Fulfilling childhood dreams as a Service Lead

Every child dreams of being something. Some of them look up to their teachers and say that they also want to teach when they grow up. Some dream of saving the world and doing so as firefighters or police officers. Some want to be doctors. But then years go by, you find yourself all grown up and might wonder what happened to those dreams.

Since I was four years old I wanted to become a secretary. Since the 1990’s the world has changed quite a bit and archiving papers and answering phone calls are things in the past. Still, the idea of working in the office where you can roll around with your chair and sit in cubicles always intrigued me.

For the past ten years, I’ve been working in IT service management and during that time I’ve noticed that my role as a Service Lead has a lot in common with most people’s childhood dreams.

Service Lead as a firefighter

Perhaps the most obvious comparison is between service management and firefighting. Service Leads are very interested in preventing fires in clients’ software. This can be done by proactively suggesting ways to keep the software running smoothly and by making sure the service keeps generating value for the client.

In emergency situations it’s crucial to know what are the most important things that need to be done first. Also in software maintenance prioritization of the work in hand is necessary. There might be fires in production (hopefully not that many though) that need to be handled first before further developing the software.

Service Lead as a police officer

One of the important things that police officers do is to try to maintain the peace in the community by preventing threats. Service Leads do something similar. They remove obstacles from the maintenance team, so that they can do their work without unnecessary disruptions. The maintenance team also makes sure that the client can focus on their core business, instead of being distracted by incidents.

When something does happen, police officers need to write reports about it. Reporting the success of agreed service levels, ticket statuses and hours, just to name a few, are an essential part of the Service Lead day-to-day work. Aiming towards real-time reporting is more beneficial than just looking back at what happened weeks ago.

Having just some member of the maintenance team doing these things might be doable, but it’s not a sensible use of their time. Developers should focus on development and not on timetables and budgets.

Handling all the matters that are agreed in the contract in an organized manner helps to keep the peace between the client and the maintenance team.

Service Lead as a teacher

As a teacher, you need to know something very well in order to teach others. The Service Lead is a professional when it comes to best practices of IT service management, for example ITIL, Agile, Lean or Scrum.

When you know something exceptionally well, you can explain it to others in simple terms. That’s how teachers are so good with kids and making them understand complex concepts. The Service Lead is an interpreter between the client and the team, making sure that both parties understand each other. Using difficult language isn’t a mark of professionalism. Being able to make each party build a common understanding is more important.

Service Lead as a doctor

A good doctor doesn’t just cure illnesses, they prevent them and support your health. In a similar way Service Leads are not there just to help maintenance teams resolve incidents or to create good processes to receive them. Their focus is on how to improve the quality of service and the functionality of the software.

Doctors plan a path for patients’ treatment together with the patient, and Service Leads also plan the work and future roadmaps with the clients.

Service Lead as a coach

A great coach motivates, supports and inspires others. They create a team spirit where each team member can achieve their goals and succeed.

Service Lead’s are people persons, who are there for their teams. They want to remove obstacles from their work and to encourage them to grow as professionals. The team needs to also reach goals and the Service Lead (together with superiors) can help with that. Making sure each team has needed skills, enough variety and mentoring available is crucial in achieving those goals.

Service Leads need to be good communicators. They need to be able to have difficult discussions and to give and receive feedback. People around Service Lead need to feel safe to approach them with any concern that they have in mind. This is important both with their team and with the clients.

Service Lead is an essential part of the service

As you can see from the examples above a Service Lead is an essential part of the service. There are no projects without project management and there shouldn’t be any services without service management. When clients have their main contact person and the maintenance team, who know their business, software and future plans, it’s easy to maintain peace of mind and free time for their core business.

Written by Jenna Salo, the latest addition to Orangit Service Lead team 🌴 🦧