Trends

Taking your org maturity to the

CobiT, MOF, ITIL, ISO, ASL, BiSL, Six Sigma. With all these frameworks, it should be childs play for a service organization to improve its service levels. However, applying such frameworks can still take a lot of thought. Where do you start? And how extensively do you implement each process? To answer these questions, three TOPdesk consultants have put together a pragmatic model to help organizations improve their level of service - one step at a time.

TEXT:

JILDERT DE GROOT, GKHAN TUNA & TIAGO KROMMENDIJK

are service management consultants at TOPdesk investigating the applicability of process models.

Assess which process has the highest priority

MANY ORGANIZATIONS EXPRESS THE NEED FOR A GUIDELINE

A service organization wanting to improve their service levels often uses a combination of various frameworks to do so. Existing frameworks for IT service management often focus on the desired outcome for the service organization. Countless books and articles analyze which processes play a part in this and how they are related to each other. In the previous edition of TOPdesk Magazine, Sander Jerphanion presented the best practice framework, ITIL v3 as one such example. This framework distinguishes between almost 40 processes that an organization can implement, whereby each process must fulfil certain requirements. ITIL v3, however, does not define how an organization should actually achieve its goal; and thats exactly what often causes headaches for service organizations. In practice, it is not possible to implement all aspects of ITIL v3 successfully in a short period of time. Its more important to point out that most successful organizations have gone through a very long

12 TRENDS

anizations next level

period of development. By learning from their mistakes, they have formulated methods and processes that work well for them. Therefore, prioritizing the processes you are going to implement is of utmost importance. succeed in its goal, each component of the process must be given attention. It is not recommended to implement all the components in one go; instead, determine the order in which they should be introduced.

Define each step of each process

Prioritizing your processes alone is not enough. For each process you must determine, step by step, which parts of it you are going to implement. Organizations trying to implement a large process in one go often come up against problems. Below are a few real-life examples of the problems that organizations can experienced while implementing a process: An organization has defined SLAs for dealing with incidents, but in practice the agreed SLAs are never met. The option to display breached incidents in red is then deactivated, because it appears to be too discouraging. The telephone at the service desk rings, but nobody feels the need to answer it. A CMDB was once implemented, but is no longer updated because no one felt responsible for it. The question that remains is what causes these situations and, even more important, how do you prevent them from occurring? Firstly, we need to determine the nature of the process. A process is often presented as a simplified drawing of a sequence of activities, but in practice it is just not that simple. A process comprises many components; each component must be clearly defined and all employees must understand their respective role. For the process to

Service Development Model (SDM)

When implementing the ITIL framework, you should first draw up a priority list of the processes you intend to introduce. Next, you should do the same for the various process components. The question now arises how you, as a service organization, can prioritize these processes, and how you decide which process components to implement. We have noticed that many service organizations express the need for a guideline. That is why we have created the Service Development Model. This model is based on three existing frameworks, that each cover a separate area of IT Service Management: ITIL, CMMI and ISO 20000 (see the following page for more information). ITIL can be used to provide an overview of the various processes, the CMMI is used to analyze the maturity of the entire service organization and ISO 20000 is used to determine the maturity of each process. As such, the SDM can help service-oriented organizations to work towards their goal one step at a time. The SDM model examines the stages of maturity within service organizations. Maturity is evaluated on two levels:

LEVEL 1: LEVEL 2 :

The overall maturity of the service organization (or department) The maturity of each process within the service organization

TRENDS 13

LEVEL 1: MATURITY OF THE SERVICE ORGANIZATION

CMMI

The abbreviation CMMI stands for Capability Maturity Model Integration and is the name of a model originally aimed at evaluating government suppliers who were leading a software project. Even though it originates from the field of software development, it is used as a generic model to test the maturity of processes (e.g. ITSM processes) in serviceoriented organizations.

The first level concerns the service organization (or department) as a whole. Whereas other frameworks simply describe an ideal situation or final stage for organizations, the SDM outlines five different stages of growth. These growth stages (see diagram 1) describe how a service organization can develop from an ad-hoc organization into a customer-focused organization. 1. Awareness and control Employees should be made aware of their position within the service organization and the three basic processes (Configuration Management, Communication Management and Incident Management) should be set up. 2. Managing the basics The three basic processes should be optimized in order to effectively manage these processes on an operational level. Additional processes are introduced, such as Change Management and Problem Management.

