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By David Mainville - CEO & Co-founder

Adopting a Survey, Design, and Verify approach to your ITSM processes

Maximizing your investment in ITSM

Introduction 1Understand the Gaps 2Getting the Maximum Value 3Why is it so Difficult to Get Value? 4What Contributes to a Good Process? 5Being Faithful to Process is Key 6About the Author 7About Navvia 8

Table of Contents

1Maximizing Your Investment in ITSM / 2012.11

Introduction

Most organizations embark on IT Service Management (ITSM) programs with the goal of improving IT efficiency and overall service delivery.

One of the first things asked by management is “What will be the overall return on investment?”

Measuring the value of an ITSM program is often very subjective. People use words like “quality”, “service improvement” or “customer satisfaction” to justify the program.

The main reason for this subjective view of ITSM is that few organizations do a very good job of measuring the outcomes of their IT Service Management initiatives.

The problem with this situation is that it becomes very difficult to identify and communicate the tangible benefits of the program, especially if you are trying to get support from your executive management.

Over my 32 years of Service Management experience, I have come to have faith in the benefits of ITSM because I’ve seen it work time and time again.

IT organizations that practice strong Service Management principles are, by default, better aligned to the business and much more effective in servicing their clients, whether they are internal or external.

Just take a moment and reflect upon the companies in your life that provide services to you. Think about an organization that consistently disappoints. Now think about an organization that consistently exceeds expectations. What’s the difference between the two?

I’ve observed that well run service organizations have simple, effective and well governed processes. They also have a culture of accountability and continual service improvement.

The poorly run Service Organization may claim to have processes – but more often than not they hide behind process to deflect any criticism of their service – “I’m sorry sir, but that isn’t the process.”

The benefits of ITSM are much more than a matter of faith. Those organizations that practice effective governance, complete with metrics, accountability and continual improvement, will have no trouble identifying and communicating the real benefits.

So how do you start maximizing the value of your investment in IT Service Management?

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Before you spend any more time and money on your ITSM program, it is important to understand where the real opportunities lie.

One of the best ways of doing this is by surveying your ITSM processes.

A survey will help you uncover organizational, process and tool gaps in your ITSM program. It will also help you to better understand the perceptions held by the stakeholders in your ITSM processes.

From an organizational perspective, a survey will uncover gaps in authority, accountability, governance, communication, training and skills.

From a process perspective, a survey will identify issues with how your processes are constructed including inputs, outputs, activities, tasks, procedures and metrics.

When it comes to ITSM tools, a survey will point out issues with integration, ease of use, overlapping technology or areas where no tools exist at all.

One approach to measuring process maturity is the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), developed by Carnegie Mellon University and made popular by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).

This model has been adopted by many in the ITSM community as the de-facto standard for measuring process maturity.

CMM measures process on a scale of 1 to 5

1 = Starting point (for a new process)2 = Managed3 = Defined4 = Quantitatively Managed5 = Optimized

A thorough survey requires you to reach out to your stakeholders in a systematic manner through questionnaires, interviews and workshops.

The results of these activities become the observations from which you can measure maturity, develop recommendations and create an action plan.

In addition to identifying gaps, a survey allows you to establish a baseline from which future improvements can be measured - an important component in communicating the value of your ITSM program.

Maximizing Your Investment in ITSM / 2012.11

Understand the Gaps

Start with Understanding the Gaps in Your Existing Processes

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It has been my experience that far too many process design projects become an exercise in bureaucracy, resulting in nothing more than high-level documents that sit on the shelf – which doesn’t help anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people purposefully embark on a process improvement project because “there isn’t enough bureaucracy” in the company.

They do it to ● Streamline activities ● Improve communication ● Eliminate waste ● Automate repetitive tasks ● Improve allocation of resources ● Provide better management information

This is a good thing, especially in these times of shrinking budgets and reduced staffing.

Effective, well-managed processes will help you resolve incidents faster (and for less cost), improve the quality of applications you roll out, minimize re-work, improve “time to market” for new IT services and even help you provision service requests faster – and who doesn’t see the value in that?

Getting the Maximum ValueGetting the Maximum Value from Your Processes Requires Good Design

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I believe that most process improvement projects fail because they stay stuck at the 50,000 foot level.

The funny thing is that many process designers (or best practice advocates) will explain that processes are meant to be high-level and independent of any technology or specific toolset. I couldn’t disagree more.

We live in the real world. A world of tools, with human interactions, and very specific tasks for getting things done.

A good process design needs to go much further than a high level description of activities and tasks.

It needs to encompass the following: ● A clear definition of duties down to the detailed

work instruction level ● Tool and data requirements for automating the

process ● Agreement on how the process will be governed ● Established accountability for the process ● Defined metrics and reports for measuring the

success of the process ● A plan for rolling out the process – including

training

You also need to make sure that the focus and effort is on the right process. Take the time to assess what your organization does well and what needs improving. Determine what will have the biggest impact on your user base.

