CSI Register

• What kinds of Effort are required? (Into small, medium or large)

• What is the Duration or how quickly it can be achieved?

• What are the Benefits that will be achieved by its implementation?

• And lastly what are the Risks? (since every opportunity has a risk)

The CSI register contains important information and is part of the service knowledge management system (SKMS).

Business Value of Service Measurement

• To validate– monitoring and measuring to validate previous decisions

• To direct– monitoring and measuring to set the direction for activities in order to meet set targets. It is the most prevalent reason for monitoring and measuring

• To justify– monitoring and measuring to justify, with factual evidence or proof, that a course of action is required

• To intervene– monitoring and measuring to identify a point of intervention including subsequent changes and corrective actions.

Baselines

An important beginning point for highlighting improvement is to establish baselines as markers or starting point for later comparison. Baselines are also used to establish an initial data point to determine if a service or process needs to be improved.

As a result, it is important that baselines are documented, recognized and accepted throughout the organization. Baselines must be established at each level: strategic goals and objectives, tactical process maturity, and operational metrics and KPIs.

Knowledge Management

DIKW (Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom)

Wisdom will lead us to better decisions about improvement. This applies both when looking at the IT services themselves and when drilling down into each individual IT process. Knowledge Management is a mainstay of any improvement process.

Seven Step Improvement Process

Step 1 - Identify the strategy for improvement

Step 2 - Define what you will measure

Step 3 - Gather the data

Step 4 - Process the data

Step 5 - Analyze the information and data

Step 6 - Present and use the information

Step 7 - Implement improvement

Where do you actually find the information?

Talk to the business, the customers and to IT management.

Utilize the service catalog as your starting point as well as the service level requirements of the different customers.

Make it simple.

Step 2 - Define what you will measure

What do you actually measure?

Start by listing the tools you currently have in place.

These tools will include service management tools, monitoring tools, reporting tools, investigation tools and others.

Compile a list of what each tool can currently measure without any configuration or customization.

Stay away from customizing the tools as much as possible; configuring them is acceptable

Now the concern is Where will you find the information?

The information is found in each process, procedure and work instruction.

The tools are merely a way to collect and provide the data. Look at existing reports and databases.

And Perform a gap analysis between the two lists.

Report this information back to the business, the customers, and IT management. It is possible that new tools are required or that configuration or customization is required to be able to measure what is required.

Step 3 - Gather the data

What do you actually measure?

You gather whatever data has been identified as both needed and measurable.

Please remember that not all data is gathered automatically.

A lot of data is entered manually by people.

It is important to ensure that policies are in place to drive the right behavior to ensure that this manual data entry follows the SMART (Specific-Measurable-Achievable-Relevant-Timely) principle.

you need to standardize the data structure through policies and published standards.

For example, how do you enter names in your tools – John Smith; Smith, John or J. Smith? These can be the same or different individuals.

Having three different ways of entering the same name would slow downtrend analysis and will severely impede any CSI initiative.

Step 4 - Process the data

What do you actually do here?

Convert the data to the required format and for the required audience.

Process the data into information (i.e. Create logical groupings) which provides a better means to analyze the data – the next action step in CSI. Processing the data is an important CSI activity that is often overlooked.

While monitoring and collecting data on a single infrastructure component is important, it is also important to understand that component’s impact on the larger infrastructure and IT service. Knowing that a server was up 99.99% of the time is one thing, knowing that no one could access the server is another.

An example of processing the data is taking the data from monitoring of the individual components such as the mainframe, applications, WAN, LAN, servers etc. And process this into a structure of an end-to-end service from the customer’s perspective.

Step 5 - Analyze the information and data

What do you actually analyze?

Once the data is processed into information, you can then analyze the results, looking for answers to questions such as:

• Are there any clear trends?
• Are they positive or negative trends?
• Are changes required?
• Are we operating according to plan?
• Are we meeting targets?
• Are corrective actions required?
• Are there underlying structural problems?
• What is the cost of the service gap?

Now the question is where to find the information?

Here you apply knowledge to your information. Without this, you have nothing more than sets of numbers showing metrics that are meaningless. It is not enough to simply look at this month’s figures and accept them without question, even if they meet SLA targets.

You should analyze the figures to stay ahead of the game. Without analysis you merely have information. With analysis you have knowledge. If you find anomalies or poor results, then look for ways to improve.

Step 6 - Present and use the information

The sixth step is to take our knowledge and present it, that is, turn it into wisdom by utilizing reports, monitors, action plans, reviews, evaluations, and opportunities. Consider the target audience; make sure that you identify exceptions to the service, benefits that have been revealed, or can be expected. Data gathering occurs at the operational level of an organization.

Format this data into knowledge that all levels can appreciate and gain insight into their needs and expectations.

So the question is what to measure?

There are no measurements in this step.

And where do you actually find the information?

From all previous steps. Historical/previous presentations

This stage involves presenting the information in a format that is understandable, at the right level, provides value, notes exceptions to service, identifies the benefits that were revealed during the time period, and allows those receiving the information to make strategic, tactical and operational decisions.

In other words, presenting the information in the manner that makes it the most useful for the target audience.

Step 7 - Implement improvement

Use the knowledge gained to optimize, improve and correct services.

Managers need to identify issues and present solutions. Explain how the corrective actions to be taken will improve the service. If organizations were implementing corrective action according to CSI, there would be no need for this publication.

Corrective action is often done in reaction to a single event that caused a (severe) outage to part or all of the organization. Other times, the squeaky wheel will get noticed and specific corrective action will be implemented in no relation to the priorities of the organization, thus taking valuable resources away from real emergencies. This is common practice but obviously not best practice.

The next section explains the seven steps integrated with PDCA cycle.

Seven step integrated with PDCA

Plan stage relates to:

step 1 Identify the strategy for improvement and

step 2 Define what you will measure.

Do activity refers to:

Step 3- Gather the data and

Step 4- Process the data of 7 step improvement process.

Check activity refers to:

Step 5- Analyze the information and data and

Step 6- Present and use the information of 7 step improvement process

Act activity refers to:

Step 7: Implement improvement of 7 step improvement process

Critical Success Factor

Something that must happen if an IT service, process, plan, project or other activity is to succeed. Key

performance indicators are used to measure the achievement of each critical success factor. For example,

a critical success factor of ‘protect IT services when making changes’ could be measured by key

performance indicators such as ‘percentage reduction of unsuccessful changes’, ‘percentage reduction in

changes causing incidents’ etc.

