7 tips to Boost the Productivity of your IT Operations
Boosting the productivity of IT Operation (ITOps) is one of main challenges that organizations face. How can they make it possible to do more with less, while effectively managing costs effectively?
Getting to that goal, businesses try implementing measures to optimize routine daily tasks without compromising the results quality.
In this post, we have listed 7 tips that can help you increase the productivity of your ITOps. Check them out!
1. Invest in technological innovations
Any IT department is certainly aware of the importance of investing in technological solutions. However, such understanding is not always shared with the Management. Implementing new resources can boost productivity and, to some extent, scale up your business considering costs do not necessarily increase on a proportional basis.
To get maximum efficiency from your team, you should implement intuitive tools and solutions that meet internal demands. The objective is to automate manual tasks to free up the team to focus on more strategic issues. With the support of technology, identifying problems becomes more accurate and easier.
It’s also important to ensure access to a structure that offers visibility to the data and metrics shared. With that, the team can visualize the current status of ITOps and detect what has to be improved and, therefore, improve performance.
2. Be attentive to the data collected
In the previous item, we briefly described the importance of having a structure that facilitates the access to data. This is of utmost importance as IT efficiency is closely related to the visibility of information.
The idea is to monitor main tasks, such as new requests, orders status, the time spent to respond to requests etc. Based on that, it’s possible to control and improve the measures taken.
Note that monitoring data is just a recommendation. It does not mean that ITOps should not have autonomy to determine the best course of action. The key is to measure results to avoid future and repetitive issues.
This also implies managing risks. By logging processes and problems, their status are clear and the team can anticipate things that may go wrong and work on a proactive basis.
Accordingly, it’s advisable to have an integrated process management to ensure a high-performing and flexible environment and streamlined operational processes. Review your solutions continuously and get rid of those that do not deliver the expected results. Have in mind they are no longer suitable to your internal processes.
Regarding the data collected from several sources, analyze and transform them into information to find out the adjustments you should make. For example, if you identify that the help desk area is spending too much time to respond to a request, you need to implement technologies to reduce this indicator. In this case, the opening of tickets should be automated to ensure the team is able to identify the problem in advance.
3. Establish priorities
The lack of priorities is an enemy of productivity. When you do not establish deadlines and urgencies, everything becomes absolutely necessary. Defining what should be done first allows the team to focus on essential tasks.
More than that, it’s necessary to work with realistic goals. Before starting any task, set limits and communicate them to the team. That will help you achieve your goals.
How to establish priorities properly? Here is a suggestion on a 4-step process:
3.1. Choose a management model
Choose a management model that adjusts to the way your team works. The Scrum methodology is an option. It’s an agile methodology that breaks projects into smaller pieces – called sprints – to ensure continuous improvements. If you prefer traditional methods, the PMBOK Guide describes good concepts to be applied in the IT area to achieve new levels of performance and improved results.
3.2. Share timelines
To establish deadlines and communicate them to all team members is crucial to ensure they will have time to prepare and perform tasks on a timely basis. This also helps you manage people as it increases accountability and fosters a sense of belonging in the workplace, leading to reduced turnover.
3.3. Establish urgency criteria
The idea is to define who is responsible for the tasks and when they should be performed, in addition to having a margin of error for unexpected events. This means that the time to complete a task must be shorter than the delivery date to ensure tasks are delivered in due time.
3.4. Establish priorities
After following the previous steps, you are ready to establish your priorities. You can add more efficiency to this process with implementation, training and support solutions. Bet on cloud computing to have an integrated management and offer access from any device connected to the internet.
4. Outline a strategic plan
IT is a strategic area for organizations across all industries and demands proper planning. The objective is to take internal and external conditions into account, as well as the evolution of each item (for example, increase in sales, revenues or profits, market expansion etc.).
Based on that, a strategic planning supports decision making so that the business objectives are aligned with the technological resources. But what is the relation between a strategic planning and productivity?
Planning actions implies integrated efforts to optimize business processes, resulting in higher productivity levels. Additionally, the flexibilization it provides ensures the necessary adjustments to meet ITOps needs.
5. Improve the internal communication
Although the focus is on the IT team, it’s important to remember that communication is key to your business success. Managers need to communicate with employees and open new contact channels, such as applications, intranet, corporate social networks, software, and email.
Bear in mind that the internal communication also helps people connect, thus facilitating the sharing of information and ideas. Likewise, all team members have access to goals and indicators, allowing them to contribute with feedback and information that can produce important insights.
An employee can notice that a specific solution is not efficient for a specific department, for example. He/she can perceive this need, seek a more adequate tool and recommend it to his/her manager based on the data collected.
The manager, in turn, needs to provide continuous feedback to align actions and expectations. This measure helps solve doubts, avoid unexpected events and justifications and ensure that all team members are working towards the same goal.
6. Revaluate processes
Businesses that focus on productivity need to implement a high-performance culture. This means that beliefs, habits and values need to positively interfere on the employees’ work. However, it’s necessary to reevaluate processes to implement this idea.
A crucial measure is to map workflows to eliminate unnecessary tasks, reduce delays and rework, define roles, and adopt changes that ensure more agile businesses. At the same time, the workflow mapping allows you to standardize processes according to the best practices, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and more transparency.
7. Make your business processes more efficient
Productivity is also connected with the value added your business offers to users. For that, you need to reduce red tape, have an in-depth understanding of your processes and eliminate unnecessary tasks.
Keep in mind that the recommendation is to optimize processes, that is, to identify what has to be done, to set delivery dates and to know how to maintain the product or service quality. Productivity does not always have to do with agility. The most important thing is to align productivity with the goals you want to achieve.
By following the before-mentioned tips, it’s easier to increase ITOps productivity and, at the same time, maintain the quality and achieve better results. Need assistance with your IT team? Contact us!