OPS01-BP01 Evaluate external customer needs
Involve key stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams, to determine where to focus efforts on external customer needs. This verifies that you have a thorough understanding of the operations support that is required to achieve your desired business outcomes.
Desired outcome:
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You work backwards from customer outcomes.
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You understand how your operational practices support business outcomes and objectives.
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You engage all relevant parties.
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You have mechanisms to capture external customer needs.
Common anti-patterns:
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You have decided not to have customer support outside of core business hours, but you haven't reviewed historical support request data. You do not know whether this will have an impact on your customers.
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You are developing a new feature but have not engaged your customers to find out if it is desired, if desired in what form, and without experimentation to validate the need and method of delivery.
Benefits of establishing this best practice: Customers whose needs are satisfied are much more likely to remain customers. Evaluating and understanding external customer needs will inform how you prioritize your efforts to deliver business value.
Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: High
Implementation guidance
Understand business needs: Business success is created by shared goals and understanding across stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams.
Review business goals, needs, and priorities of external customers: Engage key stakeholders, including business, development, and operations teams, to discuss goals, needs, and priorities of external customers. This ensures that you have a thorough understanding of the operational support that is required to achieve business and customer outcomes.
Establish a shared understanding: Establish a shared understanding of the business functions of the workload, the roles of each of the teams in operating the workload, and how these factors support your shared business goals across internal and external customers.
Resources
Related best practices:
