ITSM Advice for 2024

Here’s some ITSM advice for 2024. In Q4 2023, ITSM.tools asked the IT service management (ITSM) community – practitioners, consultants, vendors, or any other ITSM roles (except ChatGPT) – for the three pieces of advice they’d offer ITSM practitioners for 2024. This article shares some of those ITSM insights spread across identified groupings (although this is not an exact science, especially when the advice can fit into multiple groupings and groupings such as improvement are so broad).

This article shares a whopping 80 pieces of #ITSM advice for 2024 (& beyond) from IT practitioners, consultants, and vendors. Check it out here. #servicedesk #AI #EX Click To Tweet

The most popular guidance groupings are shared first to indicate what the contributors collectively saw as the most important areas for ITSM growth and change in 2024:

• ITSM advice on improvement (22)
• ITSM advice on AI (15)
• ITSM advice on ITSM tools (13)
• ITSM advice on people and organizational change management (11)
• ITSM advice on value (8)
• ITSM advice on ITSM guidance (6)
• ITSM advice on experience management (5)

ITSM advice on improvement

 Here’s some ITSM advice on (continual) improvement:

1. “You need to assess the appropriate level of maturity and capabilities for each ITSM practice. How will increasing the maturity or capabilities of a practice increase the value of the services you provide? How will customer experience or employee experience be affected?” ~ John Custy, Managing Consultant, JPC Group
2. “Prioritize customer experience and continual improvement: Delivering exceptional customer experiences should be at the forefront of ITSM strategies. Gather real-time feedback and use it as a compass for ongoing improvements.” ~ Vivek Krishna, Customer Value Architect, VivaNovaTech Nexus Solutions
3. “The IT investment decisions made in 2024 need to focus on what’s best for business operations and outcomes, not what IT thinks are the right things to do. While business conversations help, most organizations will need experience data to understand what matters most to employees and business operations.” ~ Sami Kallio, CEO of HappySignals
4. “Rethink your current process; slim it down further if possible.” ~ Alvin Sii, Integration Systems Analyst, Medtech Global
5. “Practice makes perfect. Work with your customers, colleagues, and partners to understand where you are and define where you want to get to. Create a community from across your organization(s) and beyond to practice delivering value and go on to perfect this at scale.” ~ David Barrow, Service Management Consultant, Sol Seven Studio
6. “Keep learning. Depending on your main focus of work, consider the updated ITIL practices; product management; SIAM; generative AI; experience management; human-centred design; and sustainability in IT. The industry is evolving fast. So should the professionals. Make learning a regular activity rather than a major effort once in a few years. Progress iteratively with feedback.” ~ Roman Zhuravlev, Senior ITIL architect, Axelos/PeopleCert
7. “When things go wrong, like in the case of a change causing a major incident, it’s easy to blame the people involved. We often hear about the need for more training or updating procedures, but this is just another way to say people are the root cause. This mindset lets leaders and ITSM practitioners avoid looking at bigger system issues. After an issue, new change management policies are often added, or people are scrutinized. Over time, change stakeholders will resent the unneeded attention and find ways to hide or obscure activities. Additionally, when IT teams feel these new rules slow them down, they’ll push to revert to leading us back to the same problems. This isn’t just about individual mistakes; it’s a management issue. We need to look at the whole system to make lasting improvements. Deming, the father of the quality movement, said that 94% of problems come from the system and only 6% from individuals. It is time to update our approach to change management.” ~ Rob Laroche, Sr Business Process Owner ITSM, T-Mobile USA
