Interview summary Report

Team 2

Interviewees: Mirjam den Boon

Petra Beintema
Roy Pastoor
Coordinator: Paul Roper

Authors: Oleksandra Voronchykhina

Thorben Juffer
Andreea Lupu
Cem Sinan
Martijn Bakker

Group: Team 2

Class: ITVK1
Date: 14-11-2018

Pagina 1
1.0. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
Within Ordina, even though not all processes have a clearly defined procedure, each Ordina’s employee
knows his/her responsibility and role in the team, so flexible structure is beneficial for the company. It
empowers its employees which admit that they are satisfied with their job because of its flexibility. The
actions of employees to great extent rely on their common sense and differ from situation to situation.

When it comes to the Incident Management, there are clearly defined steps on how to deal with
incidents. Concerning this process, there are not many incidents and all of them are registered which is a
positive aspect. Moreover, before handling the incidents, the team tries to find the root cause and
update the customer throughout the process by phone calls. To improve the Incident Management, it is
recommended to measure customer satisfaction by remailing the survey until it’s completed and
conduct surveys based on the position that the employee occupies within the organisation’s hierarchy.
Another recommendation is to make the process of getting employees from other departments to work
on incidents easier. This can be done by explaining the head of the departments the importance of OLAs
and ask for people from other departments only when work cannot be done by the Incident
Management team.

Speaking about Configuration Management, positive points are that a single centralized CMDB is used
which includes information about both internal and external configuration data. To improve the
Configuration Management, clear organised procedure should be implemented. Moreover, trainings for
employees and customers who work with the CMDB should be provided. Another recommendation
would be to make the CMDB more user-friendly which would improve the usability and remove
miscommunication between Ordina and its customers. Eventually, employees should have a specific
time-slot when they could do configuration management updates and audits to measure performance.

Problem Management described in this report relates less to Ordina but more to one of the company’s
customers. When it comes to the Problem Management, good aspects which help with solving the
problems are: track of incidents, problems and changes in a database; usage of ISM framework; Scrum
related solutions. However, there are a few points that could be improved. Considering Ordina’s clients,
first of all, employees should have more space to make decisions and not ask a manager about every
step. Secondly, the company could consider hiring a specialist that could contribute to the problem
solution. As for Ordina itself, it is recommended to use the knowledge and skills of already existing
employees and their experience within the customer organisations in order to deal with problems more
efficiently.

In conclusion, the overall processes within Ordina work well and this can be justified with actual data
(e.g. very few incidents occurred this year) and employees are satisfied with their jobs, but there could
always be room for improvement.

Pagina 2
2.0. INTRODUCTION
The aim of this consultancy report is to provide Ordina with a diagnosis of their current performance of
the Incident, Problem and Configuration Management processes and with recommendations on how
they might be improved in order to increase productivity and efficiency within the work environment.

In this report, the current situation of ITIL processes, Incident, Problem, and Configuration Management,
in Ordina was investigated. Ordina is the largest IT services provider in the Benelux. Among its
customers are companies in the public sector, financial services sector, industry and healthcare.

Based on the information which was gathered during the interviews with three employees from Ordina,
the current situation, conclusion and recommendations were written. After the interview, the summary
report was sent to the employees in order to show them the initial perception we have about the
company. Incident and Configuration Management, described in the report, relate to Ordina, while
Problem Management relates less to Ordina but more to one of the company’s customers.

There were a few limitations while writing the report. First of all, the time of each interview was about
40 minutes and sometimes it was not enough to ask all questions that were prepared. Secondly, the
Problem Manager left this position a few years ago, so the information regarding Problem Management
relates to one of Ordina’s clients and might not be up-to-date.

The interview took place into Ordina’s office, Europaweg 31-33, 9723 AS Groningen, on the 17 October,
th

while the final presentation with conclusion and recommendation was presented on the 14 November.
th

We would like to add that our conclusions and observations are based on the answers of the interviews
and from the experience gained during the ITIL course at Hanzehogeschool.

We are very grateful to Ordina and its employees for their time and the experience we gained from
them.

Pagina 3
3.0. CURRENT SITUATION
In the following chapter, observations about the processes have been drawn based on the answers
given in the interview. In general, Incident, Problem and Configuration Management processes within
Ordina don’t follow a strict path, are flexible and rely on the common sense and shared responsibility of
the employees to do the right thing when needed. The subchapters about Incident and Configuration
Management relate to those processes within Ordina, while the subchapter about Problem
Management refers mostly to one of Ordina’s clients, but not entirely.

