Right Practice vs. Best Practice in ITSM

If you have worked in IT or service management, in any other industry for that matter, you have likely heard a lot about best practices.

But today, let us dig a little deeper and talk about something that might just change the way you think about managing IT, or other enterprise services. The concept of right practice versus best practice.

Best Practice: The Industry Standard

First off, let us give best practice its due. Best practices are essentially industry standard methods and processes that have been widely accepted because they have been proven to work well across various organisations and scenarios. They are like the playbook that the majority of successful teams follow. ITIL, for example, is chock-full of best practices for IT service management, and we are huge fans of it.

The big advantage of best practices is that they provide a solid foundation. If you are new to ITSM, or looking to standardise processes in a chaotic environment, adopting best practices can be a great way to ensure you are on the right track. They are well documented, widely understood, and supported by a wealth of resources and training materials.

With that said, for us pragmatism and common sense prevails in ITSM, which brings us nicely on to what we like to call right practice.

Right Practice: Tailored to Your Needs

This is where things get a bit more personalised. Right practice takes the idea of best practice and tweaks it to better fit the specific needs and context of your organisation. It is about finding what works best for you, not just what works best in general.

Think of best practices as a well fitting suit you buy off the rack. It looks good, and it works well for most occasions. But right practice is like having that suit tailored to your exact measurements. It fits perfectly, feels more comfortable, and ultimately helps you perform better.

Why Right Practice Might Be Better for You

So why should you consider right practice over just sticking with best practice? Here are a few compelling reasons.

1. Customisation. Every organisation is unique. Different cultures, different technologies, different goals. Best practices do not always account for these nuances. Right practice allows you to customise your approach to fit your organisation's specific needs.
2. Flexibility. In the rapidly changing world of IT, flexibility is key. Right practice is inherently more adaptable. It encourages you to continuously assess and adjust your processes based on what is working and what is not, rather than sticking rigidly to a predefined set of guidelines.
3. Increased buy-in. When practices are tailored to fit your organisation, you are more likely to get buy-in from your team. People are more inclined to support and engage with processes that feel relevant and appropriate to their day to day work.
4. Better results. Ultimately the goal of ITSM is to deliver value and improve service delivery. Right practice is more focused on outcomes than on following a set of rules. By prioritising what works best for your team and your customers, you are likely to see better results.

Balancing Best and Right Practices

Of course, this does not mean you should throw best practices out of the window. They still serve as a valuable starting point. The trick is to strike a balance between the two. Here is how you can do that.

• Start with best practices. Use them as your foundation. They provide a great starting point and help ensure you are covering all the essential bases.
• Assess and adapt. Regularly review how these practices are working in your specific context. Gather feedback from your team and your customers. What is working well? What is not?
• Customise. Based on your assessments, customise the practices to better fit your needs. This might mean tweaking processes, adopting new tools, or even discarding some practices that just do not work for you.
• Continuous improvement. Make continuous improvement a core part of your ITSM strategy. Right practice is not a one-time adjustment, it is an ongoing process of refinement and enhancement.

In Conclusion

In our opinion, there is no one size fits all solution in the world of IT and enterprise service management.

While best practices provide a solid foundation, embracing right practice allows you to tailor your approach to better fit the unique needs of your organisation. By finding the sweet spot between best and right practices, you can create a more flexible, effective and engaging service management environment that delivers real value.

We would encourage everyone who works in a service oriented environment to learn about ITIL and other frameworks, as they really are extremely powerful and effective. But also remember that just because the book says it should be a certain way, this has to be balanced with what is right for the organisation where you are implementing it.

Remember, everyone always looks sharper in a tailored suit.

Happy tailoring.