Principle for Service Improvement
| A principle is a "general axiom or truth which has proven true when followed". In this regard, principles are similar to best practices. Best practices can be conceived of as "bundles of principles" applied to a specific process or operation. They allow us to adopt strategies for improvment without necessarily experiencing all the pains associated with failure - we build upon the experiences of others.
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My education and experience in strategic and financial planning, methodology, performance reporting and IT service management has provided me with certain principles germane to these fields of endevour. Moreover, the combination produces insights and new approaches which can be fruitfully applied to further service improvement.
The Principles I've Learned
- Lock in Senior Management Support - Implementing any body of best practices such as ITIL is problematic in the absence of support from senior management, most prominently the CIO.
- Maintian Project Support - While best practices can be implemented with sufficient brute force, sustaining them in the absence of the initial champions requires concerted attention in line with what CMMI refers to as "institutionalizing" gains.
- Know How to Spell Success - Articulate identifiable criteria for success (Key Goal Indicator(s)) so that you will know when you have achieved it and, better yet, how you are progressing towards its' realization.
- Get Started but Ensure Continuing Improvement - Optimization of best practices requires dedicated attention in accordance with CMMI advanced practices. A well thought out plan will pay due acknowledgement to a "staged" representaiton of CMMI in which organizational capabilities are added and solidified within the organization in identifiable matuurity levels.
- Establish Base Organizational Capabilities - A corrollary to the above, organizations require some key, base organizational capabilities in order to be successful in improving many areas of service management.
- Plan for Quick Wins - many organizations can undertake some basic service improvements in conjunction with a more comprehensive project plan because some aspects of ITIL best practices such as the definition of a service catalogue can be considered 'basic organizaitonal capabilities'. Quick wins can be suggested which further service management goals and objectives but which do not require advanced organizational capabilities.
- Walk the road before you carry the load - Costly investments in toolsets will not achieve success without changes in behaviors. Ensure that the necessary enablers can be changed before investing in tools which, by themselves, will not produce the promised gains.
I can help an organization wishing to undertake service improvements. This engagement can take on of many different forms. The list below is far from exhaustive but presents some rough parameters for how I might be engaged.
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Readiness Assessment
I conduct an assessment of the state of your internal enabling practices and procedures upon which more comprehensive service management improvement exercises will be conducted.
Effort
Elapsed Time: 40 daysBillable Time: 20 days
Activities
- Material collection (primarily by client)
- Material review
- Follow-up interviews
- Production of draft document
- Review and revision of draft document
- Management presentation of findings
- Submission of final readiness assessment report
Deliverables
Ten to twenty page assessment of your capabilities to implement service management best practices using CMMI/CobIT maturity levels accompanied by textual explanations. Though additional items may be added or listed items excluded the following list of key enablers is reviewed.
- Ability to plan and manage a project - specifically evaluated against CMMI Project Management - Project Planning and Monitoring and Control
- State of retention of current IT policies. Is there a central location? Are they widely known and easily accessible? Are they reviewed and updated?
- State of process documentation. Is there a document/process repository? Are they referenced? Are they reviewed and updated?
- Acknowledgement of governance requirements. Is there a governance framework for the organization? Are RACI charts and/or roles and repsonsbilities identified for processes? Are hand-offs between organizations in a service chain identified with procedures governing their performance? Are there procedures governing compliance? Are there procedures governing exceptions?
- Risk management plan. Are there generally accepted and followed strategies and approaches for reviewing and acting upon risks? have risk categories been established and parameters identified?
- Awareness of best practices. Are staff aware of best practices? Are there discussion and proposals available for service improvements? Are the assessed for cross-unit influences? Are stakeholder groups included in the governance framework?
- Configuration Management. Are there files and descriptions of the basic components of the infrastructure? Are there descriptions of how they relate to each other?
- Service Management. Have the services offered by the organization been systematically identified and are clients aware of them? Is there known procedures for accessing a service including the costs and obligation inherent in accessing it?
- Base Performance Measurement. Are there protocols and methods by which the performance of respective areas are measured and reported on an ad hoc or continuing basis. CobIT maturity descriptions for Process Monitoring can be applied to this area.
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Service Objectives Review
I provide advice on your capabilities to deliver a specified objective with reference to ITIL, CobIT and CMMI frameworks. This engagement type is limited in scope to a containable, discrete set of agreed-upon objectives.
Effort
Elapsed Time: 15 daysBilled Time: 10 days
Activities
- Interview with contracting party to discuss objectives
- Collection of policies, processes and governance responsibilities associated with objectives
- Identification of known risks and vulnerabilities to meeting objectives
Deliverables
Five page report on current capabilities to deliver specific objectives. Report includes:- Current IT policies affecting realization of policy and any information on how consistently they are followed. Information on any penalties and sanctions the organization employs when policies are avoided
- Suggestions for new or revised policy statements
- Organization and governance frameworks including job descriptions
- IT training over the last year
- Processes, how often they are modified, and information on what sanctions are imposed if they are not followed.