3.1. INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

General Performance service desk

In the past, Ordina trained their service desk employees to know their customer and their core
business. Before the changes there were less skilled employees. In contrast, today service desk
employees do not know their customers that well. Now it’s more of a “transportation service”.
Ordina is currently working on a new ticket system where customers serve themselves by
submitting incidents.

An issue may arise since customers do not always convey their incidents properly due to the fact
that what a customer thinks is a incident may not be what the help desk defines as incident.

Team
The team is very small because there aren’t a lot of incidents. There is a Delivery Manager that
makes SLA reports at the end of every month. The people within the team also take time to look
at the problems that may cause two or more incidents, since there is not a separate department
that does that.

Incidents
Reaction time and fix times need to be explained with each incident. The Delivery Manager is
the one who looks for anomalies.

SLA
Ordina has made use of service packages in the past. However, in order to offer more open-
ended options, customers can negotiate their own requirements. It is true that this adds more
difficulty in keeping track of a company's requirements. The attitude towards such SLA’s is also
dependent on the size of the customer’s company. For example, larger customers care more
about resolution times while smaller companies tend to be more lenient.

The SLA’s KPI violation fines can be avoided if Ordina can explain the usage of their time when
resolving incidents. For example, a customer may ask the service desk to do something else
while their incident resolve “timer” is already running.

Pagina 4
Customer Satisfaction
While there are people within Ordina that conduct customer satisfaction, they can’t measure
overall customer satisfaction when it comes to Incident Management. Furthermore, satisfaction
varies between managers and lower level employees based on how the incident interacts with
their daily work.

Incident Handling
End users report incidents through emails and phone calls. All incidents reported, regardless of
context, get logged. Incidents will get a prioritization number based on the amount of people
they affect. Higher priority incidents have a slightly different procedure, because they need to
be phoned in, not sent by email. Also, in the case of high priority incidents, permanent contact
with the customers is kept by giving updates of the status of the incident.

25 people from different units= 1 Priority Ranking

10 people from a least 1 units = 2 Priority Ranking
1 person from one unit = 3 Priority Ranking

Priority Received Closed In progress

Prio 1 0 0 0

Prio 2 1 1 1

Prio 3 12 16 10
(Incident Report 2018)
Generally there are few incidents in a year, while even fewer or zero priority one incidents.

Escalation
If a priority incident can’t be fixed before the agreed resolution time deadline, communication
will be organized with the customer.
If the priority still isn’t fixed, the Service Delivery Manager or Delivery Manager will be
contacted for hierarchical escalation. Most of the time an escalation involves time constraints.

Incident can also be forwarded to Database Administrators within Ordina, but problems can
occur. They are not always available and outside help from other departments can be
problematic, because people can be busy doing their own work. Especially when it comes to
Database Administrators, there are only a few of them and they could be busy with their own
duties. There is a concern that someday this may cause a huge issue when multiple incidents are
filled in.
Also, getting help from other external suppliers such as Oracle can be difficult. It could take a
month to get an official response as they require log files and/or other resources and
information.

Pagina 5
This flow diagram illustrates the steps of the Incident process as provided by Ordina.

When incidents are reported, all of them are registered and classified regardless of initial
context. Afterwards an official analysis will be conducted, and solutions will be considered. Once
completed, the customer is notified and if the customer agrees with the solution the incident
process comes to an end.

Pagina 6
3.2. CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
Ordina currently implements configuration management to give themselves an overview of the
kind of hardware and software that is being used internally and externally by their customers.

Configuration management system(s)

Configuration data is stored within a single CMBD at Ordina. This CMDB contains internal and
external configuration data and this external configuration data is used for around 80 customer
organisations.

Not all customers are being included within the CMDB that belongs to Ordina, because this is
decided based upon the written agreements within the SLA. Also, customers cannot implement
changes on the hardware/software themselves without consulting Ordina.

The items (CI’s) within the CMBD consist of hardware, software, databases and operating
system information. These CI’s are identified by a unique key and the keys are connected to a
contract number involving that contract. This is good because all the configuration items are
physically labeled by these unique keys and can easily be identified. A photo of the interface of
the CMDB can be seen below.

Pagina 7
Maintenance and measuring performance
The maintaining of this centralized CMDB which involves updating and monitoring of the
information is done by one person (the service delivery manager) as a side activity. The service
delivery manager does not have always have the time available to update this information.

Some guidelines for updating the information of the CMBD is done once every quarter or half
year, however there is no strict policy for updating the system. Because updating the CMBD is
not done regularly, information is not always up-to-date and not so trustworthy for usage.
Ordina doesn’t use KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) or Audits involving configuration
management.