8. “There has never been a better time to expand beyond what you inherited. Explore alternate methods, frameworks, and investments. Are they keeping you thinking in linear, monocultural ways? What other thinking or ideas exist on the matters you are addressing this year? Perhaps it’s time to explore, meet new people, and learn new things.” ~ Matt Beran, Senior Product Specialist, InvGate
9. “Lifelong learning is about both individuals and organizations. Knowledge management strategy is about understanding both of these segments and engendering a culture of curiosity, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Without it, you cannot understand or make the best decisions; your focus, including emerging technology, becomes skewed; the dependence on your capability is at risk. Don’t be a data junky; become knowledge-wise.” ~ Simone Jo Moore, HumanisingIT, SJM
10. “Pay attention to the shifts across the governance landscape, whether it be country, industry, or other legalities, even cultural and moral considerations. Learn and engage with those in the know of not only the current but evolving approaches to how we not only use but also prevent technology from being our vulnerability. Understanding and applying the advances in cyber security is vital to a business’s survival.” ~ Simone Jo Moore, HumanisingIT, SJM
11. “Realize and accept that when you speak with the ‘business,’ you will very likely speak to someone tasked to be the business representative to talk with IT. That person is probably not involved in the primary process of the business but may be an internal advisor or assistant. They would often know as much as you do about the primary processes your IT systems support. You can make business representatives allies by asking them to join you in the investigation into the primary processes and invite them to sit with you when you talk to the actual workers in these processes. Otherwise, you will risk turning them into gatekeepers, preventing you from getting to know the actual primary processes and business concerns.” ~ Paul Leenards, Principal Consultant, Idwell
12. “Often IT departments are found close to the data centers they support and far away from the primary locations where business is conducted. If possible, create a day in the week to work in the field. Find a workplace close to where the workers in the primary processes you need to support work and find ways to engage with them. When you get to know them better, start to understand the work they do and what is important to them, you can make better decisions where to improve or optimize your IT services.” ~ Paul Leenards, Principal Consultant, Idwell
13. “Outsource services to SaaS companies. Consider outsourcing tasks to specialized external services instead of trying to do everything in-house. Just like you wouldn’t start from scratch to build a website when you can use a platform like WordPress, think about finding vendors who can handle tasks like monitoring servers and managing IT assets for you. The SaaS solutions market is always growing, and we should take advantage of it. Using cloud-based options not only helps you save money but also frees up your time. Focus on improving your expertise in areas that are more directly related to your business rather than trying to master skills that might not bring in revenue.” ~ Ivan Samoylov, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Alloy Software, Inc.
14. “Keep it simple – Simplify processes for success. Avoid over-complication, as complexity can undermine great ideas or teamwork. Unexpected issues and unscheduled requests are part of the daily grind, and complex procedures only add stress. Focus on the essentials—implement incident management alongside problem management and change management. Remember the 80/20 rule: addressing the top 20% of problems can eliminate 80% of incidents, reducing service desk workload and costs. Prioritize simple processes for effective service management and consider the 80/20 rule before investing in costly tools or processes.” ~ Glenn Schwarz, Regional Manager Marval Australia at Marval Software Limited