The Seven-Step Improvement Process: Goal

to define and manage the steps needed to identify, define, gather process, analyze, present and implement improvements.

Integrate improvement process with other life cycle

to identify opportunities for improving services, process etc and reduce the cost of providing services. The objective is also to Identify what needs to be measured, analyzed and reported and continually review service achievements.

Identify improvement opportunities and ensure optimized, cost effective service delivery.

The Seven-Step Improvement Process: Scope

Identify Analysis of the performance and capabilities of service, processes throughout the Lifecycle, partners, and technology.

CSI’S Scope is to continually align the portfolio of IT services with the current and future business needs.

Continual alignment of service portfolio

Org capabilities, functions and roles & skills

The Seven-Step Improvement Process: Value

With the help of these processes in CSI, current and future business outcome requirements can be met by monitoring and analyzing the delivery of service It also enables the continual assessment of the current situation against business needs The organization achieves the capability to identify opportunities to improve service provision for customers.

Ensure enterprise desired business outcomes are met against current and future requirements.

Also ensure service provider capabilities and IT services are continually assessed,thus continuously seeking improvements of service and process.

The Seven-Step Improvement Process: Policies

All improvement initiatives must use the formal change management process All functional groups within IT have a responsibility for CSI activities This might be only one person in the group, but the intent here is that CSI is not usually a functional group within an organization.

Everyone has hand in supporting CSI activities Roles and responsibilities will be documented, communicated and filled within IT Services must be checked against competitive service offerings to ensure they continue to add true business value to the client, and the service provider remains competitive in its delivery of such services.

All the Services must be reviewed in the light of the new technological advance (e.g. Cloud computing) to ensure they are delivering the most efficient services to customers.

Process Activities, Methods, And Techniques

The first activity is to Identify the strategy for improvement

Second activity is to Define what you will measure

Third activity is to Gather the data

Fourth activity is to Process the data

Fifth activity is to Analyze the information and data

Sixth activity is to Present and use the information seventh activity is to Implement improvement

Step 1 - Identify the strategy for improvement: Input

What are we trying to achieve for the business as a whole?

How can improvements enable the business vision to be achieved?

The inputs of the first activity are:

Service level requirements and targets

Service Catalogue

Vision and mission statements

Corporate, divisional and departmental goals and objectives

Legislative requirements

Governance requirements

Budget cycle

Balanced Scorecard

The expected Outputs for the first activity are:

Vision statement

Mission statement

Objectives

Goals

Step 1 - Identify the strategy for improvement: Output

Vision statement

Mission statement

Objectives

Goals

Step 2 - Define what you will measure: Input

What do you actually measure?

The information is found in each process, procedure and work instruction. The tools are merely a way to collect and provide the data.

Look at existing reports and databases. And Perform a gap analysis between the two lists. Report this information back to the business, the customers, and IT management. It is possible that new tools are required or that configuration or customization is required to be able to measure what is required. Document the actual measurement plan.

The Inputs for the second step are:

SLR and targets

Service review meeting

Service portfolio and the service catalog

Vision and mission statements

Corporate, divisional and departmental goals and objectives

Legislative requirements

Governance requirements

Budget cycle

Measurement results and reports, e.g. Balanced scorecard

Step 2 - Define what you will measure: Outpuy

The outputs of the second step are:

Measurable metrics

Gap analysis of metrics

Measurement plan

Step 3 - Gather the data: Input

Gathering data requires having some form of monitoring in place. Monitoring could be executed using technology such as application, system and component monitoring tools or even be a manual process for certain tasks.

What do you actually measure?

You gather whatever data has been identified as both needed and measurable.

The inputs for this step will be:

New business requirements

Existing SLAs

Existing monitoring and data capture capability

Plans from other processes, e.g. Availability management and capacity management

The CSI register and existing SIP

Previous trend analysis reports

Step 3 - Gather the data: Output

The Outputs for this step will be:

Updated availability and capacity plans

Monitoring procedures

Identified tools to use

Monitoring plan

Input on IT capability

Collection of data

Agreement on the integrity of the data

Step 4 - Process the data: Input

What do you actually do here?

Convert the data to the required format and for the required audience.

Report-generating technologies are typically used at this stage as various amounts of data are condensed into information for use in the analysis activity.

The data is also typically put into a format that provides an end-to-end perspective on the overall performance of a service. This activity begins the transformation of raw data into packaged information. Use the information to develop insight into the performance of the service and/or processes.

Process the data into information (i.e. create logical groupings) which provides a better means to analyze the data – the next activity step in CSI. Processing the data is an important CSI activity that is often overlooked.

The inputs for the fourth step will be:

Data collected through monitoring

Reporting requirements

SLAs

OLAs

Service Catalogue

List of metrics, KPI, CSF, objectives, and goals

Report frequency and

Report template

Step 4 - Process the data: Output

Outputs for the fourth step will be:

Updated availability and capacity plan

Reports

Logical groupings of data ready for analysis

Step 5 - Analyze the information and data: Input

Verification of goals and objectives is expected during this activity. This verification validates that objectives are being supported and value is being added.

It is not sufficient to simply produce graphs of various types but to document the observations and conclusions.

What do you actually analyze?

Once the data is processed into information, you can then analyze the results, looking for answers to questions such as:

Are there any clear trends?

Are they positive or negative trends?

Are change required?

Are we operating according to plan?

Are we meeting targets?

The inputs for the fifth step will be:

Monitored data

Existing KPIs and targets

Problem-solving techniques

The perception of customer satisfaction surveys etc

Step 5 - Analyze the information and data: Output

The Outputs for the fifth step will be:

Trends

Observations

Statistical analysis reports

Pareto distributions

Bottlenecks

Evaluation reports

Step 6 - Present and use the information: Input

turn it into wisdom by utilizing reports, monitors, action plans, reviews, evaluations, and opportunities.

Format this data into knowledge that all levels can appreciate and gain insight into their needs and expectations.