Process and past issues

Ordina has experienced problems with configuration management in the past. This was because
of Subversion, a program for Windows that stores different versions of software that are being
used. Within the program it wasn’t clear which versions were on the product environment and
which weren’t. The issue was that changes were made to a configuration item, but when it was
released into production it didn’t work, because the developing happened on a whole different
version of that functionality.

Ordina was aware of this issue so it addressed it by making a research with the Ministry of
Economic Affairs. The outcome of the research was how to use their version control system
more efficiently. This means Ordina is clearly trying to improve the process by taking different
actions.
Ordina considers configuration management has been done well when per client the
information about all his CI’s (Hardware, Software) is up-to-date and insightful for the Service
Delivery Manager.

Pagina 8
3.3. PROBLEM MANAGEMENT
Ordina situation
Within Ordina, there isn’t a special department that deals with Problem Management. The
employees that deal with incidents take time regularly to look at the root cause of these. This
happens when more of the same incident happens frequently and before solving it again, they
step back and try to find the actual problem. A separate department that deals specifically with
problems might be helpful, but also costly and as long as problems are dealt with on a regular
basis there is no urgency for one.

Ordina’s client situation. The process and relationship with other processes
But for the next part, based on the interview answers of the Problem Manager, the report refers
to the process within one of Ordina’s clients.
There, the Problem Management was done based on ISM framework, a lighter version of ITIL. A
flow diagram with the process’ steps as well as one regarding the relationship with other
processes can be seen below.

Pagina 9
These diagrams show how the Problem Management interacts with the other processes as it
gets input from Incident Management when one incident repeats frequently and gives output to
the Change Management if a change is needed in order to solve the underlying cause of the
incident.
One example involving Ordina’s client is that every month a particular system went down so
when this incident happened for the fourth time, the Problem Manager was informed, and the
problem was logged in the database of incidents, problems and changes. After diagnosis and
after the solution was found, the cost of solving was determined and when the management
level agreed to solve it, the Problem Manager went to the Change Manager to see if he can take
care of the change that will solve the problem.
The conclusion is that the steps of the process are clear for everybody and followed so there is
no miscommunication between managers of different processes.

Keeping track of incidents and measuring performance

Also, problems, incidents and changes are kept in a database which makes it easy to access
them when needed so the organisational part of the process is in good order. For the process to
be successful, a problem needs to be solved and a change implemented. Data of 120 problems
being solved in almost 2 years was given by the interviewee. Another measure of success is
whether people are doing the process by themselves without the need of a Problem Manager to
tell them what to do.
On one hand, for prioritization, urgency and impact is used. Impact means how big is the risk
that the problem poses to the business. On the other hand, categorization is not always done
because it is not mandatory within the ISM framework, but problems are easily recognized.

Pagina 10
4.0. GOOD POINTS, POINTS FOR IMPROVEMENT AND ADVICE ON IMPLEMENTING
IMPROVEMENTS
Based on the observations presented in the previous chapter, major good points, but also points for
improvement have been found. In this next chapter, they are going to be presented along with
recommendations and specific actions that can be taken in order to implement them.

4.1. INCIDENT MANAGEMENT

Points that were good:

• Everything gets registered as an incident. This makes the process reliable and the
information can be used for identifying further problems.
• There are few incidents in a year, which means that the process is properly implemented.
• The team that handles incidents doesn’t jump straight to solving an incident, but also
analyzes it to understand what caused it.
• In the case of high priority incidents, the customer will be updated throughout the process
and will call instead of sending an e-mail.

Points for improvement:

• Even though Ordina’s slogan is “IT that works for people”, it was said that customer
satisfaction regarding incident management cannot be measured properly at the moment.
In this case, making use of a survey would be more appropriate. While surveys usually get
sent to trash mail, there are ways to make customers to actually fill it in. For example:
1. Remailing the survey a second time.
2. Highlighting the importance of it in a conversation over the phone or in person.
3. Because it is hard to measure customer satisfaction for different positions within an
organization's hierarchy, we suggest customized surveys for the operative level (users, the
ones that work with the service on a daily basis) and for the strategic and tactical
level(managers).
Anyone within the incident process would be suitable carrying out such a survey.
• It may be difficult to get people from other departments to work on incidents because of
their own responsibilities, mainly when it comes to Database administrators.
1. Attempt to ask more urgently (implement an alert system for very high priority incidents
only) and make the people from other departments understand the consequences of not
meeting the deadlines. Also, better defined OLA’s regarding the response time.
2. Let them do only the parts they have to do. When gaining assistance from other
departments give them only the important parts where their help is actually required. Don’t
escalate the incident if there’s no need to do it.