15. “Start where you are – Starting where you are means precisely that. When trying to improve your processes and service, don’t overthink and make it too big a task and turn it into a significant project that requires funding and resourcing (yes, keep it simple). Any change for the better is an improvement. So, start where you are! In other words, start by adjusting your process today, and don’t get overawed with fixing everything in one hit, including updating existing records/requests/CIs, etc. You are far better off adjusting new records or your process and continuing along the same path. Remember Demmings’ improvement cycle of ‘Plan, Do, Check, Act!’ It’s simple, and it works!” ~ Glenn Schwarz, Regional Manager Marval Australia at Marval Software Limited
16. “Implementing a continual improvement regime is one of the best places for IT organizations to start working. First, it’s relatively inexpensive. The principles are well known, but only some organizations establish programs to use them. Second, there are lots of low-/no-cost opportunities to improve your customer and employee experiences that would help you gain the trust and support of your user community. Start there and use it to take on tougher, more expensive projects later, once you’ve ‘banked’ some ‘relational capital’!” ~ Kenneth (“Kengon”) Gonzalez, Head of Analyst Relations, Freshworks
17. “Stop chasing ‘IT maturity.’ It doesn’t work and (ultimately) doesn’t matter. Even if you are the most mature organization, if your customer thinks you’re awful, you’ve failed. Focus on the outcomes that those you serve care about and track the measures that will let you know how well you’re doing at that. Use these to demonstrate that you’re focused on their success and make the internal changes necessary to realize those improvements. Those that do will find they become more ‘mature’ without having to focus on it.” ~ Kenneth (“Kengon”) Gonzalez, Head of Analyst Relations, Freshworks
18. “We all try to do too much. Follow the data and prioritize the biggest opportunities for impact: provide the most effortless solutions to the highest volume problems.” ~ Keith Andes, Product Marketing Manager, EasyVista
19. “Less complex is always better. We are always adding new projects and initiatives. But we should also look back at the work we’re already doing and see if anything can come off the organization’s plate. What is no longer relevant or has become less valuable? Or has it become so high volume and repeatable that a portion can now be automated?” ~ Keith Andes, Product Marketing Manager, EasyVista
20. “Anyone who tells you that innovation (or ‘creativity’) is in Agile or software teams doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Creativity is a human skill. These days, it tends to get celebrated more within software and product teams. If you’re NOT in this part of an organization, look for ways to celebrate and amplify (and then celebrate again) wins, lessons learned, and small tweaks that help people work better. For example, perhaps you work in an office, and you find that it’s useful to have a big wall calendar to track holiday schedules; perhaps you find that having a document of useful links to YouTube videos allows you to resolve basic end-user issues 10% faster and with higher CSAT scores. Highlight these wins with your teams and managers and celebrate them!” ~ Akshay Anand, Principal Solution Engineer, Atlassian (views are of the individual, not the company)
21. “Be grateful. All feedback can move you forward, so give it the attention it deserves. Negative feedback isn’t to make you angry; it’s because the person giving it cares enough about what you’re doing to make it the best.” ~ Filip Jandora, Software Developer, ALVAO
22. “Don’t stop. Don’t be satisfied with yourself. Be agile and adaptable. Learn and adapt your processes. Make mistakes so you can learn from them.” ~ Filip Jandora, Software Developer, ALVAO

