Process Improvement

IT Service Management Solutions

i3 provides hands-on implementation for ITIL-based IT Service Management Systems for both Government and commercial customers.  Our focus is on understanding business problems and opportunities in the context of requirements to deliver best practice solutions unique to each customer.

Unique Implementation Approach
i3’s implementation approach provides our customers a fully configured ITSM system within 6 weeks.  This includes the process and tool implementation and training for functional/process managers.  Our implementation approach cuts the normal 6-9 month process development phase, by over 75% and allows the organization to learn and improve through measured execution as soon as possible.  Our rapid implementation approach significantly increases the chance of implementation success.  Based on the experiences of our customers, we offer multiple consulting options to fit every business and budget.  

ITSM Consulting Options
We know that companies and budgets vary.  As such, we've created multiple ITSM Consulting Options based on our experiences from working with customers of all shapes, sizes, and situations.  Picking the right engagement strategy is often as important as the engagement itself.  Make an appointment to talk with us about choosing the best option for your company.  If you have already determined your path forward, you can purchase the remote solution and remote consultant options directly on this site and have access to resources today.

Integration with ServiceNow
i3 specializes in IT Service Management solutions using ServiceNow.  Our services include implementing and transforming all areas of the ServiceNow platform including, Online Service Catalogs, Service Level, Incident, Problem, Configuration, Asset, Change, Release, Cost, Procurement, Service Continuity, and Knowledge Management.  In addition to ServiceNow’s suite of standard out-of-box applications, i3 has designed, developed and delivered dozens of platform-based custom applications to enable organization to overcome unique challenges.  i3 is highly proficient in ServiceNow configuration and customization efforts including, form tailoring, workflow design, email notifications, report setup, data imports, business rules, client scripts, UI policies, UI actions, UI pages, and third-party software integrations.

Agile Process Solutions

Over the past ten years, more software development shops have transitioned from traditional waterfall development methodologies to agile.  i3 support the transition of organizations from traditional development methods into a more modern agile and scrum approach.  We have a proven set of agile/scrum processes that we can tailor to your organization and will support you to customize leading agile development tools, such as Jira, Version One, and Microsoft VSO.  The integration of a full agile-based software development life cycle (SDLC) with modern tools greatly improves the performance and quality of development and lowers costs.  

Helping your Organization Mature into a Robust Agile SDLC
There are large numbers of organizations claiming to execute agile as their development methodology.  However, most tend to be implementing the little ‘a’ version of agile.  This can range from just doing shorter iterative development cycles to planning sprints, using agile estimation methods, and assessing customer value of backlog items.  Both these cases emphasize small iterative development cycles or sprints.  The challenge is that focusing all planning and development on the sprint ignores the larger context needed to effectively plan the work.  In most cases, there are three levels of planning in a big ‘A’ Agile development project.  It begins at the portfolio level.  This is where the iterative backlog grooming occurs that helps move customer requirements from Epics into useable sized chunks that can be planned and developed.  Additionally, this is where the product roadmap is developed and provides the longer-term development vision for the project.   The roadmap should lay out the expected number of releases and notional schedule expected to meet the customer’s definition of done.  The methodology allows for requirements to change and the product roadmap to evolve, but the chances of project success significantly increase when there is at least some end game identified. 

By creating the product roadmap, it provides a mechanism to communicate progress with the customer.  In this construct, the release level becomes the planning unit for agreements with the customer.  The backlog to be developed should be reviewed and approved at the release level.  Release planning will include many of the details of the sprints and may seem a bit redundant, but it increases customer interaction to a more meaningful level.  Having customer agreements at the sprint planning level are often burdensome for the customer and not helpful for the development team.  By engaging the customer at the release level, the development team can manage expectations about what the customer will see at the sprint demos and update the customer long before the release of new, usable, and integrated functionality.  This is easily communicated with the use of sprint and release burndown charts.

Moving from ‘agile’ to ‘Agile’ for most organizations is about creating discipline in the process beyond the sprint level and creating a context for understanding the longer-term vision of the product(s).  It also involves creating workable and meaningful planning units at the right level to successfully engage the customer and manage development expectations.

Meaningful Project Monitoring Data
Agile is great for the development team, but where is the project management monitoring data?  Is my project on schedule?  Is my project on budget?  These are common questions that we are asked by transitioning agile shops.  Traditional data used for project management is not obvious and sometimes not present in an agile project.  We work directly with senior managers to better understand how the traditional triple constraints from project management work in an agile environment. Moreover, we work to create executive and management dashboards integrated with the agile development tools and other corporate systems to provide meaningful management insight.

