How to Check It’s Working

Mastering IT Support Delivery courses are packed with practical technique and method. This very practicality can be used as a means for how to check it’s working.

Students should return from these seminars and workshops with a list of ways of doing things that they can apply to how they work, to achieve new and measurable success. For the HR officer or manager commissioning the training, this means that measurable differences can be witnessed in the behaviour, policies, intentions, activities, and ultimately results of returning training candidates. This is a way of checking candidate progress and proving the training’s effectiveness.

This should ideally be done in tandem with previously conducted training preparation, during which the manager or HR officer agreed with the candidate a list of key areas of focus from the syllabus. Upon completing the course, another discussion should establish whether that was achieved and the student’s understanding of that achievement. This can be done after the training itself, but it is perhaps better to wait until after the examination, during which the student’s recollection and grasp of the lessons will be objectively tested.

Over time, the items on the candidate’s list of activities should start to yield tangible results. These are some of the things to look for.

Operational Manager

  • Describe a vision for the purpose, shape, direction and principles of the workgroup
  • Anticipate and quantify workload demand and describe policies to meet it
  • Ensure that both reactive demand and commissioned work have adequate resources to minimise backlogs and maximise throughput
  • Identify, measure, monitor and act upon key performance indicators for real-time decision support
  • Use statistics for workgroup and individual performance management and improvement
  • Implement a range of strategies and practices pertinent to support staff job-satisfaction
  • Build relationships with co-dependent workgroups and customers

Aspiring Manager

  • Describe the differences between the roles and perspectives of different operative and managerial ranks
  • Describe methods for cementing one’s place as workgroup leader
  • Understand how management goes beyond mere superiority
  • Obviate any potential conflict with others who may have sought and failed to gain management responsibility
  • Use skillset quantification and management to resolve workgroup Single Points of Failure
  • Describe a policy to replace oneself as a technical functionary without loss of workgroup output
  • Make use of the differences between external and internal support to adjust workgroup practices and meet business needs
  • Develop and use an essentially managerial workday to-do list

Foundation & Operative

  • Be able to use and describe meaning of key ICT industry terms and concepts
  • Understand the business basis of IT support and how this affects prioritisation
  • Understand why managers may sometimes make unpopular decisions
  • Build an effective, non-deferential, working relationship with managers
  • Know and express the real meaning of ‘customer service’ and exercise it without pretence or hyperbole
  • Be able to motivate oneself and put stress in a manageable context

Support Strategy Manager

  • Market research and scoping to anticipate business expectations, service needs and quantities
  • Design services, departmental structures, skillset clusters and job descriptions
  • Negotiate for resources inside and outside of IT
  • Map workflow paths, escalation routes and self-regulating protocols for these
  • Define key measurables across IT support, with policies reporting and consequent actions
  • Determine service, practice, staff development, and career path improvement strategies and processes
  • Describe and use IT support cost-benefit analyses and link these with business financial imperatives