Next up is ITSM advice on AI.

Here you'll find 22 pieces of advice for #ITSM improvement from the likes of @bloreboy, @Simonejomoore & @mattberan. Click To Tweet

ITSM advice on AI

Here’s some ITSM advice on AI:

1. “AI is coming, and even if you don’t have a strategy that includes AI, you need to understand how AI technologies can facilitate better service, customer experience, and employee experience improvements.” ~ John Custy, Managing Consultant, JPC Group
2. “IT leaders are (rightly) cautious about adopting AI and pushing back until they identify a business problem that can be solved by AI – or solved in a much better and cost-efficient way with AI. But they need to remember that while they wait it out, their competition is not standing still. My advice would be to start running low-stakes experiments unless you already have, so you have the right learnings, talent, and expertise when you decide to implement the solution. That said, you should keep your users and business context at the centre while deciding which problems to target and which experiments to run.” ~ Vijay Rayapati, CEO of Atomicwork
3. “Technology is a means, not an end. Whatever the technology du jour — AI, ChatGPT, No code — those are not a goal. The goal is to achieve outcomes for the company — better productivity, collaboration, performance, and experience. Having an AI strategy is not an outcome. Finding ways to use new technology, like AI, to improve business outcomes IS a strategy.” ~ Alan Berkson, Advisor, Intelligist Group
4. “We needed a way to predict potential problems before they caused significant disruptions. Leveraging AI and machine learning algorithms, we developed a predictive analytics model that analyzed historical incident data, identified commonalities, and predicted potential problem areas.” ~ Vivek Krishna, Customer Value Architect, VivaNovaTech Nexus Solutions
5. “There are many career options that AI supports and provides opportunities for – find your best fit to be part of that future and get educated and aware. There are many areas where the experts haven’t been discovered yet.” ~ Barclay Rae, MD, author, consultant, Barclay Rae Consulting Ltd
6. “Make good use of AI – Even though we still need a few more years to understand its potential clearly, I encourage you to explore the multiple uses of AI and add the capabilities that make sense to your organization. If you need help choosing, focus on the alternatives that can further empower your agents’ and end-users’ abilities (e.g., assisting them in ticket creation, classification, management, and documentation).” ~ Ariel Gesto, Founder and CEO, InvGate
7. “AI is a great playground for ambitious engineers. We are currently seeing a trend of super great point solutions being patched together because there is a new spirit of optimism, and management is spending money on innovative ideas. All according to the motto, ‘The main idea is that we can show that we also have AI in use.’ The result is the production of technical debt that will (financially) burden companies for years to come. Therefore, I advise a more professional approach to AI by paying attention to the value streams and careful risk management, which must also identify opportunities. Capability management should be a central component of the consideration and the control mechanisms from IT4IT, ITIL, USM, and other practices that have been defined continue to apply.” ~ Martin Pscheidl, Senior Enterprise Architect at ServiceNow
8. “If you really want to have a say in AI, you should use it personally every day. We have a lot of great soccer coaches on the field right now who have never touched a ball or managed a team. AI will not replace everything but will integrate into everything. This also applies to ITSM tools.” ~ Martin Pscheidl, Senior Enterprise Architect at ServiceNow
9. “Keep an eye on the integration of AI and ITSM. Don’t just focus on the obvious, like AI-powered customer support, which is already there. Instead, imagine how AI could change ITSM processes and roles. Picture a solution that can analyze an entire company’s IT infrastructure and suggest improvements in hours. This is a shift you’d better be prepared for. So, I would suggest embracing change instead of resisting it and keeping a close eye on the latest news in this field.” ~ Ivan Samoylov, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Alloy Software, Inc.
10. “I expect a complete contextual response from AI-powered tools. I also expect it to get answers only from expert sources when answering ITSM (or other IT) questions. But one should not stop thinking and adjust the answer according to one’s unmistakable experience if there is a space for it.” ~ Markéta Kurucová, Product analyst/UX researcher, ALVAO
11. “AI and GPT tools are quite a complex topic when discussing cybersecurity. Script kiddies with creativity find more ways to harm. GPT tools can be bypassed quite easily. Their protection from abuse is still not perfect, and it’s offered to the mainstream. It’s quite a fail.” ~ Markéta Kurucová, Product analyst/UX researcher, ALVAO
12. “AI cannot currently be used in UX, specifically in usability testing. Human interaction is crucial here. A range of AI-powered tools for UX research already exist, but they are more or less supportive – transcript analysis, suggestions for changes, and improvements. These tools cannot work fully with context.” ~ Markéta Kurucová, Product analyst/UX researcher, ALVAO
13. “Beware of the Generative AI hype. Think carefully about what you are using, and always verify the content. Too much chance for misleading, inaccurate, and biased data.” ~ David Pickering, Technical Product Marketing Director, Ivanti
14. “Try. Don’t be afraid of artificial intelligence. Everything you try can only push you further and give you new experiences. AI works much better than you think. Everyone only talks about it, but by being brave enough to try it and apply it, you will move much further.” ~ Filip Jandora, Software Developer, ALVAO
15. “Many organizations will be moving from AI pilots to production use cases during 2024, but how will they know if they’re employing AI in the right places and with the intended positive impact? AI-focused metrics won’t help, but people-focused metrics will.” ~ Sami Kallio, CEO of HappySignals