Integration with CMMI for Development   
Integrating an agile development with CMMI requirements is not a straightforward endeavor.  i3 is experienced in developing agile SDLC’s that map to the CMMI for Development Level 3 requirements.  If you have an existing agile SDLC, we can customize and integrate your existing solution to meet the model requirements.  Our solutions embrace the spirit of agile and significantly streamline and consolidate the documentation and artifact requirements of the CMMI model.  This approach means that the CMMI requirements are simply built into your agile implementation and do not create additional work outside of your development processes.  Our consultants will work with your team to create solutions work with industry leading agile development tools, such as Jira, Version One, and Microsoft TFS & VSO

Staff Services Solutions

i3 has proven solutions built specifically to improve business performance of staff services firms by lowering operational costs, raising customer acceptance rates for candidates, and significantly improving customer satisfaction.  Our solutions focus on business transformations that improve revenue, quality and margin.  Our specialty is working with U.S. Government contractors that provide staffing and expertise to supplement and enhance the federal workforce.  The types of personnel provided can range from data entry clerks to cyber security experts.  Many work on-site shoulder to shoulder with federal employees helping to achieve the mission of the agency or department.  Regardless of function and status (SETA/Non-SETA), what work and how work is completed is largely under the direction of the government.  

One of the initial challenges in this space is that many staffing contractors market themselves as IT, Cyber, and software development companies.  While their staff is certainly doing this type of technical work under the auspices of the government, the company itself may only be providing staffing resources.  This situation is especially common for small businesses looking to grow a contracting presence and past performance record. While this is a proven business model, it creates a challenge scoping effective management systems because many staffing resource companies view themselves as having a set of capabilities linked to their contractor staff.  However, because the company has little to no control over the processes the contractor personnel is executing day to day, the focus of the company should be on how to plan, manage, measure, and improve the delivery of the staff.

For most staffing services companies, this will include the following service delivery processes:

• Work Solicitation Responses. Includes items such as reviewing solicitation, bid/no bid decisions, developing technical proposals, creating a BOE and cost proposal, review of the proposal, and delivery.
• Hiring.  Processes for hiring qualified staff.
• Onboarding.  Process for ensuring an efficient and effective onboarding experience.
• A Project/Service Management Process.  Process for managing the delivery of the service
• Personal management.  How to monitor personnel and performance. These tend to be standard Human Resources processes focused on employee performance and development. 
• Customer Satisfaction.  Process for establishing a customer satisfaction baseline and plans to improve it.
• Contractual Reporting.  Process for ensuring the delivery of contractually required reporting.  These often include Monthly Status Reports, Invoices, etc.
• Others as needed or to satisfy contractual agreements.

Documenting, Improving, and automating these process will greatly improve the performance and efficiency of any staff services firm. 

Taking a Services Approach
Working with staffing services customers over the past 20 years, we have discovered there are many approaches to doing business. However, the best approach we have found for meeting the customer requirements and SUPERCHARGING the business is to approach staffing services…as a service.  In other words, take the principles from frameworks like ITIL and apply them generically to the provision of staffing as a service.

This approach is important from a business perspective because it forces the company to define the services it provides, develop measures that are intimately linked to the success of that service, and integrate a service improvement methodology that supercharges the business.  Using a service catalog, the organization breaks down the core services (provision of staff) into discrete categories of staffing, such as Help Desk, Cyber, Tier 2 Desktop Support, Telecommunication Engineers, etc.  As part of that categorization, the organization defines the parameters and characteristics of those staffing service categories.  While most staffing organizations know they provide, for example, help desk personnel, they likely have not gone beyond that simple characterization.  Doing so enables the organization to clearly articulate in their services (and marketing message) what they are offering their customer and it specific service characteristics (location, skills, etc).

Once the services are defined, using a service level agreement to define the requirements associated with the delivery of the services is critical.  Rarely will the government or other customers provide or agree to a traditional service level agreement for this type of work, but that should not stop the company from establishing one with itself related to accountability for their delivery.  Many of the service targets contained within the agreements will come from the contractual requirements (staffing turnaround times, fill times, contractual reporting requirements, etc) and some will come from the business (customer satisfaction, attrition rates, etc). Together with a service reporting structure (aka., management review), this approach will greatly improve management accountability structures and focus the organization on improving the core staffing services. Other processes such as incident management and problem management (aka., corrective action), capacity, availability, and business continuity borrowed from the service management literature (and ISO 20000/CMMI for Services) are also useful processes for taking your staffing business infrastructure to the next level.  

Last, instead of using a Service Management Plan, tie the system together with a service management plan.  This documents all the operational nuances of the system and provides key information on roles and responsibilities, risk management, reporting, etc.  The three key service management documents, the Service Catalog, Service Level Agreement, and Service Management Plan, form the triad of system documentation and significantly streamlines documentation and artifact collection.

Choosing the Correct Measures
Most everyone has heard some version of the adage, “You only improve what you measure.”  The provision of staff is no exception.  Whether you choose to take a services approach to go at it from a different direction, you will need to collect measurements.  In most cases, you will want to focus on 3-5 measures that make a difference in your delivery of services and are contractual requirements.  While any number of measures could be included, these tend to be useful for this type of work:

• Percent of contractual reporting requirements met on time
• Percent of candidates accepted by the customer/prime
• Percent of qualified candidates provided within specified contractual timeframes
• Customer satisfaction scores of 4.6 (1 to 5 scale) or above for all contracts
• Contract attrition rate below 10%.