Kestrel Shared Services: an improvement register nobody uses
Kestrel provides IT shared services to six UK councils through four directorates. Each directorate runs its own incident process, and three different ITSM tools are in use. A central continual improvement register holds 340 items; four have been closed in two years. Audit has just found that Kestrel cannot evidence who approved a sample of changes, prompting a recommendation to "implement ITIL". The newly appointed head of service management has no budget, no direct reports and no mandate to change directorate processes. Council finance directors are wary of anything that looks like a centralisation programme, and one directorate has publicly said it will not give up its tool.
1. What is the first move, given the lack of budget and mandate?
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The audit finding is not a process problem, it is a decision-rights problem: nobody can say who is accountable for approval in a given directorate, which is why evidence is missing. Adding a fourth standard process on top of three divergent ones would deepen that, not fix it - and the head has no levers to enforce it anyway.
First move: establish governance before standardisation. Specifically:
- Convene a small decision forum of the four directorate leads (plus finance) with a written purpose, meeting rhythm and a named chair. Without this, any standard is advisory.
- Agree what must be common and what may stay local, and write it down. Typically: common definitions, a common control set and single reporting for regulatory/audit purposes; local procedure and tooling choice within those. That split gives the reluctant directorate something real to keep, which is what makes agreement possible.
- Make the audit finding the shared problem, not the head's agenda. Ask audit to state precisely which controls they need evidence for.
- Pick one visible, low-cost improvement in the first quarter to build credibility - evidence of change approval is a good candidate because it is auditable and cheap.
Avoid opening with an ITIL maturity assessment; it will be read as a centralisation programme and will unite the directorates against you.
2. How would you deal with the 340-item improvement register?
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The register is a symptom: it has accumulated everything anyone wanted fixed, with no ownership, no cost and no decision point, so nothing can be prioritised and nothing gets closed. Four closures in two years is what a list looks like when it is not a plan.
Approach:
- Triage in one pass against a stated filter: does it relate to the agreed common controls, does it reduce a live risk, is there an owner who wants it? Close or archive the rest explicitly, with a note explaining why - silent deletion destroys trust.
- Convert survivors into a small portfolio (10–15 items) with owner, expected outcome, effort, and a date. Anything without an owner does not enter.
- Prioritise on outcome and risk, not enthusiasm. Weigh regulatory exposure and cross-directorate benefit highest, because those are the arguments finance directors accept. Items that only one directorate wants should be theirs to fund.
- Attach each item to the governing forum's agenda so prioritisation is a recurring decision with a record, not a one-off purge.
Also fix the intake: a register with no threshold will refill. Require a stated outcome and an owner at submission, and cap the number of active items so capacity is honest.
3. Which measures would tell you whether this is working, and which would mislead you?
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Measure the system, not the activity:
- Audit findings closed and controls evidenced - the original problem, and the one finance directors care about.
- Proportion of the common control set actually operated in all four directorates, sampled rather than self-reported.
- Cycle time for the improvement portfolio from approval to closure, and the percentage of active items closed on time.
- Repeat incidents across directorates - a sign that learning is not crossing boundaries.
- Time to restore service, compared across directorates, which will expose where local process variation actually costs money.
What misleads: number of register items closed (rewards closing trivia), ITIL practice maturity scores (measure adoption, not outcome, and invite paperwork), ticket volumes (a change in categorisation looks like a change in demand), and any single central dashboard that directorates do not recognise as their own - it will be disowned the moment it looks bad.
A structural warning sign: if the only person chasing the measures is the head of service management, governance has not taken hold. The measure of success is that directorate leads bring their own numbers to the forum and argue about them.