Next up is ITSM advice on ITSM tools.

Looking for advice with your #AI initiatives in 2024? See what advice the likes of @SamiKallioHki, @barclayrae, & @berkson0 have to offer. #ITSM #ArtificialIntelligence Click To Tweet

ITSM tools advice

Here’s some ITSM advice on ITSM tools:

1. “Get your operating model right BEFORE you start implementing the tool.” “Be clear on who owns and maintains your tool. The success and longevity depend on clear ownership.” “Don’t build the tool to just trigger emails to people. Fix your processes.” ~ Roxanne Showell, Principal Consultant, ZestCo.uk
2. “Automate some of the repetitive ITSM tasks so you can focus on what’s important.” ~ Alvin Sii, Integration Systems Analyst, Medtech Global
3. “Tools, systems, and frameworks are part of your ITSM toolbox, not a Swiss Army Knife that can do anything. You should explore, experiment, and expand your knowledge to use a mix of ideas, systems, and methods.” ~ Barclay Rae, MD, author, consultant, Barclay Rae Consulting Ltd
4. “Embrace automation. Automation can help you streamline your ITSM processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Various automation tools are available, so be sure to choose the ones that are right for your organization.” ~ Mark Bradley, Senior Manager, Product, Management, Flexera
5. “Don’t be scared of following the tool’s default way of working, but do understand the implications of doing so. Especially if there is a terminology mismatch between the tool, best practice, your internal wording, and your vendors’ language. Focus on exploiting the tool you have to the full rather than feeling constrained by what it doesn’t do. This extends to AI to some degree, but don’t think any tool is perfect. Just useful for a purpose.” ~ James Finister, Independent
6. “Throw away your old reports, and don’t be seduced by the report-generating capability of your new tool. Ask yourself a multitude of questions, such as: What does this metric really tell me? Can I really benchmark it against data from three years ago? Over the long term, what changes should I expect? Are people agreeing about what this metric actually shows? Is this just a wallpaper graph? If the figure is X or Y, what action should we take in response?” ~ James Finister, Independent
7. “If you haven’t already, automate! Automation is indispensable nowadays. There’s so much it can resolve, leaving your team’s plate empty enough so they can focus on things where their input is more valuable. And if your service desk is used in multiple business areas, you can implement cross-departmental workflows to boost efficiency.” ~ Ariel Gesto, Founder and CEO, InvGate
8. “Expand your ITSM tools’ ROI to the whole company. Service desk software can potentially assist more areas than just IT. Onboarding other departments (such as Human resources (HR), Maintenance, and Finance) increases your return on investment while allowing you to bring automation and AI capabilities to your entire organization.” ~ Ariel Gesto, Founder and CEO, InvGate
9. “As contrary as it may seem coming from a vendor representative, ‘tools’ are never an answer. Good tooling is necessary to support team members in meeting the needs of those your team/organization serves. If you can stay focused on that, everything else gets simpler and clearer. You’ll select the tools that are the best fit for your organization.” ~ Kenneth (“Kengon”) Gonzalez, Head of Analyst Relations, Freshworks
10. “Don’t be in a rush to automate as much as possible. While it might look appealing in terms of cost savings, the reality is that not every aspect of a role can be documented. This means that replacing a human being with automation (especially in roles requiring real-life or human-to-human interactions) can inadvertently create risks to your team and organization. Look up the ‘Doorman Fallacy’ for more details.” ~ Akshay Anand, Principal Solution Engineer, Atlassian
11. “Automate, Automate, Automate. Much more than an ITSM workflow or approval. Drive to a shift left approach, have the end-user do more and earlier. Put in place preventative healing capabilities.” ~ David Pickering, Technical Product Marketing Director, Ivanti
12. “Work with your vendor more! Give feedback on the toolset, suggest ideas, discuss features and real-use cases, and report issues and pain points for correction and improvement. Ask for guidance on using a particular feature. Vendors have seen so many instances of their product deployed in many different environments and have no doubt seen, or already configured, what you’re trying to do many times before. And probably better than your current configuration. Remember, your environment is unique, just like everyone else that the vendor has seen! Stay up-to-date with the latest product version and regularly plan for doing so.” ~ Rod Weir, Managing Director, PRD Software
13. “Document your designs and workflows. Preserve the “why and what” of your configuration. Toolset workflow and back-end automation configuration can quickly become a mysterious black box if not documented correctly and comprehensively. When designing a system, use any meta-data options within the tool (notes, properties, category codes, groupings, etc.) to classify the configuration within the tool and make it easy for searching/filtering. However, also maintain a separate document/wiki that gives a much wider overview of what the system is doing and why. Keep this document up-to-date and readable so that if the key personnel that designed all those complex workflows and automations/triggers were to leave, their successor(s), or someone else can take over and not let the tool suffer.” ~ Rod Weir, Managing Director, PRD Software

Next up is ITSM advice on people and organizational change management.

There's 13 pieces of advice pertaining to #ITSM tools in this article, plus further help on people and organizational change management, #AI, & experience management. #ITXM Click To Tweet

ITSM advice on people and organizational change management

Here’s some ITSM advice on people and organizational change management:

