Right Practice vs. Best Practice in ITSM: Finding the Sweet Spot

If you’ve worked in IT or Service Management (in any other industry for that matter), you've likely heard a lot about “best practices.”

But today, let’s 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’s give “best practice” its due. Best practices are essentially industry-standard methods and processes that have been widely accepted because they’ve been proven to work well across various organisations and scenarios. They’re 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're huge fans of it.

The big advantage of best practices is that they provide a solid foundation. If you’re new to ITSM or looking to standardise processes in a chaotic environment, adopting best practices can be a great way to ensure you’re on the right track. They’re 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’s 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 don’t 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’s working and what’s not, rather than sticking rigidly to a predefined set of guidelines.

3. Increased Buy-In:

   When practices are tailored to fit your organisation, you’re 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’re likely to see better results.

Balancing Best and Right Practices

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

- Start with Best Practices:

  Use best practices as your foundation. They provide a great starting point and help ensure you’re 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’s working well? What isn’t?

- 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 don’t work for you.

- Continuous Improvement:

  Make continuous improvement a core part of your ITSM strategy. Right practice isn’t a one-time adjustment; it’s an ongoing process of refinement and enhancement.

In Conclusion

In our opinion, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in the world of IT/ESM.

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 orientated 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!