Over at The ITSM Review I blogged about Structured Problem Analysis.
When I worked in IT Infrastructure and Operations I was unaware of this framework for rationally finding and proving the root cause to complex problems. I wished I'd read "The Rational Manager" book during that time - I think the lessons are invaluable.
An extract is below - head over to the article for the full post. Comments and discussion most definitely encouraged!
Those who have worked in IT Operations have a strong affinity with the skills of problem solving and troubleshooting. Although a huge amount of effort is taken to improve resiliency and redundancy of IT systems the ability to quickly diagnose the root cause of problems has never been more important and relevant.
IT Service Management has gone a long way towards making practices standardised and repeatable. For example you don't want individual creative input when executing standard changes or fulfilling requests. Standard Operating Procedures and process manuals means that we expect our engineers and practioners to behave in predictable ways. Those reluctant to participate in these newly implemented processes might even complain all the fun has gone out of IT support.
