process - a process that ensures that all changes are consistently recorded, evaluated, authorised, prioritised, scheduled, tested and implemented – will reduce incidents and rework, as well as improve communication throughout the IT team. Change Management is about getting it right first time, not just doing it and hoping for the best.

The role of the support team/service desk is to respond to customer requests and to restore interrupted services as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, many IT organisations are so busy doing this that they do not analyse historic call information and eliminate the causes of recurring calls/incidents. Assigning full-time or occasional resources to reduce incoming calls/ incidents can pay huge dividends by decreasing the number of support staff needed to service a given customer base.

As the number of people required to deliver a solution increases, and as the duration of the work extends, the risk of failure rises exponentially. Recognising that an initiative is complex and assigning a capable project manager with responsibility for delivering it, can improve your chances of success. A good project manager will not only track costs and schedule, but they will also manage the requirements, issues and risks and ensure that communication is timely and effective. When industry data shows that over two thirds of projects are either cancelled, run late, go over budget or don’t meet the requirements, don’t leave project success to chance.

As first-level support staff will tell you, a large number of requests for help are due to insufficient customer knowledge. As second-level support staff will tell you, a large number of escalations are due to insufficient first-level support knowledge. A large number of calls and escalations can be eliminated by delivering effective initial and refresher training on your IT products and services . In my experience most projects treat training as an afterthought and don’t utilise the skills of professional trainers. Even when initial training has been effective, over time staff turnover will see that imparted knowledge trickle away. Don’t skimp on training – do it well and do it regularly.