This stage involves presenting the information in a format that is understandable, at the right level, provides value, notes exceptions to service, identifies the benefits that were revealed during the time period, and allows those receiving the information to make strategic, tactical and operational decisions.

The Inputs for the sixth step will be:

Collated data and information

Format details and templates etc.

Stakeholder contact details

Step 6 - Present and use the information: Output

And the Outputs for the sixth step will be:

Funding requirements

Presentation to key stakeholders

Gap analysis

Cost-benefit analysis

Service level achievements chart

SLAM chart (target met, target threatened, target breached)

Step 7 - Implement improvement: Input

Implement improvement: Use the knowledge gained to optimize, improve and correct services.

Managers need to identify issues and present solutions. Explain how the corrective actions to be taken will improve the service.

Now let us see the Inputs for the seventh step which are listed below:

Firstly the Knowledge and wisdom gained from presenting and using the information

Gained Approval on agreed implementation plans

And A CSI register for those initiatives that have been initiated from other sources

Step 7 - Implement improvement: Output

Let us understand the Outputs for the seventh step which are listed below:

Action plans

Project plans

Initiatives

Change requests

Process involved in gathering and processing the data

SLM

Availability Management

Capacity Management

Incident Management

Service Desk

Security Management

Financial Management

Process involved in presenting and using the information

SLM

Availability

Capacity Management

Incident Management and Service Desk

Problem Management

Process Involved In Implementing Improvement

Change Management

Release Management

Service Level Management

Critical Success Factors And Key Performance Indicators

The next step is to identify the metrics and measurements required to compute the KPI. There are two basic kinds of KPI, qualitative and quantitative.

Here is a qualitative example:

CSF - All improvement opportunities identified

KPI - Percentage improvements in defects. For example, 3% reduction in failed changes; 10% reduction in security breaches

CSF - The cost of providing services is reduced

KPI - Percentage decrease in overall cost of service provision. For example, 2.5% reduction in the average cost of handling an incident; 5% reduction in the cost of processing a particular type of transaction

Challenges associated with the seven step improvement process

• In Getting the required resources to implement and run the process
• In Gathering the right level of data and having the tools
• The willingness of the IT organization to approach CSI in a consistent and structured way
• Get commitment from management to approach it in a better way
• Obtaining sufficient information from the business regarding improvement requirements and cost reduction
• At times Persuading suppliers to include improvement in their contractual agreements

Risks associated with the seven step improvement process

• No formalized approach to CSI and initiatives being taken on randomly in an ad-hoc manner
• Insufficient monitoring and analysis to identify the areas of greatest need
• Staff attitude such as ‘We have always done it this way and it has always been good enough’
• Inability to make the business case for improvement and therefore no funding for improvement or loss of ownership
• Lack of ownership or loss of ownership
• Too much focus on IT improvements without a clear understanding of business needs and objectives

Assessments

Assessments are the formal mechanisms for comparing the operational process environment to the performance standards for the purpose of measuring improved process capability and/or to identify potential shortcomings that could be addressed.

The advantage of assessments is they provide an approach to sample particular elements of a process or the process organization which impact the efficiency and the effectiveness of the process.

The performance standard is dependent on the operational environments, for example:

ITSM then ISO 20000

Quality Management then ISO9000

Security Management then ISO27000

Just by conducting a formal assessment an organization is demonstrating their significant level of commitment to improvement. Assessments involve real costs, staff time and management promotion. Organizations need to be more than just involved in an assessment, they need to be committed to improvement.

What to assess

The scope should be based on the assessment’s objective and the expected future use of process assessments and assessment reports. Assessments can be targeted broadly at those processes currently implemented or focused specifically where known problems exist within the current process environment.

There are three potential scope levels discussed as follows:

Process only – Assessment only of process attributes based on the general principles and guidelines of the process framework which defines the subject process.

People, process, and technology – Extend the process assessment to include assessment of the skills, roles, and talents of the managers and practitioners of the process as well as the ability of the process-enabling technology deployed to support the objectives and transaction state of the process.

Full assessment – Extend the people, process, and technology assessment to include:

- an assessment of the culture of acceptance within the organization

- the ability of the organization to articulate a process strategy

- the definition of a vision for the process environment as an ‘end state’

- the structure and function of the process organization

- the ability to process governance to assure that process objectives and goals are met

- the business/IT alignment via a process framework, the effectiveness of process reporting/metrics

- the capability and capacity of decision-making practices to improve processes over time

How to assess

Using external resources for assessments

Assessments can be conducted by the sponsoring organization or with the aid of a third party.

The advantages of conducting a self-assessment are the reduced cost and the intellectual lift associated with learning how to objectively gauge the relative performance and progress of an organization’s processes.

Of course, the downside is the difficulty associated with remaining objective and impartial during the assessment. The pitfall of a lack of objectivity can be eliminated by using a third party to conduct the assessment.

Balancing against the obvious increased cost of a third-party assessment is the objectivity and experience of an organization that performs assessments on a regular basis.

Performing self-assessments

Organization when conducts internal assessments that can be beneficial as compared to external.

The Advantages of internal assessments are:

- No expensive consultant promotes external cooperation and communication.

However, there can be certain disadvantages of internal assessments such as:

- Lack of objectivity, little acceptance of findings, internal politics, and limited knowledge of skills.

Whether conducted internally or externally, the assessment should be reported using the levels of the maturity model. A best-practice reporting method is to communicate assessment results in a graphical fashion.

Graphs are an excellent tool as they can fulfill multiple communication objectives. For instance, graphs can reflect changes or trends of process maturity over time or reflect the comparison of the current assessment to standards or norms.

Gap analysis

Gap analysis is a business assessment tool enabling an organization to compare where it is currently and where it wants to go in the future. This provides the organization with insight into areas which have room for improvement.

This can be used to determine the gap between ‘What do we want?’ and ‘What do we need?’ for example. The process involves determining, documenting and approving the variance between business requirements and current capabilities.

Gap analysis naturally flows from benchmarking or other assessments such as service or process maturity assessments. Once the general expectation of performance is understood then it is possible to compare that expectation with the level of performance at which the company currently functions. This comparison becomes the gap analysis.

Such analysis can be performed at the strategic, tactical or operational level of an organization.