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Single Process Assessment
Document a single current process (eg. Change Management, or sub-set of Change Management such as RFC review process) and compare against best practices.Effort
Elapsed Time: 60 daysBillable Time: 45 days
Activities
- Collect material on current process including:
- process objectives
- stakeholder list
- workflow diagrams and descriptions
- policies affecting process
- roles and responsibilities of participants
- any information of pertinent process metrics (KGI, KPI) and critical success factors
- Develop TO-BE process based upon ITIL/CobIT/CMMI
- Discuss implication of new model for organization with senior management and stakeholder groups. Reach agreement on Scope and Coverage of new process
- Finalize TO-BE process
- Present TO-BE process to staff
- Develop Gap Analysis of difference between existing and TO-BE process
- Present Gap Analysis to senior management
- Optional: Create Business Case
- Optional: Develop Risk
Deliverables
- AS-IS process model
- TO-BE process model
- Gap Analysis
- Presentation
- Optional: Business Case
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Single Process Improvement
Assuming completion of Gap Analysis established through Single Process Assessment engagement a project plan is developed to implement the new (TO-BE) process. Provisions for "institutionalizing" and later "optimizing" the process are established in the plan but are outside the length of this engagement. Timelines are subject to wide variances because of the inherenet variability amongst different process areas for implementation.Effort
Elapsed Time: 6 to 9 monthsBillable Time: 6 to 9 months
Activities
- Establish a top-level work breakdown structure (WBS) to estimate the scope of the project.
- Establish Project budget and resource requirements
- Identify and analyze project risks.
- Establish project information repositories
- Idenitfy stakeholders and their form of participation in project
- Identify Risks, develop Risk Mitigation Strategies
- Review Commitment to the Plan
- Monitor Project Against Plan
- Manage Corrective Action
- Review and recommend acquisition of tools
- Optional: Establish Supplier Agreements as required
Deliverables
- Work Breakdown Structure
- Estimates budget and resource requirements (number and skill sets)
- Risk Management Plan
- Project Plan
- Modifications to project and Risk Management Plans
- Toolset recommendation(s)
- Optional: Supplier Contrracts
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Application Support Matrix
A support matrix is established for a new application outlining terms, conditions and any costs for support of the application.Effort
Elapsed Time: 4 monthsBillable Time: 4 months
Activities
- Review Requirements Traceability Matrices.
- Review standard support goals (restoration time).
- Assume application readiness or Optional: Review Defect List, results of QAT and stress testing for expected outages (application put into production earlier than indicated by testing)
- Review industry best practices for similar application type and environment
- Determine cost to organization of downtime
- Establish application availability requirements, maintenance window(s)
- Establish application escalation and communications protocols
- Establish Severity assignment(s) for outages related to application
- Develop Support Matrix for inclusion in SLA - Optional: Develop SLA/Service catalogue potfolio for application support
- Review Support Matrix with management and stakeholders
- Revise Support matrix based upon comments
- Presentation of Support Matrix
- Place support matrix in document repository
Deliverables
- Support Matrix for inclusion in Service Catalogue and/or Service Level Agreement(s)
- Emergency escalation and communications protocols
- Stakeholder consultants
- Best practices document with regard to application support
- Presentation on Support Matrix
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Service Catalogue
Develop Online service catalogue using CobIT framework to describe services --> Access Service Catalogue SummaryEffort
Elapsed Time: 4 to 6 monthsBillable Time: 4 to 6 months
Activities
- Collection of available information describing services
- Rationalization of services into service framework (eg., CobIT framework outlined at hci-itil.com)
- Service Catalogue toolset review and recommendation
- Process modeling of Service Request process
Deliverables
- New or revamped Service Catalogue
- Revision to Service Request process to accommodate Service Catalogue usage, including scope, policies, roles and responsibilities, performance metrics
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Service Management Assessment
Review of IT services offered by IT Service Provider based upon ITIL service management categorization - incident, problem, change, configuration, release plus Service Level Management (ITIL service delivery item)Effort
| Organization Complexity | Elapsed/Billable Time Months |
| less than 5,000 users supported | 4 |
| 5,000 to 15,000 users support | 6 |
| over 15,000 users support | 9 |
Activities
- Collection of available information describing the six processes
- Identification of key support people for each process
- Mail self assessment questionnaires to each recipient
- Collate and summarize results of self-assessment surveys --> See Assessment questionnaires by ITIL field
- Conduct group sessions with stakeholders for each process area.
- Integrate group sessions, literature review and self-assessment questionnaires into summaries by six ITIL best practice areas.
- Produce Assessment Report
- Distribute Assessment Report for verification of results
- Present results to senior management
- Finalize report
Deliverables
- Assessment questionnaires
- Results of literature review
- Summary findings from group sessions
- Assessment Report including description of best practices for each area
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Service Delivery Assessment
Review of IT services offered by IT Service Provider based upon ITIL service delivery categorization - capacity, availability, financial, service continuityEffort
| Organization Complexity | Elapsed/Billable Time Months |
| less than 5,000 users supported | 3 |
| 5,000 to 15,000 users support | 4.5 |
| over 15,000 users support | 6 |
Activities
- Collection of available information describing the four processes
- Identification of key support people for each process
- Mail self assessment questionnaires to each recipient
- Collate and summarize results of self-assessment surveys --> See Assessment questionnaires by ITIL field
- Conduct group sessions with stakeholders for each process area.
- Integrate group sessions, literature review and self-assessment questionnaires into summaries by four ITIL best practice areas.
- Produce Assessment Report
- Distribute Assessment Report for verification of results
- Present results to senior management
- Finalize report
Deliverables
- Assessment questionnaires
- Results of literature review
- Summary findings from group sessions
- Assessment Report including description of best practices for each area
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