Title
IT Support Conversation Manager: A Conversation-Centered Approach and Tool for Managing Best Practice IT Processes
Abstract
There is a push in the enterprise towards facilitating processes from best practice frameworks (such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)) to make them more repeatable, efficient and cost-effective. Best practice processes provide descriptive, high level guidelines rather than prescriptive, precise process model definitions. They are meant to be followed by people and may be adapted and enacted differently in various realizations. Currently, ITIL processes are either supported by tools that hard code an interpretation of the process logic, or followed by people using productivity tools. This is inefficient because existing tools hardcode a rigid logic of the processes, and do not support collaborative and flexible realizations of processes. Moreover, there is a risk of information loss when people using rigid productivity tools, and are forced to collaborate outside of those tools. In this paper, we present a conversation-centered approach and a tool that enables dynamic and flexible definition and enactment of best practice processes in a collaborative and interactive manner. We address the issue of information loss by using the concept of a conversation as a container of information about the interactions among people in the context of a process. A conversation is backed with a semi-structured process model and process templates to support flexible and adaptive process realization. We showcase the approach using an illustrative use case in incident and problem management, based on best practice processes from ITIL.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1109/EDOC.2010.20
EDOC
Keywords
Field
DocType
business data processing,groupware,open systems,productivity,IT infrastructure library,IT support conversation manager,best practice IT processes management,conversation centered approach,enterprise,process logic interpretation,productivity tools,Ad-hoc Business Processes,Best Practice Process Frameworks,Collaboration Applications,IT Processes
Hard coding,Information Technology Infrastructure Library,Data mining,Best practice,Conversation,Systems engineering,Software engineering,Computer science,Problem management,Collaborative software,Financial management for IT services,Open system (systems theory)
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2325-6354
9
0.64
References 
Authors
4
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hamid R. Motahari-Nezhad11277.19
Claudio Bartolini294486.00
Sven Graupner319524.72
sharad singhal41211150.87
Susan Spence534030.69