Gap analysis can be conducted from different perspectives such as:

Organization (e.g. Human resources)

Business direction

Business processes

Information technology.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking is a process used in management, particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own sector.

This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to adopt such best practice, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-time occurrence event but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices. Let us now move on to our next section which explains Benchmarking procedure.

Benchmarking procedure

Here you identify your problem areas. Because benchmarking can be applied to any business process or function, a range of research techniques may be required. They include:

Informal conversations with customers, employees, or suppliers

Focus groups

In-depth marketing research

Quantitative research

Surveys

Questionnaires

Re-engineering analysis

Process mapping

Quality control variance reports

Financial ratio analysis.

Benchmarking costs

Benchmarking is a moderately expensive process, but most organizations find that it more than pays for itself. The three main types of costs are:

• Visit costs – This includes travel- and accommodation-related expenses for team members who need to travel to the site.
• Time costs – Members of the benchmarking team will be investing time in researching problems, finding exceptional companies to study, visits and implementation. This will take them away from their regular tasks for part of each day so additional staff might be required.
• Benchmarking database costs – Organizations that institutionalize benchmarking into their daily procedures find it is useful to create and maintain a database of best practices and the companies associated with each best practice.

Value of Benchmarking

• Profiling quality in the market
• Boosting self-confidence and pride in employees as well as motivating and tying employees in an organization. This is relevant to today’s staff shortages in the IT industry – IT personnel want to work in a highly efficient, cutting-edge environment
• Trust from customers that the organization is a good IT service management provider.

Benchmarking - Who is involved?

The customer – that is, the business manager responsible for acquiring IT services to meet business objectives. The customer’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can I improve my performance in procuring services and managing service providers, and in supporting the business through IT services?’

The user or consumer – that is anyone who uses IT services to support his or her work. The user’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can I improve my performance by exploiting IT?’

The internal service provider – providing IT services to users under Service Level Agreements negotiated with and managed by the customer. The provider’s interest in benchmarking would be: ‘How can we improve our performance in the delivery of IT services which meet the requirements of our customers and which are cost-effective and timely?’ There will also be participation from external parties

External service providers – providing IT services to users under contracts and Service Level Agreements negotiated with and managed by the customer

Members of the public – are increasingly becoming direct users of IT services

Benchmarking partners – that is, other organizations with whom comparisons are made in order to identify the best practices to be adopted for improvements.

Comparison with industry norms

Process maturity comparison

Conducting a process maturity assessment is one way to identify service management improvement opportunities. Often when an organization conducts a maturity assessment they want to know how they compare to the other organizations.

Figure 5.4 reflects average maturity scores for over 100 separate organizations that went through a maturity assessment. As you can see Service Level Management which is a key process in support of CSI is at a fairly low maturity level in the organizations used in the above example.

The lack of a mature SLM process that provides for identification of new business requirements, monitoring, and reporting of results can make it difficult to identify service improvement opportunities. A prime target for improvements in this example would be first to mature the SLM practice to help achieve measurable targets to improve services going forward.

Total cost of ownership

The total cost of ownership (TCO), developed by Gartner, has become a key measurement of the effectiveness and the efficiency of services. TCO is defined as all the costs involved in the design, introduction, operation, and improvement of services within an organization from its inception until retirement.

Often, TCO is measured relating to hardware components. The TCO of an IT service is even more meaningful. CSI needs to take the TCO into perspective when looking at service improvement plans. TCO is often used to benchmark specific services in IT against other organizations, i.e. Managed service providers.

Service Measurement - 3 basic measurement in....

Benchmarking activities need to be business-aligned. They can be expensive exercises whether undertaken internally or externally and therefore they need to be focused on where they can deliver the most value.

For services, there are three basic measurements that most organizations utilize:

Provide comprehensive & accurate reporting & measurement in terms of:

Availability of the service

Reliability of the service

Performance of the service

Design and Develop a Service Measurement Framework

One of the first steps in developing a Service Measurement Framework is to understand the business processes and to identify those that are most critical to the delivery of value to the business.

The IT goals and objectives must support the business goals and objectives.

Need to be a strong link between the operational, tactical and strategic level goals and objectives, otherwise, an organization will find itself measuring and reporting on performance that may not add any value.

Service measurement is not only looking at the past but also the future – what do we need to be able to do and how can we do things better? The output of any Service Measurement Framework should allow individuals to make operational, tactical or strategic decisions.

For a successful Service Measurement Framework, the following critical elements are required. A Framework that is:

• Integrated into business planning
• Focused on business and IT goals and objectives
• Cost-effective

Balanced in its approach to what is measured

Able to withstand change.

Define roles and responsibilities - Creating a Service Measurement Framework will require the ability to build upon different metrics and measurements. The end result is a view of the way individual component measurements feed the end-to-end service measurement which should be in support of key performance indicators defined for the service.

This will then be the basis for creating a service scorecard and dashboard. The service scorecard will then be used to populate an overall Balanced Scorecard or IT scorecard. Thus it is important to identify:

Who defines the measures and targets?

Who monitors and measures?

Different Levels Of Measurement And Reporting

Starting at the bottom, the technology domain areas will be monitoring and reporting on a component basis.

This is valuable as each domain area is responsible for ensuring the servers are operating within defined guidelines and objectives. At this level, measurements will be on component availability, reliability and performance.

The output of these measurements will feed into the overall end-to-end service measurement as well as the Capacity and Availability Plans.

These measurements will also feed into any incremental operations improvements and into a more formal CSI initiative.

This will then be the basis for creating a service scorecard and dashboard. The service scorecard will then be used to populate an overall balanced scorecard or IT scorecard.

Service Management Process Measurement

There are four major levels to report on.

The bottom level contains the activity metrics for a process and these are often volume type metrics such as the number of Request for Changes (RFC) submitted, number of RFCs accepted into the process, number of RFCs by type, the number approved, number successfully implemented, etc.

The next level contains the KPIs associated with each process. The activity metrics should feed into and support the KPIs.

The KPIs will support the next level which is the high-level goals such as improving service quality, reducing IT costs or improving customer satisfaction, etc.

Finally, these will feed into the organization’s Balanced Scorecard or IT scorecard. When first starting out, be careful to not pick too many KPIs to support the high-level goals. Additional KPIs can always be added at a later time.

