Something I worked on for the last few months, the framework for Intelligent Swarming, has been published by the Consortium for Service Innovation. Before you think I did this on my own, let me add that I was one of three authors. There were bits and pieces of information about Intelligent Swarming in slides, workshop notes, case descriptions present, but it was time to structure it and write it down. I was picking Greg Oxton's brain, who knows more about Intelligent Swarming than anyone else. He's called "Father of KCS", but I think it applies to IS as well. I'm glad the job is done and I'm proud of the result. I know it's a first version and I'm sure more versions and updates will follow as companies gain more experience with this way of working. As Greg put is: this framework is more a "what" and "why" for Intelligent Swarming than a "how", as the way IS is filled in depends so much on the company, like we did at Tricentis.
In short, when swarming in the service organization, we no longer use the tiered model of escalation, but a network of expertise. The model depends on collaboration to solve issues and the "intelligent" refers to getting the issue to the person who can best solve it and finding the right experts who can help. Collaboration means asking for help or offering help and we use technology to support this (think: how do people know you need help, how do you ask for help, how can others offer help?). The framework explains that this model is efficient, but not in all cases. Whether Intelligent Swarming is right for your organization depends, amongst other things, on the complexity of the issues that you're trying to solve.
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