You can usually boil down what IT does to these two simple things:

● Provisioning quality services quickly and accurately.

● Resolving incidents with those services.

Make sure you are focused on the basics (i.e. Incident and Change Management) before spending time and energy on processes that are less “customer facing”.

If you take these design considerations to heart, you are well on your way to improving service delivery at your company.

“Most process improvement projects fail because they stuck at 50,000 foot level.”

Why is it so Difficult to Get Value?

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A good process design engages the stakeholders, clearly identifies requirements, and drives automation.

When designing a process consider the followingNever design a process in a vacuum I once had someone say to me - “You know, I spent all this time designing and documenting the process. I emailed it out, but nobody seems to be following it.”

Why would anyone buy-in if they weren’t included in the design? You will get the best buy-in for a process if you bring together the stakeholders in a facilitated manner.

Assign ownership and accountability and a method for measuring successDesigning the process is the easy part. The hard work is in making sure the process is adopted, managed and measured. You will get absolutely no value from your process if people choose or are allowed to circumvent it.

Make sure everyone is clear on, and agrees on, what they have to doOne of the biggest fears people have regarding process is “I already have too much on my plate – I don’t have time for this process stuff.” What they fail to see is that lack of process often results in duplication of effort, plus re-work and last minute changes, etc. They are already doing the work – a good process will simplify it. Use process design to identify activities, tasks and work instructions.

Ensure the process can be automated in a toolMore than once, I’ve seen a process architect hand off a process to someone responsible for implementing a Service Management tool without providing any detail on what the data fields are, what the workflow is, what integrations need to be done, and what exact reports need to be produced. They leave it entirely up to the tool implementation team and then wonder why the tool doesn’t support the process.

Develop a training and communication planA manager once told me “I have smart people – they can figure it out.” Why leave your process up to interpretation? Let people know why you are doing it, what’s in it for them, and how they should do it. Training and communication is critical to the success of your process initiative.

What Contributes to a Good Process?

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“When it comes to maximizing the value of your ITSM investment, nothing is more important than good governance”

Being Faithful to Process is Key

When it comes to maximizing the value of your IT Service Management investment, nothing is more important than actually following the processes you designed and implemented.

That may strike you as being obvious but, actually, it is the lack of IT Service Management governance that is at the heart of most ITSM program failures.

To put it simply -“say what you do then do what you say”.

Organizations routinely spend significant time and money designing processes and implementing them in an IT Service Management tool only to leave the execution of the processes to chance.

Verifying that people are being faithful to the process through an effective governance program that lays out the ground rules, assigns accountability and responsibility, and – most importantly - measures and tracks compliance right down to the individual, including evidence, is critical to success.

Good governance makes sure you are getting the real value out of your ITSM program while effectively positioning you for continuous improvement, passing an audit, or obtaining an external certification such as ISO20000 or SAS70.

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David MainvilleNavvia CEO & Co-founder

David is a 33-year ITSM veteran with a unique and practical perspective on Service Management.

As a Field Engineer, David was on the front line of Service Operations.

As a Customer Service Manager he developed a knack for the customer facing processes. As a Solutions Architect he designed and deployed Systems Management solutions.

As the CEO & co-founder of Consulting-Portal he has built an ITSM consulting practice and has architected and launched an innovative SAAS based Process Management Software product. David is a frequent speaker at ITSM conferences, as well as on webinars and podcasts, where he promotes the practical side of ITSM. David’s ITSM articles have been published on a variety of industry websites and magazines. David lives in Toronto Canada with his wife Tonga and their two Jack Russell terriers Al and Savvy. He enjoys running, cycling, camping along with practicing his Bass Guitar and Drums.

Connect with DavidTwitter - @Mainville

or

LinkedIn - David Mainville

About the Author

8Maximizing Your Investment in ITSM / 2012.11

Process Management Made EasyWe are people passionate about helping companies improve business outcomes. Since 1999, our parent company Consulting-Portal has proven this ambition by assisting countless organizations design and implement effective IT and business processes with the goal of improving business outcomes.

Passion to help becomes passion to empower. Combining our ITSM success with a desire to simplify process management, we built the first cloud-based collection of process tools to aid IT Service Management (ITSM) practitioners. We called it ITOptimizer.

Today, ITOptimizer has evolved and become Navvia.

This new name reflects our guiding principle of simplicity, as well as the broader process management capabilities of our product and services beyond ITSM.

Derived from the roots “navigate” and “via”, it illustrates how Navvia empowers businesses with clear roadmaps to steer their ships to the desired destinations.

Navvia, simply, is an online toolkit designed to strip away complexity from process practices and ultimately improve business outcomes.

Learn more at navvia.com

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