1. “People and relationships are most important. First, your team must trust you (leaders), and your customers must trust you.” ~ John Custy, Managing Consultant, JPC Group
2. “When someone has a tech issue, be aware it is preventing them from doing what they want or need to do. And that’s stressful. Be empathetic and infuse that into your services. It enables a better employee experience and instills confidence that IT is there to help. Technology doesn’t have empathy; people do.” ~ Alan Berkson, Advisor, Intelligist Group
3. “Bots and AI – and other shiny new things – can deliver excellent new options, value, and efficiency. But don’t forget that you are still dealing with people, not just end-users and numbers. People who do the support work daily, and those who rely on them.” ~ Barclay Rae, MD, author, consultant, Barclay Rae Consulting Ltd
4. “Invest in people. Your employees are your most important asset. Ensure they are appropriately trained and have the resources needed to do their jobs effectively. Also, create a culture of continuous learning and improvement.” ~ Mark Bradley, Senior Manager, Product, Management, Flexera
5. “Embrace neurodiversity in your workplace, including in leadership roles. The reality is that you have neurodiverse individuals on your team, so acknowledge it and bring out their strengths in areas like pattern finding and non-linear thinking. Recognize as well that your user community includes neurodiverse individuals who need a different approach.” ~ James Finister, Independent
6. “Balance it out – family and mental health is always the top priority.” ~ Lokesh Kumar Narayana, Manager – Enterprise Service Management, Jade Global
7. “Think people – your own teams as well as customers and users. Don’t rush to replace human contacts with technology. Develop service empathy. Collaborate and promote visibility.” ~ Roman Zhuravlev, Senior ITIL architect, Axelos/PeopleCert
8. “Question your current thinking. If you get stuck living in the glory of the past and fall in love with ‘the way we’ve always done it,’ you won’t be able to take advantage of the diversity you are exploring and finding. So when you hire, write different job descriptions and change your ITIL certification to “ITIL or equivalent.” The times have changed, and the best opportunity to innovate is now.” ~ Matt Beran, Senior Product Specialist, InvGate
9. “The human element is and always will be the underlying focus you need regardless of industry or area of the organization or individual endeavor path. Remember, it’s a combination of both customer experience and employee experience and the value they place on the service and product and also the impact it has on their lives that makes the difference. Humans are the most unpredictable yet powerful facet; therefore, how you support their ability and well-being, including mental health, plays a major role in sustainability and success.” ~ Simone Jo Moore, HumanisingIT, SJM
10. “If the people who will have to use the (new) practices and tools are not involved, prepare to fail. They must actively participate and own how ITSM fits into the organization, helps the organization, and then improves the services and products delivered.” ~ Daniel Breston, Independent
11. “Service management needs to be understood and embraced. For this to happen, organizational change management also needs to play a role in understanding the impact and imparting training on the benefits of the change.” ~ Gautam Bangalore, ITSM Consultant, Independent

Next up is ITSM advice on value.

Industry authorities such as Daniel Breston, @simonejomoore, @MattBeran, & @ITSMninja share their advice on people & organizational change management in this article. #ITSM Click To Tweet

ITSM advice on value

Here’s some ITSM advice on value:

1. “If it costs more than the value you get from it, don’t do it. There’s risk in doing it, risk in not doing it.” ~ John Custy, Managing Consultant, JPC Group
2. “Map your value chain and then apply tools. Use MoSCoW to determine what tools you really need vs. those that are simply shiny” ~ Daniel Breston, Independent
3. “Get a better understanding of your customer’s needs and situation.” ~ Alvin Sii, Integration Systems Analyst, Medtech Global
4. “Problem-solving and adding value is the key no matter what any best practices state.” ~ Lokesh Kumar Narayana, Manager – Enterprise Service Management, Jade Global
5. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers or colleagues what value means to them. Collate and use this information to design and operate digital services that fulfill your customer and colleagues’ needs and, where needed, innovate beyond their expectations.” ~ David Barrow, Service Management Consultant, Sol Seven Studio
6. “Always add value – This is one of my most important rules. If you want people to do something, it has to be of some value to them. While you will get compliance to some degree, I can guarantee that the uptake of any process or service will be far greater if it adds value to the user’s experience. For example, if you want people to use a self-service portal, having it look nice and having fancy forms will at first attract people to your new service. But if it doesn’t provide a better service – by this, I mean you respond quicker, deliver quicker, and continually update the request with well-structured information – then your customers will quickly abandon your new service and ring the service desk for updates rather than checking self-service first! The same goes for your processes; if it makes a support officer’s job harder without a greater reward, then I can guarantee you that whenever there is an opportunity to go around the process and reduce the immediate workload, this option will be the preferred option.” ~ Glenn Schwarz, Regional Manager Marval Australia at Marval Software Limited
7. “Align to the business’s passion.’ We’re not here to resolve tickets; we’re here to enable the business. What does the business do, and why does it matter? If we have a good reason for that, we have a good reason to do good work.” ~ Keith Andes, Product Marketing Manager, EasyVista
8. “The Five Whys can be more than a useful problem investigation technique. It can help build business cases that better align with corporate goals and objectives, or even to helping you prioritize what to work on now, and what to work on next.” ~ Akshay Anand, Principal Solution Engineer, Atlassian

Next up is ITSM advice on ITSM guidance.

