Fresh Links Sundae encapsulates some pieces of information I have come across during the past week. They maybe ITSM related or not entirely. Often they are from the people whose work resonates with me, and I hope you will find something of value.

If your service desk is still delivering services via only the traditional methods, Robert Stroud suggested it may be time to look into new and innovative methods to engage the business community. Today’s Service Desk Must Have “Social and Mobile” (CA on Service Management)

Although being accessible to the customers is very important for a service desk, Rob England proposed it is just as critical for the service desk staff to have the time they need for training and team building activities. The service desk isn’t here right now (The IT Skeptic)

Managing changes in organizations is rarely easy or trivial. Using a real-life example, Liz Ryan explained how buy-in for changes should be handled. Need Buy-In From the Team? Open Up (Businessweek)

How to leverage available information effectively in an enterprise is always a concern, and Patrick Gray discussed what to keep in mind when examining the big data use cases. Is Big Data big hype? (TechRepublic)

If you are working on putting together a service desk support process for your organization, Alicia Choo posted a sample operating procedure document that may help in your endeavor. Service Desk and Site Support (Choofca’s Brain Dump)

One challenge of managing IT personnel is having a workable framework for defining jobs, hiring candidates, and keeping the employees engaged and growing. SFIA is one possible framework that can be used for managing IT workforce, and Ros Satar discussed what SFIA is and how it can be used for ITSM work. SFIA & ITSM (Skills for the Information Age) (The ITSM Review)

Pink Elephant has published its Incident, Problem, and Change Management Metrics Benchmark update with an analysis of voluntary survey responses by IT managers across the globe since early 2010. Incident, Problem, and Change Management Metrics Benchmark – July 2012 (The Pink News Blog)

Because most of us always try to effectively juggling as many projects we can, Adriana Beal made five observations on how to improve your productivity. How to Be Super Productive and Effective (Bridging the Gap)

Current period of slow employment growth is something not many of us have experienced before. Peter Cappelli wrote a book about the current phenomenon and discussed his viewpoints during an interview. Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs (Knowledge at Wharton)

Using past IT examples, Bob Lewis discussed how migrating applications to cloud is no trivial setup and why. Migrating to the cloud means more work than you think (InfoWorld)

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