Measuring Effectiveness Utilizing ITIL/ITSM Best Practices
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. This is a core concept that is held by virtually every best practice and framework in IT (and elsewhere). But while it is a simple concept, it is one that is a struggle for many organizations.
The Struggle
With over 15 years experience in IT spanning across multiple industries such as technology, non-profit, retail/eCommerce, federal contracting, and higher education, I have seen time and time again how much of a struggle most organizations have with measuring success.
In IT we do a great job of measuring “things” like servers, switches, and other equipment. Some organizations are even measuring processes like incident management, change management, etc. But to get the whole story we need to take a more holistic approach that looks at not just the technology and processes, but at the services we provide. After all, the people, processes and technology are all pulled together to deliver services that then deliver value to the customer.
Luckily IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a framework for IT Service Management (ITSM) best practices, gives us some guidance. According to the article “Service Measurement & Reporting Across the ITIL Service Lifecycle” written by Gary Case, the “measure it” piece is covered by the service measurement process which, as the name implies is used collect data about the various elements of services being delivered. To help with the “manage it” piece we look to the service reporting process to take the data collected and analyze it so it becomes useful information that can be applied to provide knowledge about the services and “that enables action.”
From Feelings to Actions
That last bit is the critical one — “that enables action.” In other words, we measure how effective we are providing services, processes, technology and even people to know what the right action should be. Without effective measurements we are acting based on anecdotal assumptions or gut feelings.
The elements that we are measuring and reporting against should be captured in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the Service Level Agreement (SLA). According to “ITIL Service Level Management — How can you report credibly against SLAs and KPIs” measuring and reporting is vital. In fact, it goes so far as to say “If you can’t report back against KPIs in a consistent and timely manner, then the objectivity that is crucial to a creditable measure of performance against the SLA is lost.”
All of this is to say that in order to effectively manage IT services we must be able to measure them. Not just measure, but measure consistently and accurately. While this is an area many organizations struggle in, utilizing ITIL and ITSM best practices we can bridge that gap to better offer quality IT services to our customers.
References
Case, Gary. “Service Measurement & Reporting Across the ITIL Service Lifecycle.”
Lawrence, Steve. “ITIL Service Level Management — How Can You Report Credibly against SLAs and KPIs?”
