162 ◾ Making IT Lean: Applying Lean Practices to the Work of IT
We also can ask questions about the nature of the product or service that
the Service Desk is delivering. In the case of service requests, as suggested
earlier, we can think of this almost as an assembly operation, and we should
consider efficiencies in the supply chain as part of the management of the
request fulfillment process.
As we think through these various ideas and apply them to our cur-
rent models for Service Desk operation, we begin to see gaps. Lean
suggests one way of viewing the objectives, and our typical Current State
operations that suggest that other objectives are at play (e.g., operate at
lowest unit cost, respond to incidents or requests within established time ...