Why ITSM Must Put People at the Centre

Ask IT practitioners how the business sees them and three words often surface: slow, expensive and complicated.

Another platform, tighter SLA or extra layer of governance will not fix that perception on its own. The missing layer is experience: understanding the people who rely on IT to do their jobs.

Humanising IT™ brings human-centred design into service management. It asks not only, "Does the service work?" but, "Does it work for the people delivering and using it?"

Good Process Does Not Guarantee a Good Experience

ITIL®, COBIT® and USM give IT organisations valuable structure, control and a shared language. They help teams manage risk and deliver stable, secure services.

But a process can work exactly as designed and still frustrate everyone using it.

Employees struggle to navigate support. Tickets go unraised because people do not believe they will help. Tools are introduced without understanding how frontline teams actually work.

The process may not be broken. It may be solving the wrong problem.

Human-Centred Design Is Not a Soft Option

Human-centred design is more than listening politely or giving users whatever they request. It is a structured, evidence-based way to understand context, expose friction and frame the right problem before rushing to a solution.

The Design Council's Double Diamond, introduced in 2004, moves through four phases: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. IDEO adds three essential lenses: desirability, viability and feasibility.

In plain terms:

• Does this solve a problem that matters to people?
• Can it succeed within real organisational constraints?
• Can we build and support it?

The aim is not to accept every request at face value. It is to combine inquiry, observation and evidence to uncover what people genuinely need.

Two Worlds, Different Starting Points

ITSM often starts with process, control and compliance. Human-centred design starts with research, experimentation and iteration. Telling an IT team to "think more about the user" will not bridge that gap.

Stakeholders also experience the same event differently. During a major incident, Finance sees cost, People and Culture sees employee impact, IT sees restoration, and executives see risk and reputation.

No single view is wrong. No single view is complete.

Humanising IT™ starts by asking who is affected, what they are experiencing and what outcome they need before the existing process defines the answer.

Where HIT DDF™ Changes the Conversation

Created by HIT Global co-founder Katrina Macdermid, the Humanising IT™ Double Diamond Framework (HIT DDF™) connects human-centred design with IT service management without losing the controls IT needs.

It aligns Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver with ITSM activity across Strategy, Plan/Design, Build and Transition. It then extends into Run/Maintain through Operations and Support.

That matters. Experience does not end at go-live.

Three early HIT DDF™ activities make the approach practical:

• Recognising the Initial Perceived Problem (RIPP): pauses the rush to solve the first problem presented.
• Assumption Analysis: makes hidden beliefs visible so they can be tested.
• Stakeholder Mapping: identifies who affects or is affected by the service.

Together, they move teams from assumption to evidence.

The Payoff Is Practical

Understand the real causes of friction and teams can reduce avoidable demand, improve resolution, strengthen adoption and create support people are willing to use.

The impact reaches beyond the service desk. Better technology experiences help employees do their jobs, support customers and stay engaged. The context may change across healthcare, hospitality, finance, government or manufacturing, but the need is the same: services must work for the humans who depend on them.

Humanising IT™ training and certification, available through HIT Global and its learning partners, gives IT professionals a structured way to build these capabilities.

Humanise Before You Automate

AI makes this urgent. Automation learns from the data, workflows and decisions already in place. If those processes contain hidden workarounds, incomplete information or untested assumptions, AI will reproduce the same failures - faster and at greater scale.

Humanise the service before automating it.

Understand how people work. Find the demand that never reaches the service desk. Test assumptions. Design from evidence, not convenience.

Get the foundations right and AI can improve outcomes. Get them wrong and sophisticated technology will simply accelerate a poor experience.

The Agenda Has Changed

This is not people instead of process. It is people at the centre of process.

Optimising only for compliance and efficiency can still leave the business experiencing IT as slow, expensive and complicated. Human-centred design adds the experience layer traditional service management too often misses.

The frameworks exist. The methods are practical. The opportunity is clear: design IT services that are reliable, secure and efficient and that genuinely work for people.

*This article draws on insights shared by Mark Basham in a webinar delivered in partnership with Informa Connect Academy.*

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