ISO 20000

ISO 20000 is the first international standard for IT Service Management. This standard consists of two parts. The first part describes the minimum specifications for introducing the application of an integrated process approach. The second part is viewed as a code of practice; it describes best practices for service management.

Process introduction

Process optimization

Process is optimized and will be adjusted continually

MATURITY OF THE ORGANIZATION VOLWASSENHEID VAN DE ORGANISATIE

Project Management Problem Management

ITIL

Operational Management Change Management

The abbreviation ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, which describes the setup of processes within service providing organizations. ITIL can give processoriented organizations a boost in quality. A proper application of ITIL can ease existing pressure points within service management, stimulate methodological procedures and introduce a common terminology.

Configuration Management Communication Management Incident Management

STEP 1

14 TRENDS

3. Internal Excellence The goal for this stage is to optimize your organizations internal performance. The processes discussed in step 2 should be optimized and new processes such as IT Service Continuity Management and Access Management are introduced. 4. Service Focus Firstly, the processes introduced in step 3 are optimized. Once this has been completed, the organizations internal performance will be incredibly solid, and the time has come to focus on service levels and collaboration. Implementation of Service Portfolio Management and Service Level Management begins here.

5. Service Excellence Collaboration with the customer is improved by optimizing the processes introduced in step 4. An essential part of this is fulfilling the agreements made with the customer. The sequence in which these processes should be introduced is based on years of experience gathered by service management consultants at thousands of service organizations. It is particularly important to optimize the current processes in each growth stage before introducing new processes. For example, introducing the Problem Management process is of little value if the Incident Management process has not yet been optimized.

DIAGRAM 1

Service Level Management

Service Level Management

Control Management

Configuration Management

Incident Management

STEP 2

STEP 3

STEP 4

STEP 5

customer situation

TRENDS 15

DIAGRAM 2

TION STRATEGIC DIREC UNICATION EXTERNAL COMM UNICATION INTERNAL COMM ECTION OPERATIONAL DIR ROLES IONS WORK INSTRUCT RES CESS & PROCEDU PRO

LEVEL 2: MATURITY OF THE VARIOUS PROCESSES:

The second level of the SDM describes the components of each process. By examining its components, it is possible to measure the maturity of a process. We distinguish between seven process components, from process description to strategic direction (see diagram 2). It is also necessary to decide in which order to introduce the various components of these processes. You could say that the bottom half of the diagram (defining the processes, procedures and roles) provides the basis for professionalizing your service, while the top half (operational and strategic direction) comprises the final stages in the maturity of the process. For example, a service organization is not ready to let customers register their own incidents via the Self Service Desk if the service organizations employees are not yet familiar with the procedures and roles for that process. This would mean that there is no guarantee that incidents registered through the Self Service Desk will be dealt with, and the Self Service Desk will not fulfil its purpose.

Management is in good order, Configuration Management has been implemented but has not been optimized, something is being done with Capacity Management and SLAs have been defined that are not entirely achievable. In a bid to improve the level of service, the organization has focused on processes from different maturity levels, and as such has skipped many of the essential steps in the processes. In this case, we would advise the organization to leave SLM alone for the time being and to focus on implementing processes such as Configuration Management, Knowledge Management and Capacity Management. Only when they are well managed can you progress to the next stage.

Audit
To help organizations on their way to the next development stage, TOPdesk offers several services aimed at piecing together a picture of the service organization. One such service is a short scan. In one day, we perform a quick analysis of the service organization and give advice about which steps to take to improve service levels. Additionally, we can gain an in-depth understanding of the organizations maturity by performing extensive research into the two levels described in the Service Development Model. The organizational scan is designed to determine where the organization stands at that point in time: what is the maturity level of the organization as a whole and which processes should logically be focused on first? Next, a process maturity test will provide insight into the maturity level of each process. Any gaps discovered in the process are identified, and recommendations are made as to how to raise its maturity.

Mind the gap

The two levels of the SDM, namely the maturity of the service organization as a whole, and that of every process are compared with the processes implemented in the organization. This will identify any gaps in the development. Once this is done, you can start drawing up a step-by-step plan. Take a look at the customers situation in diagram 1. On the right hand side you can see a situation that we come across regularly at organizations: Incident

What next?
This service development model helps service-oriented organizations raise their service levels. This doesnt happen all at once, but step by step. And thats exactly where the strength of this model lies. It gives organizations not only a tantalizing goal, as do the various theories, but also the concrete footholds needed to realize these abstract goals.

16 TRENDS