Pagina 11
 4.2. CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Points that were good:

• Usage of a single centralized CMDB.
• CMDB contains not only internal but also external configuration data within a single
CMDB. Each of them are labeled for easier identification.
• Implementing a centralized program that monitors software versions on all
locations.

Points for improvement:

• Establish a clear organised process for doing configuration management.
Make use of a project group and include members who have experience in doing
configuration management. Together with these members define a configuration
process that interconnects with processes like change management. For example:
1. When a change has been made, update the contents of the CMDB. Make sure
that that the process cannot be compromised when dealing with changes.
2. Also specifically include within the process the doing of audits every quarter
or/and after the implementation of a large change. This allows measuring the
performance of the process for later improvements.
• Provide training for employees and clients who are supposed to interact with the
CMDB system.
With a clear (made) configuration management process manuals and (optionally)
training, activities can be organised. This gives clients and employees the confidence
and trust to work with the system regularly. This will result in employees and clients
who know how to interact with the system so even if it’s going to be costly in the
first place, the result will save later.
• Improve the usability of the CMDB by making it more user-friendly (interface).
To encourage clients and employees to use and trust the CMDB, a more user-
friendly system is needed. First ascertain what the clients and employees current
problems with the interface is. After that, decide what's possible for implementing.
Then make a draft or/and test environment for users to test on and check back with
the clients and employees if user-friendliness has improved.
This will remove miscommunication issues like the one that happened between
Ordina and one of their clients some time ago, when a lot of time was spent
explaining over and over again how to use the CMDB even though all the
information was there.
• Make time free for employee(s) and use that time to do configuration
management. Involve them in the process
Make time free for employees to do activities regularly like, updating, auditing and
monitoring of configuration management process and its systems.

Pagina 12
 4.3. PROBLEM MANAGEMENT
Points that were good (regarding Ordina’s client process)
• Good defined processes (diagrams, flow charts).
• Keeping track of incidents, problems, changes in a database. Surviving in a
competitive market demands zero error. “We know it is impossible, but we also
know getting close to zero is not impossible” the interviewee said. To be able to do
that, companies need to keep all the necessary data and store them to trace the
previous errors and mistakes.
• Using frameworks. As we mentioned earlier in the report, Ordina uses ISM
framework. We can suggest that using a framework that allows the complex
structures to be analyzed, understood and solved easily.
• Scrum like solutions for problems. Using Scrum like solutions are important in
problem management, because as our interviewee told “Sometimes problem is
deeper than we assumed”. Which means always asking why questions to determine
the root cause, having different technical expertise and constant improving.
Points for improvement:
The first two points are related to Ordina’s client and the third one to the organisation itself.
• Don’t depend on a manager for every action.
When we asked our interviewee about her thoughts on improving the process, she
replied that the related department’s employees ought to be more autonomous
with the processes. Benefits would be quicker response time, a lower hierarchy and
giving the employees the confidence to make their own alternative plans. This
implies that clear roles and responsibilities are defined and everybody knows what
they should be doing within the process.
• Hiring a person that could help the problem solution team.
Our team knows the fact that hiring a new employee is not a favorable idea.
However, we also know what happens if problems remain unfixed for a long time.
Until all the formal processes are prepared and the team is gathered, it would be
efficient to make a report that explains basic idea for the problem management
team. The person who is going to analyze and make this would give the team the
basics and thus make it more efficient.
• Regarding Ordina, the company should use the knowledge and experience to solve
problems in other companies.
This means there are employees who have great experience with problem solving.
Even though establishing a different department that deals only with problems is
costly and affects the hierarchy within the organisation making it larger, only by
using these employees’ competencies for problem management in Ordina would
make a positive difference. This could be done easily, as long as the employees are
willing to, because the information from the Incident Management is reliable and
accurate and provides the necessary insight to handle problems. This will result in
an improved service quality and reliability within Ordina.

Pagina 13
5.0. CONCLUSION
All in all, the team believes that Ordina is on the right track and even though it has a more flexible
approach to processes, this isn’t as issue as it also has responsible employees who handle their work
effectively. This means that the processes are treated seriously in order for the customer to receive the
best value.
We firmly believe that even our recommendations may seem costly at first sight (hiring people,
providing training etc.), for a big company like Ordina, in the long term, this investment will pay itself
with the higher efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. This will lead to a bigger profit, long-term
loyalty and a good relationship with the customers which are key success factors for an organisation.

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