Monday, February 15, 2010
Education and Training issues - Part 3
In my previous blog entry, I mention that I would start mapping soft skills to processes and/or activity within a given process.
I also provided this word of caution: of course, all the soft skills would apply but if your education dollars are limited, the mapping would represent you biggest “bang for your buck” (i.e.: benefit).
Here are SOME examples of soft skills
• Team Building - includes
o Uniting a team amidst cultural differences
o Interacting with others (includes observing various forms of etiquette)
o Defusing arguments with timing, instructions and polite, concise language
• Leadership
• Teaching
• Presenting
• Public speaking – includes maintaining…
o Meaningless conversation (small talk)
o Meaningful conversation (discussion/debate)
o Feigning interest and speaking intelligently about any topic
• Negotiating
• Motivating
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Listening
• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Writing
It would seem obvious to follow the lifecycle of a service and follow the order of the ITIL® core books. To many, this would not make sense. However, many may argue the most popular topics being Service Operation, Service Transition, Service Catalog Management, and Service Level Management; this is where we should start. Even within Operation and Transition, not all processes offer the same level of interest to everyone. The following list is not scientific but it is based on the most popular courses and consulting topics people call us about, here at Pink Elephant. There are in alphabetical order as they are among the most popular, Change Management, Incident Management, Problem management, Service Asset & Configuration management, Service Catalog Management, Service Desk, and Service Level Management.
However, before I start looking at any process in particular, I shall be looking at the Service Operation functions, which are:
- IT Operations – IT Operation Control and Facilities Management
- Technical Management
- Application Management
- Service Desk
Here is what the Service Operation book says about the four functions in regards to communication, education, and training.
Section 5.14.5 Communication
It should go without saying that good communication about changing requirements, technology and processes will result in improvement in Service Operation. However, communication is often neglected. Service Operation improvement is dependent on formal and regular communication between teams responsible for design, support, and operation of services.
Section 5.14.6 Education and training
Service Operation teams should understand the importance of what they do on a daily basis. Education is required to ensure that staff understand what business functions or services are supported by their activities. This will encourage greater care and attention to detail and will also help Service Operation teams to better identify business priorities.
Training programs should ensure that all staff have the appropriate skills for the technology or applications that they are managing. Training should always be provided when new technology is introduced, or when existing technology is changed.
Technical Management and Application Management
As per the Service Book, sections 6.3.1 and 6.5.1, Technical and Application Management have very similar dual roles.
- They are the custodian of knowledge and expertise related to managing the IT Infrastructure.
- They ensure that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed, and refined.
- They provide the actual resources to support the ITSM Lifecycle.
- They ensure that the resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate, and improve the technology required to deliver and support IT services.
Depending on the size and complexity of the organization, some of the following may or may not be in place. However, I would argue that regardless of the organization, there are managers and there are technical personnel.
For all four functions, here some possible roles
Possible management roles: manager, supervisor, team leader, senior analyst
Possible technical roles: senior, intermediate, and entry-level analysts
By the way, it does not matter if the people performing these roles are internal or are employed by a third party supplier; they all require soft skills proficiency.
In the following list, I am using
[M] - represent management roles
[A] - represent analysts performing technical roles
[B] - indicate that it applies equally to both
Team Building [M] / [A]
• Uniting a team amidst cultural differences [M]
• Interacting with others (includes observing various forms of etiquette) [B]
• Defusing arguments with timing, instructions and polite, concise language [B]
Leadership [M]
Teaching [M]
Presenting [M]
Public speaking – includes maintaining… [B]
• Meaningless conversation (small talk) [A]
• Meaningful conversation (discussion/debate) [B]
• Feigning interest and speaking intelligently about any topic [B]
Negotiating [M]
Motivating [M]
Decision making [M]
Problem solving [A]
Listening [B]
Coaching [M]
Mentoring [M]
Writing [B]
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Education and Training issues - Part 2
In my previous blog entry, I started to discuss training issues and completed with the following.
“Organizations must incorporate soft skills education and training. However, they must first design, engineer and foster a corporate culture that will enable this to happen and empower the people to act on it.”
What does this actually mean?
First, we need to define soft skills. Looking at Merriam-Webster, Business Dictionary, and Wikipedia online definitions, we can summarize soft skills as:
Merriam-Webster (Merriam-Webster online
[The] ability to use one’s knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance
[The] dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks
A learned power of doing something competently: a developed aptitude or ability [such as] language skills
Business dictionary (Business Dictionary online)
Communication, conflict resolution, human relation, making presentations, negotiating, team building, and other such ability defined in terms of expected outcomes and not as a specific method or technique such as statistical analysis.
Wikipedia (Wikipedia online)
Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person’s “EQ” (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills complement hard skills (part of a person’s IQ), which are the occupational requirements of a job and many other activities.
Here are SOME examples of soft skills
• Team Building - includes
o Uniting a team amidst cultural differences
o Interacting with others (includes observing various forms of etiquette)
o Defusing arguments with timing, instructions and polite, concise language
• Leadership
• Teaching
• Presenting
• Public speaking – includes maintaining
o Meaningless conversation (small talk)
o Meaningful conversation (discussing, debating)
o Feigning interest and speaking intelligently about any topic
• Negotiating
• Motivating
• Decision making
• Problem solving
• Listening
• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Writing
In my next blog entry, I will map the above soft skills to process and/or activity within a given process.
Word of caution: Of course, all the above would apply but if your education dollars are limited, the mapping would represent you biggest “bang for your buck” (i.e.: benefit)
To be continued