Creating A Measurement Framework Grid

It is recommended to create a framework grid that will lay out the high-level goals and define which KPIs will support the goal and also which category the KPI addresses.

KPI categories can be classified as the following:

Compliance – are we doing it?

Quality – how well are we doing it?

Performance – how fast or slow are we doing it?

Value – is what we are doing making a difference?

Metrics type

Technology metrics – these metrics are often associated with component and application based metrics such as performance, availability etc.

Process metrics – these metrics are captured in the form of CSFs, KPIs and activity metrics for the service management processes. These metrics can help determine the overall health of a process.

Four key questions that KPIs can help answer are around quality, performance, value, and compliance of following the process. CSI would use these metrics as input in identifying improvement opportunities for each process.

Service metrics – these metrics are the results of the end-to-end service. Component/technology metrics are used to compute the service metrics.

Tension Metrics

The effort from any support team is a balancing act of three elements:

Resources – people and money

Features – the product or service and its quality

The schedule

The delivered product or service, therefore, represents a balanced trade-off between these three elements. Tension metrics can help create that balance by preventing teams from focusing on just one element – for example, on delivering the product or service on time.. Component/technology metrics are used to compute the service metrics.

Balanced Scorecard

This is a technique developed by Kaplan and Norton in the mid-1990s and involves the definition and implementation of a measurement framework covering four different perspectives:

• Customer
• Internal Business
• Learning
• Growth
• Financial

The four linked perspectives provide a Balanced Scorecard to support strategic activities and objectives and can be used to measure overall IT performance. The Balanced Scorecard is complementary to ITIL. Some of the links to IT include the following:

Client perspective – IT as a service provider, primarily documented in Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Internal processes – Operational excellence utilizing Incident, Problem, Change, Configuration and Release management as well as other IT processes; successful delivery of IT projects

Learning and growth – Business productivity, the flexibility of IT, investments in software, professional learning, and development

Financial – Align IT with the business objectives, manage costs, manage risks, deliver value. IT Financial Management is the process used to allocate costs and calculate ROI.

IT Balanced Scorecard

Many organizations are structured around strategic business units (SBUs) with each business unit focusing on a specific group of products or services offered by the business.

The structure of IT may match the SBU organization or may offer services to the SBU from a common, shared services IT organization or both. This last hybrid approach tends to put the central infrastructure group in the shared services world and the business solutions or application development group in the SBU itself.

This often results in non-productive finger-pointing when things go wrong. The business itself is not interested in this blame-storming exercise but rather in the quality of IT service provision. Therefore, the Balanced Scorecard is best deployed at the SBU level.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This section provides guidance on properly conducting and using the result of a SWOT analysis, how to select the scope and range of this common assessment tool, as well as the common mistakes people make when using a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis provides a quick overview of the strategic situation as:

Strengths are internal attributes of the organization that are helpful to the achievement of the objective.

Weaknesses are internal attributes of the organization that are harmful to the achievement of the objective.

Opportunities are external conditions that are helpful to the achievement of the objective.

Threats are external conditions that are harmful to the achievement of the objective.

CSI and Availability Management

The CSI process makes extensive use of methods and practices found in many ITIL processes throughout the Lifecycle of a service. Far from being redundant, the use of the outputs in the form of flows, matrices, statistics or analysis reports provide valuable insight into the service’s design and operation.

There are various analysis techniques to determine what needs to be improved, prioritize and suggest improvements such as:

Component Failure Impact Analysis

Fault Tree Analysis

Service Failure Analysis

Technical Observation

Component Failure Impact Analysis and CSI

(CFIA) identifies single points of failure, IT services at risk from failure of various Configuration Items (CI) and the alternatives that are available should a CI fail. It should also be used to assess the existence and validity of recovery procedures for the selected CIs.

The same approach can be used for a single IT service by mapping the component CIs against the vital business functions and users supported by each component. When a single point of failure is identified, the information is provided to CSI. This information, combined with business requirements, enable CSI to make recommendations on how to address the failure.

Fault Tree Analysis and CSI

Analysis (FTA) is a technique that is used to determine the chain of events that cause a disruption of IT services. This technique offers detailed models of availability. It makes a representation of a chain of events using Boolean algebra and notation.

Essentially FTA distinguishes between four events: basic events, resulting events, conditional events, and trigger events. When provided to CSI, FTA information indicates which part of the infrastructure, process or service was responsible for the service disruptions.

This information, combined with business requirements, enables CSI to make recommendations about how to address the fault.

Service Failure Analysis and CSI

Service Failure Analysis (SFA) is a technique designed to provide a structured approach to identify end-to-end availability improvement opportunities that deliver benefits to the user. Many of the activities involved in SFA are closely aligned with those of Problem Management.

In a number of organizations, these activities are performed jointly by Problem and Availability Management. SFA should attempt to identify improvement opportunities that benefit the end user. It is therefore important to take an end-to-end view of the service requirements.

SFA Distinguishes between four events:

• basic events
• resulting events
• conditional events
• trigger events

CSI and SFA work hand in hand. SFA identifies the business impact of an outage on a service, system or process. This information, combined with business requirements, enables CSI to make recommendations about how to address improvement opportunities.

Technical Observation and CSI

A Technical Observation (TO) is a prearranged gathering of specialist technical support staff from within IT support. They are brought together to focus on specific aspects of IT availability. The TO’s purpose is to monitor events, real-time as they occur, with the specific aim of identifying improvement opportunities within the current IT infrastructure.

The TO is best suited to delivering proactive business and end-user benefits from within the real-time IT environment. Bringing together the specialist technical staff to observe specific activities and events within the IT infrastructure and operational processes creates an environment to identify improvement opportunities.

The TO gathers, processes and analyses information about the situation. Too often the TO has been reactive by nature and is assembled hastily to deal with an emergency. Why wait? If the TO is included as part of the launch of a new service, system or process, for example, a lot of the issues

CSI and Capacity Management

This section provides practical usage and details about how each Capacity Management method mentioned below can be used in various activities of CSI. We will understand all the three areas of business capacity, component capacity and service capacity below:

Business Capacity Management:

A prime objective of the Business Capacity Management sub-process is to ensure that future business requirements for IT services are considered and understood and that sufficient capacity to support the services is planned and implemented in an appropriate timescale.

