Transition from Traditional ITSM to Agile. How to Build Flexible IT Service Management?
Author of the article: Dmitry Kurdyumov
Participated in Agile transformations in the largest companies in Russia (Alfa Bank, MTS, X5 retail group), with international experience in a startup abroad
Modern companies strive to improve the efficiency and flexibility of IT service management in order to respond faster to business demands and improve customer experience. Traditional ITSM (IT service management) approaches with their rigid processes and bureaucratic barriers often fail to cope with these tasks. Working with Agile allows you to transform IT service management, making it more efficient and adaptive.
Problems with Traditional ITSM and the Need for Change
Traditional approaches to ITSM focus on processes, strict regulations, and adherence to SLAs (service level agreements). The main problems with such approaches are:
Long cycles of response to requests and changes. Regulated processes, as a rule, require a lot of time for approvals and going through all the stages.
Low adaptability to change. Structured processes are difficult to adapt to new requirements or sudden changes.
Bureaucracy and low team engagement. Employees often become mere task performers, losing motivation and interest in the improvement process.
Agile approaches help change these processes by making them more flexible, accelerating task completion, and engaging teams in continuous improvement.
Forming Agile Teams in ITSM
Adapting Agile to ITSM requires creating cross-functional teams that will independently resolve incidents and manage changes. Such teams should be autonomous to minimize dependence on other departments and increase response speed. Here are the key specialists who should be included in the team:
Support Engineer: The primary person responsible for initial incident handling and user interaction.
DevOps Engineer: Participates in process automation, CI/CD and rapid response to problems, helps to quickly implement fixes.
Change Manager: Coordinates changes, assesses risks, and manages releases to ensure stability.
Technical Analyst: Analyzes the causes of incidents, helps the team find effective solutions, collects data.
Scrum Master/Kanban Master: Helps the team optimize the process, remove blockers, and focus on continuous improvement.
Release Manager: Organizes and coordinates releases, plans and tests changes before they are implemented.
This team structure ensures full coverage of all stages of work – from the receipt of an incident to its resolution and implementation of changes, which significantly speeds up processes and reduces the number of errors. Gathering participants into a single team allows for a significant reduction in the time spent on communication and problem solving.
Setting up a Kanban board for incident and change management
A Kanban board is the main tool for visualizing team work and managing tasks. Setting up the board correctly helps the team work in a coordinated and predictable manner, eliminating delays. An example of a Kanban board that we set up in one company:
Backlog: All incidents and change requests that have not yet been processed. This is a source of tasks for the team and helps with capacity planning.
To Do: Tasks that are ready to start working on. Incidents that have undergone preliminary analysis and have all the necessary data for resolution are included here.
In Progress: Active tasks that the team is currently working on. This is the main workflow where you can see the current status of incidents and changes.
Review: Tasks that are complete but require review, testing, or confirmation before completion.
Done: Completed tasks that reflect the team's work.
Blocked: Tasks that cannot be completed due to dependencies, missing data, or other issues. This is a critical pillar for eliminating blockers.
Your stages may be different depending on your process, the main thing is that the board reflects the process and statuses in detail. It is also important to create sub-stages within the stages – in progress, ready, in order to understand the readiness for selection to the next stage.
WIP (Work in Progress) limits
WIP limits limit the number of tasks that can be in progress at the same time. This helps the team avoid being overwhelmed and focus on completing the tasks at hand. Instead of taking on a new task, focus on finishing the ones that are in progress first, even if they are blocked, and take action to resolve the issues as soon as possible.
How to set WIP limits?
Start by analyzing the average number of tasks in a job and gradually reduce that number until you reach an optimal level at which the team works most efficiently.
What are the benefits of WIP limits?
Reduce time to complete tasks, reduce multitasking, improve quality of work by focusing on current priorities.
Kanban Meetings and Their Purposes
Meetings are an important part of flow management in Kanban, allowing you to maintain the rhythm of work and solve problems as they arise. Regular meetings should be included in Kanban:
Kanban meeting (Daily meeting):
It is carried out daily and lasts no more than 15 minutes.
Objective: To discuss the current status of tasks, identify blockers, and plan work for the day. Participants share information about what has been done, what will be done today, and what problems are hindering work.
Replenishment Meeting:
Conducted weekly or as needed.
Objective: Analyze new tasks and incidents that have entered the backlog, prioritize and add tasks to the “To Do” column on the Kanban board.
Service Delivery Review:
Conducted once a month or as needed.
Objective: To evaluate the team's performance, analyze metrics (response time, number of resolved incidents, etc.) and identify actions to improve processes.
Operations Review:
Held monthly.
Objective: To analyze overall performance, discuss operational metrics, and identify trends and issues that require intervention.
Using Kanban for incident and change management helps make processes more transparent and efficient. Visualizing tasks, monitoring WIP limits, and holding regular meetings allows teams to respond to incidents faster, improve communication, and focus on the highest priority tasks. Kanban is especially useful in situations where it is necessary to quickly resolve incidents, ensure continuity of work, and implement adjustments in a timely manner, minimizing delays and improving service quality.
Now let's look at how using Scrum helps manage change projects in ITSM.
Using Scrum to Manage Change and Projects
Unlike Kanban, which is ideal for managing the flow of tasks and incidents in daily work (run), Scrum is used for change and project management. Scrum allows you to structure and accelerate the implementation of changes, improvements and new initiatives through short iterations (sprints), providing flexibility and the ability to quickly respond to feedback.
Where and for what projects can Scrum be used in ITSM
Scrum is best suited for situations where changes need to be implemented under conditions of uncertainty, as well as for larger initiatives that require experimentation and hypothesis testing. Examples of such situations include:
Projects for the implementation of new functions and services:
Example: An IT department is implementing a new system to automate request processing. The team uses sprints to incrementally develop, test, and implement functionality, continually receiving feedback from end users and adjusting course.
Optimization of processes and improvement of service quality:
Example: A team decides to improve incident handling processes by implementing automation of responses to typical requests. Using Scrum, the team develops and tests new automation features each sprint, testing their effectiveness in real-world conditions.
Experiments with new technologies and hypotheses:
Example: An ITSM team wants to test how AI implementation can reduce incident resolution time. Each sprint, a new AI approach or model is tested, the results are analyzed, and adjustments are made based on the data.
Using Scrum for Change and Project Management in ITSM
Sprints: Changes and new initiatives are planned in short iterations (usually 2-4 weeks) in which the team works on specific tasks and tests hypotheses. Sprints help manage risk because changes are introduced gradually rather than all at once.
Sprint Planning: During planning, the team determines what tasks and changes will be included in the current sprint. This allows the team to focus on clearly defined goals and avoid being overwhelmed.
Daily Standups: The team discusses progress daily, identifies roadblocks, and coordinates work to ensure all tasks are on track.
Retrospectives: After each sprint, the team reviews what went well and what could be improved. This helps the team adapt and improve its performance in subsequent sprints.
Conclusion
In summary, Kanban and Scrum play different roles in ITSM. Kanban is ideal for supporting ongoing operations and incident management, helping teams focus on fixing problems and keeping things running smoothly. Scrum, on the other hand, helps manage changes and projects by breaking down complex tasks into manageable iterations, testing hypotheses, and quickly adapting to feedback.
The combined use of these approaches makes IT service management truly agile, efficient and focused on continuous improvement.
The transition to Agile allows not only to improve the quality and speed of work, but also to create a culture of continuous improvement, which is especially important in the context of dynamically changing business requirements. The use of cross-functional teams and flexible task management methodologies helps the company to adapt faster, provide high quality of service and achieve sustainable success in IT service management.
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