Workload management in dynamic IT service delivery organizations

Abstract

Enterprises and service providers are increasingly looking to global service delivery as a means for containing costs while improving the quality of service delivery. However, it is often difficult to effectively manage the conflicting needs associated with dynamic customer workload, strict service level constraints, and efficient service personnel organization. In this paper we propose a dynamic approach for workload and personnel management, where organization of personnel is dynamically adjusted based upon differences between observed and target service level metrics. Our approach consists of constructing a dynamic service delivery organization and developing a feedback control mechanism for dynamic workload management. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in an IT incident management example designed based on a large service delivery environment handling more than ten thousand service requests over a period of six months. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.