Service Capacity Management:

A prime objective of the Service Capacity Management sub-process is to identify and understand the IT services, their use of the resource, working patterns, peaks, and troughs, as well as to ensure that the services can and do meet their SLA targets.

In this sub-process, the focus is on managing service performance, as determined by the targets contained in the SLAs or SLRs.

Component Capacity Management:

A prime objective of Component Capacity Management sub-process is to identify and understand the capacity and utilization of each of the components of the IT infrastructure. This ensures the optimum use of the current hardware and software resources in order to achieve and maintain the agreed service levels.

All hardware components and many software components in the IT infrastructure have a finite capacity, which, when exceeded, have the potential to cause performance problems.

Workload and Demand Management for CSI

Workload Management can be defined as understanding which customers use what service, when they use the service, how they use the service and finally how using the service impacts the performance of a single or multiple systems and/or components that make up a service.

Demand Management is often associated with influencing the end users’ behavior. By influencing the end users’ behavior an organization can change the workload thus improving the performance of components that support IT services.

Using Demand Management can be an effective way of improving services without investing a lot of money. Workload and Demand Management for CSI has many activities such as:

• Utilization monitoring
• Response time monitoring
• Analysis
• Tuning and optimization
• Implementation
• Designing resilience
• Threshold management and control
• Demand Management

There are certain analysis techniques like Trend analysis, Modeling and trending, and Baselining, Simulation Modeling.

IT Service Continuity Management use in CSI

Any CSI initiative to improve services needs to also have integration with ITSCM as any changes to the service requirements, infrastructure etc. need to be taken into account for any changes that may be required for the Continuity Plan.

That is why it is important for all service improvement plans to go through Change Management. Every organization manages its risk, but not always in a way that is visible, repeatable and consistently applied to support decision making.

The task of Risk Management is to ensure that the organization makes cost-effective use of a risk process that has a series of well-defined steps. The aim is to support better decision making through a good understanding of risks and their likely impact.

Management of risk should be carried out in the wider context of safety concerns, security, and business continuity

Health and safety policy and practice are concerned with ensuring that the workplace is a safe environment.

Security is concerned with protecting the organization’s assets, including information, buildings and so on. Business continuity is concerned with ensuring that the organization could continue to operate in the event of a disaster, such as loss of a service, flood or fire damage.

Risk Management from the business perspective, in the context of working with suppliers, centers on assessing vulnerabilities in supplier arrangements which pose threats to any aspect of the business including:

Customer satisfaction

Brand image

Market share

Risk Register and CSI

Risk Register and CSI would involve various factors such as:

• Identification of risks
• Target i.e. The asses under threat
• Impact of risk, qualitative and quantitative
• Probability of occurrence
• Possible mitigating actions or controls
• Identification of stakeholder who is accountable for the risk
• Responsibility for implementing selected actions on the controls
• Evaluation of impact vs. Cost of action or control

Problem Management and CSI

CSI and Problem Management are closely related as one of the goals of Problem Management is to identify and remove errors permanently that impact service from the infrastructure. This directly supports CSI activities of identifying and implementing service improvements.

Problem Management also supports CSI activities through trend analysis and the targeting of preventive action. Problem Management activities are generally conducted within the scope of Service Operation. CSI must take an active role in the proactive aspects of Problem Management to identify and recommend changes that will result in service improvements.

Post Implementation Review: PIR is done for certain changes, CSI working with Change Management can require a PIR for all CSI changes

Knowledge Management and CSI

In our last section we learned about Problem Management and CSI. This section explains about Knowledge Management and CSI. One of the key domains in support of CSI is Knowledge Management.

Capturing, organizing, assessing for quality and using knowledge is great input in CSI activities. An organization has to gather knowledge and analyze what the results are in order to look for trends in Service Level Achievements and/or results and output of service management processes. This input is used for determining what service improvement plans to be working on.

Service Manager

The service manager is a generic term for any manager within the service provider

Refers to the business relationship manager, a process manager with responsibility for IT services overall

A service manager is often assigned several roles such as business relationship management, service level management, and continual service improvement.

Service Managers are responsible for managing very complex projects in order to achieve objectives and strategies and strive for global leadership in the marketplace. In order to attain this goal, they must evaluate new market opportunities, operating models, technologies and the emerging needs of customers in a company with an international scope.

Service Owner

The Service Owner is accountable for a specific service within an organization regardless of where the underpinning technology components, processes or professional capabilities reside. Service ownership is as critical to service management as establishing ownership for processes which cross multiple vertical silos or departments.

It is to ensure that a service is managed with a business focus, the definition of a single point of accountability is absolutely essential to provide the level of attention and focus required for its delivery. The Service Owner is responsible for continual improvement and the management of change affecting the services under their care.

The Service Owner is a primary stakeholder in all of the underlying IT processes which enable or support the service they own. For example The Service Owner act as a prime customer contact for all service related issues and inquiries. The Service Owner is responsible to identify opportunities for service improvements, discuss with the customer and raise the RFC

Process Owner

The initial planning phase of any ITIL project must include establishing the role of Process Owner.

This key role is accountable for the overall quality of the process and oversees the management of, and organizational compliance to, the process flows, procedures, data models, policies and technologies associated with the IT business process.

The Process Owner performs the essential role of process champion, design lead, advocate, coach, and protector. Typically, a Process Owner should be a senior level manager with credibility, influence, and authority across the various areas impacted by the activities of the process.

The Process Owner is required to have the ability to influence and ensure compliance with the policies and procedures put in place across the cultural and departmental silos of the IT organization. The Process Owner is responsible for Communicating process resources to support activities and Periodically reviewing the process strategy.

Process Manager

The process manager role is accountable for the operational management of a process

Process manager accountabilities include:

• Working with process owner to plan and coordinate all process activities
• Appointing people to the required roles
• Managing resources assigned to the process
• Working with service owners and other process managers to ensure the smooth running of services

Process Practitioner

A Process Practitioner is responsible for carrying out one or more process activities.