'If it costs more than the value you get from it, don’t do it. There’s risk in doing it, risk in not doing it.' ~ @ITSMNinja #ITSM Click To Tweet

ITSM advice on ITSM guidance

Here’s some ITSM advice on ITSM guidance:

1. “ITSM provides guidance and advice, but it needs to make sense for your organization. Just because others are doing it doesn’t mean it’s the best or right thing for you at this time. Always ask, ‘How will this help us achieve our goals/objectives?’ If it doesn’t, then why do it?” ~ John Custy, Managing Consultant, JPC Group
2. “Educate your leaders as to the value of service management. Upwardly communicate your success and, where useful, attempt to innovate in safe spaces where risks can be taken. Where these innovations pay off, scale them from proof of concept to become organizational enablers.”  ~ David Barrow, Service Management Consultant, Sol Seven Studio
3. “Don’t follow hype blindly. Yes, AI is exciting, XLAs are human-focused, and there is always a shiny new thing promising to solve all your problems. Consider them, by all means! But don’t rush to throw away what you already have, and don’t expect the new toys to remove the need for skilled people, effective governance, and high-quality products. Focus on value, start where you are, and think and work holistically.” ~ Roman Zhuravlev, Senior ITIL architect, Axelos/PeopleCert
4. “I urge technologists to remember the basics, the fundamentals, and the foundations of what great service and operations strategies require. We require a stable footing to deliver even greater value. For instance, it’s easy to get distracted and take the easy route when overhauling processes or investing in delivery. I implore you to do the hard work. Research your customers, map and define your processes, and get good at what you do. This will serve your teams, company, and personal career in positive ways.” ~ Matt Beran, Senior Product Specialist, InvGate
5. “The IT landscape is in a constant state of flux. ITSM professionals must stay agile, embrace DevOps practices, and be ready to pivot swiftly in response to emerging technologies and challenges.” ~ Vivek Krishna, Customer Value Architect, VivaNovaTech Nexus Solutions
6. “Take a look at the new ITIL Practice Guides. The integration of workflows in value chains is finally described there. It becomes clear what we have known for some time thanks to IT4IT, among others: It makes no sense to strive for a high level of maturity in a single practice if others are completely languishing. More attention is also being paid to service configuration management as a central element. I very much welcome the fact that many findings from the different standards and frameworks are now coming together and complementing each other in a meaningful way. Take a look at this!” ~ Martin Pscheidl, Senior Enterprise Architect at ServiceNow

Next up is ITSM advice on experience management.

'Don’t follow hype blindly. Yes, AI is exciting & there's always a shiny new thing promising to solve all your problems. Consider them, by all means! But don’t rush to throw away what you already have' – @jour_civil #ITSM Click To Tweet

Experience management advice

Here’s some ITSM advice on experience management:

1. “Organizations need to appreciate and address the adverse impact of poor employee experiences (and the lack of experience data and insight): end-users continue to lose work time due to IT, IT spends money on things that don’t matter to the business, and employees leave the company because of bad IT.” ~ Sami Kallio, CEO of HappySignals
2. “Tickets and service requests are not human. No one wants to ‘raise a request,’ “report an incident,’ or ‘open a ticket.’ They want to do their jobs. Using human language creates better communication and better employee experience.” ~ Alan Berkson, Advisor, Intelligist Group
3. “Focus on customer experience. ITSM is about delivering value to customers, so keeping them at the center of everything you do is essential. This means understanding their needs, communicating regularly, and resolving issues quickly and effectively.” ~ Mark Bradley, Senior Manager, Product, Management, Flexera
4. “Focus on the experience of customers first, not the solution or technology. If you are in tech, you have undoubtedly been enamored with the newest tech, the shiniest gadget, or the coolest thing on the block. We have all been there, including Steve Jobs, who declared at the 1997 Apple Developer conference: ‘You’ve got to start with the customer experience, then work back to the technology.’ That was well before the iPod or iPhone redefined customer experience and technology. Still, you can see the seeds of greatness in this vision. When we focus on delivering the best experience for customers and end-users instead of pushing what we think is cool or what we want to work on, we increase the impact, the profitability, and the value of what we produce.” ~ Rob Laroche, Sr Business Process Owner ITSM, T-Mobile USA
5. “Measure your employee experience. Understand their sentiment, device performance, and issues. The more you understand the digital experience, the better you can resolve the issues.” ~ David Pickering, Technical Product Marketing Director, Ivanti

'Orgs need to appreciate & address the adverse impact of poor EX: end-users continue to lose work time due to IT, IT spends money on things that don’t matter, & employees leave the company because of bad IT.' – @SamiKallioHki #EX Click To Tweet

What would you add to this list of ITSM advice? Please share your ITSM advice thoughts in the comments section below.

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