Uh oh! Report time

How many of you remember as a kid the trauma associated with Report time at school?

I'll never forget my report cards. The trouble was that my brother was incredibly smart and always had all A's across the board.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite as effective at convincing my teachers that I knew what was going on. 'Nuff said.

IT report cards

When it comes to time for IT to report to the business we're not always that good at communicating in terms that the business understands.

As a result anecdotes about Outages, Software incompatibility and poor Performance prevail.

Absent a good set of reports covering the full range of services that IT provides to the business and  written in terms that the business can relate to, we leave ourselves exposed to the poor reputation that corporate IT often has.

Service Quality

I think there is a better way.

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it.
It is what the client or customer gets out of it."  Peter Drucker

Instead of focusing on specific activities (projects) and events (incidents and events), we need to talk to our customers about what they were expecting - a comprehensive view what they received and why. And changes expected to further improve service delivery and lower costs.

Talking in (customer) tongues

I'd like to recommend an enlightening IT annual report that highlights a forward  thinking way of sharing to Business customers what IT has accomplished.

Its very noticeable that Mark Settle (now IHS CIO) chose to lead with a description of the Services that his team provides to the business and how much they cost.

He then goes on to describe:

- How well Services are delivered
- Delivering new capabilities
- Service Desk performance
- Avoiding rework
- Asset utilization
- Automation

An informative read, and a lesson in how to communicate in business terms to our customers.

How does your IT team communicate with it's customers?