Average is the F-word in service management

Average is the most offensive word in the English language, according to the brilliant and also foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay. In a service economy, customer experiences are not average: they are either good or bad. It’s almost binary. However in IT service management we still thrive on service levels based on averages. We pat ourselves on the back when we meet the average resolution time, average availability or average time to repair. I got news for you: average is useless when you want to improve continuously.

Why is average run of the mill? The first lesson in quality management is to focus on deviation. This is the famous bell-shaped curve. For example, when the norm to solve a low priority incident is five days, it is important to know what the deviation is. Are there a lot of incidents closed within one day? If so, there ought to be incidents solved after nine days or more. In this case the deviation is high and the curve is flat. What is better for high quality management: a flat or steep curve? A steep one. However, both curves can have the same average of resolution time.

In IT there is still too much focus on average. It leads to a culture of complacency. When average equals mediocre, we develop chosen IT ‘losership’ instead of chosen IT 'leadership'. When the business gets emotional on an outage, the IT department’s common excuse – to their defence – is ‘we still delivered based on average availability’. Shame on you!

There are also no average users. IT organisations often make the mistake developing services appealing to the mean. The workspace and the services are one-size-fits all. Maybe devices are a commodity, but that doesn’t mean your users are. You have to segment into profiles like knowledge workers, frequent flyers, road runners and process workers. Each have different needs to ensure and optimise their productivity.

Real service heroes ban the A-word. To improve IT service delivery maturity, we should skip the word average from our vocabulary and ban it out of our culture mindset. Average is the F-word in service management!