The responsibilities of the process practitioner include:

• Understand that how their role contributes to the overall delivery of service and creation of value for the business.
• Working with other stakeholders, co-workers, users, and customers, to ensure that their contributions are effective
• Ensure that inputs, outputs, and interfaces for their activities are correct
• Creating or updating records to show that activities have been carried out correctly

Seven-step improvement roles

The first role is the Seven-step improvement process owner/process manager

This role is responsible for Planning and managing support for improvement tools and processes

They have to work with CSI manager, service owners, process owners and functions to maintain the CSI register

Let us move to the next role of Reporting analyst.

The reporting analyst is a key role in CSI and will often work in concert with the Service Level Management roles. The reporting analyst reviews and analyses data from components, systems, and sub-systems in order to obtain a true end-to-end service achievement.

CSI Manager role

This new role is essential for a successful improvement program.

The CSI owner is ultimately responsible for the success of all improvement activities. This single point of accountability coupled with competence and authority virtually guarantees a successful improvement program.

The role of CSI manager can also fulfill the role of the seven-steps improvement process owner/manager The CSI manager’s responsibilities typically include:

• Developing the CSI domain
• Communicating the vision of CSI across the IT organization
• Ensuring that CSI roles have been filled

Critical Considerations for implementing CSI

Before implementing CSI it is important to have identified and filled the critical roles that have been identified in previous modules. This would include:

• CSI Manager
• Service Owner and
• Reporting analyst

A Service Level Manager is really needed to be the liaison between the business and IT. Monitoring and reporting on technology metrics, process metrics, and service metrics need to be in place.

Internal service review meetings need to be scheduled in order to review from an internal IT perspective the results achieved each month. These internal review meetings should take place before any external review meeting with the business.

These internal review meetings should take place before any external review meeting with the business. Let us now move on to our next section which explains the approaches to start with.

Where do we start?

Service approach

An organization can choose to implement CSI activities in many different ways. One way is to identify a certain service pain point such as a service that is not consistently achieving the desired results.

Work with the Service Owner to validate the desired results and the trend results over the past few months. Review any monitoring that has been done.

If there hasn’t been any end-to-end monitoring in place but some component monitoring than review what has been monitored and see if there are any consistent issues that are leading to the lower-than-expected service results.

Even if there hasn’t been any component monitoring being conducted, review your Incident tickets and see if you can find some trends and consistent CIs that are failing more than others that impact the service.

Also, review the change records for the different CIs that together underpin the service. The bottom line is that you have to start somewhere.

If you don’t feel you have adequate data from any monitor or another process than perhaps the first step is to identify what to monitor, define the monitoring requirements, put in place or begin using the technology required for monitoring.

Lifecycle approach

Another approach is to start looking at the handoff of output from the different Lifecycle domains. Service Design needs to monitor and report on their activities and through trend evaluation and analysis, identify improvement opportunities to implement.

This needs to be done by every part of the Lifecycle, especially Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation. CSI is engaged in this activity. Until the service is implemented we may not know if the right strategy was identified so we may not have input until later for Service Strategy improvement.

As Service Transition begins working with the product Service Design handed off, Service Transition may identify improvement opportunities for Service Design. CSI can be effective well before a service is implemented in the production environment.

Functional group approach

Perhaps your organization is experiencing a lot of failures or issues with the servers. If this is the case, one could argue a good case to focus CSI activities within the functional group responsible for the servers, as server failures have a direct impact on service availability.

This should be a short-term solution only as CSI activities should be reviewing services from an end-to-end perspective; however, it is often easier to have a small group focused on CSI activities. Perhaps this could be a pilot of CSI activities before a full rollout across the organization.

CSI Governance

ITSM program initiative

Corporate initiative statement (The ‘IT Service Management’ program supports the IT Governance Institutes definitions of Enterprise Governance, IT Governance and COBIT)

Business drivers

The implmentation of a standard ITSM process and governance is deemed as imperative to support current and future business plans. It Supports the organization’s vision and provides standard IT processes and a stable and reliable IT environment to enable timely and efficient integration of new services and systems.

It also provides process policies, standards, and controls to comply with internal audit and external regulatory and legislative requirements and foster a climate of commitment to best practices.

Lastly, it provides a standard ITSM process across the IT organization to support the organizational transformation to an enterprise IT services model while maintaining operational stability and reliability to the business.

Process changes

Implementing CSI will have an impact on many parts of the IT organization. Processes, people, technology, and management will undergo change. CSI needs to become a way of life within the organization.

This may require new management structure, new technology, changes to processes to support CSI and people will need to be trained and understand the importance of CSI within the organization. If you only focus on changing a process or technology CSI will not be effective.

OBIT as a governance framework

COBIT is based on the analysis and harmonization of existing IT standards and best practices and conforms to generally accepted governance principles It covers five key governance focus area as follows:

• Strategic alignment
• Value delivery
• Resource management
• Risk management
• Performance management COBIT is primarily aimed at stakeholder within an enterprise who wish to generate value from IT investments

CSI and Organizational Change

Project management structures and frameworks fail to take into account the softer aspects involved in the organizational change.

These changes include resistance to change, gaining commitment, empowering, motivating, involving, and communicating.

Experience reveals that it is precisely these aspects that prevent many CSI program from realizing their intended aims. The success of a CSI program is dependant on the buy-in of all stakeholders.

Gaining their support from the outset, and keeping it, will ensure their participation in the development process and acceptance of the solution.

Those responsible for managing and steering the CSI program should consciously address these softer issues. Use an approach such as John P. Kotter’s Eight Steps to Transform your Organization, coupled with formalized project management skills and practices, will significantly increase the chance of success.

CSI - Transform Organization: Kotter’s Eight-Step Approach for Success

Step 1 – Creating a sense of urgency

Answering this question for all organizational levels will help gain commitment and provide input to a business justification for investing in CSI.

Step 2 – Forming a guiding coalition

Step 3 – Creating a vision

Step 4 – Communicating the vision

Step 5 – Empowering others to act on the vision

Step 6 – Planning for and creating short-term wins

Step 7 – Consolidating improvements and producing more change

Step 8 – Institutionalizing the change

Communication Strategy and Plan

A communications plan must incorporate the ability to deal with responses and feedback from the targeted audiences. Key activities in the communications plan include:

• Identifying stakeholders and target audiences
• Developing communications strategies and tactics
• Identifying communication methods and techniques
• Developing the communications plan (a matrix of who, what, why, when where and how)
• Identifying the project milestones and related communications requirements

Defining your plan needs to take into consideration the following items:

Who is the messenger?

What is the message?

Who is the target audience?

Timing and frequency of communication

Method of communication

Provide a feedback mechanism

CSI Challenges

• Lack of management commitment
• Inadequate resources, budget and time
• Lack of mature service management processes
• Lack of information, monitoring, and measurements
• Lack of Knowledge Management
• A resistance to planning and a reluctance to be proved wrong
• A lack of corporate objectives, strategies, policies, and business direction

CSI Critical Success Factors

• Appointment of a CSI manager
• Adoption of CSI within the organization
• Management commitment
• Defining clear criteria for prioritizing improvement projects
• Adoption of the service Lifecycle approach
• Sufficient and ongoing funding for CSI activities
• Technology to support the CSI activities

CSI Risks

• Being over-ambitious – don’t try to improve everything at once. Be realistic with timelines and expectations
• Not discussing improvement opportunities with the business – the business has to be involved in improvement decisions that will impact them
• Not focusing on improving both services and service management processes
• Not prioritizing improvement projects
• Implementing CSI with little or no technology
• Implementing a CSI initiative with no resources – this means that people must be allocated and dedicated to this
• Implementing CSI without knowledge transfer and training – this means educating first (acquire knowledge), then training (practice using the newly acquired knowledge). The training should be done as close to the launch of improvement as possible

A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

Services facilitate outcomes by enhancing the performance of associated tasks and reducing the effect of constraints. The result is an increase in the probability of desired outcomes

Process definitions describe actions, dependencies and sequence. Processes have the following characteristics:

• Measurable - We are able to measure the process in a relevant manner. It is performance driven. Managers want to measure cost, quality and other variables while practitioners are concerned with duration and productivity.
• Specific results - The reason a process exists is to deliver a specific result. This result must be individually identifiable and countable. While we can count changes, it is impossible to count how many Service Desks were completed.
• Customers - Every process delivers its primary results to a customer or stakeholder. They may be internal or external to the organization but the process must meet their expectations.
• Responds to a specific event - While a process may be ongoing or iterative it should be traceable to a specific trigger.

Purpose of CSI

You can not what?

CSI is to continually align and realign IT services to the changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to IT services that support business processes

In effect, CSI is about looking for ways to improve process effectiveness, efficiency as well as cost effectiveness.

You cannot manage what you cannot control.

You cannot control what you cannot measure.

You cannot measure what you cannot define.

• Review, analyse and make recommendations on improvement opportunities in each lifecycle phase: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation.
• Review and analyse Service Level Achievement results.
• Identify and implement individual activities to improve IT service quality and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of enabling ITSM processes.
• Improve cost effectiveness of delivering IT services without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
• Ensure applicable quality management methods are used to support continual improvement activities.

• Ensure desired business outcomes are met: Current & Future
• Ensure continual assessment: Capabilities & Performance
• Continuously seeks: Improvement opportunities

ROI,VOI

Attempt to capture value that lies beyond the reach of an ROI calculation such as:

• Increased organizational competency
• Integration between people and processes
• Reduction of redundancy increases business throughput
• Minimized lost opportunities
• Assured regulatory compliance that will minimize costs and educe risk
• Ability to react to change rapidly.

• Support the vision
• Process standards
• Policies, standard & controls
• Commitment
• Organizational transformation

Establishing business case

Measuring benefit

• Cost of downtime, loss of productivity and loss of revenue
• Cost of rework or redundant work, project work, and delayed implementation
• Cost of the operating environment, escalation of incidents, and hourly cost

• Checking year-by-year benefits/ROI/VOI realized by specific improvements
• Estimating benefits likely from competing initiatives arising out of the IT SIP, to identify the best-value investment, priorities and schedule of resources
• Analyzing the impact on current benefits being estimated or realized, by a proposed organizational change either in the business or within the IT organization
• Analyzing the impact on current benefits being estimated or realized, by a change in business strategic direction or regulatory legislation.

Service Strategy

standards and policies are determined around measuring and reporting for an enterprise-wide view of the organization, possibly utilizing a tool such as Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard.

Service Design

creation or modification of services and infrastructure architecture that are aligned to the business needs.

Design elements ensure that a customer-centric viewpoint is used in creating the capability, process specification and planning, and acceptance of service management practices.

Service Design is responsible for designing a management information framework that defines the need for critical success factors (CSF), key performance indicators (KPI), and activity metrics for both the services and the ITSM processes

Service Transition

Change and Configuration Management play major roles at this point in the lifecycle. This phase focuses on the best practices of creating support models, a knowledge base, workflow management, and developing communication and marketing for use in the transitioning of services to production.

Service Operation

Service Operation is responsible for the monitoring and initial reporting related to the people, processes and infrastructure technology necessary to ensure a highquality, cost-effective provision of IT services which meet the business needs. Every technology component and process activity should have defined inputs and outputs that can be monitored.

The results of the monitoring can then be compared against the norms, targets or established Service Level Agreements. When there is a discrepancy between what was actually delivered and what was expected this becomes a service improvement opportunity.

• Aspects that are external to the org, such as regulation,legislation, competition, external customer requirements, market pressures and economics
• Aspects that are internal to the org, such as org structures, culture, new knowledge, new technologies, new skills existing and projected satffing levels, and union rules

CSI & SLM

Service Level Management

• Activities support 7 step improvement process
• Supports building relationships
• Service improvement plan (SIP)

Monitoring & Data collection

• Define capabilities
• Distribution
• Define what to measure
• OLAs & Contracts

Measuring Data

• Define support levels
• Ensure integrity of measured data
• Review results
• Define frequency

Analyzing data

• Service level achievements
• Document & revenue trends
• Identify needs

Presenting data

• Review Meetings and reports

• Validate: monitor and measure to validate previous decisions
• Direct: to set direction for activities in order to meet targest
• Justify: with factual evidence
• Intervene: identify point of intervention

High level goals

KPI is support achievement of goals

KPI addresses:

- Compliance

- Quality (effectiveness)

- Performance (efficiency)

- Value

Data

Information

Knowledge

Wisdom

上から

Operational Management

Tactical Management

Strategic Management