Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Goals and Objectives

• The goal of CSI is for continual improvement of the effectiveness and efficiency of IT services
• Aims to achieve and surpass the objectives (effectiveness), and obtain these objectives at the lowest cost possible (efficiency)
• How? By measuring and analyzing process results in all Service Lifecycle phases, to determine which results are structurally worse than others. These offer the highest improvement probability
• CSI mainly measures and monitors the following areas:
• Process compliance – Does the organization follow the new or modified service management process
• Quality – Do the various process activities meet their goals?
• Performance – How efficient is the process? What are the elapsed times?
• Business value of a process – Does the process make a difference? Is it effective? How does the client rate the process?

Deming Cycle –PDCA





The PDCA Cycle
The Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle (PDCA):

• Plan – What needs to happen, who will do what & how?
• Do – Execute the planned activities
• Check – Check if the activities yield the desired result
• Act – Adjust the plan in accordance to the checks

Plan CSI:

• Determine the scope
• Determine the requirements CSI must meet
• Set goals, for instance using gap analysis
• Define action points
• Determine which checks need to be executed during the checking phase
• Determine the interfaces between CSI and the rest of the lifecycle
• Determine which process activities need to be introduced

Implement CSI (Do):

• Determine the budget
• Document roles and responsibilities
• Determine the CSI policy, plans and procedures, communicate about them and train staff
• Supply monitoring, analysis and reporting tools
• Integrate CSI with Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation

Monitor, measure and evaluate CSI (Check):

• Report on the accomplishments
• Evaluate the documentation
• Perform process assessments and audits
• Formulate proposals for process improvements

Adjust CSI (Act):

• Introduce the improvements
• Adjust the policy, procedures, roles and responsibilities

Metrics, KPIs and CSFs

• Three types in CSI:
• Technology metrics
• Measure the performance and availability of components and applications
• Process metrics
• Measure the performance of service management process
• They stem from Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• These metrics help to determine the improvement opportunities for each process
• Service metrics
• Results of the end service
• For the business mission, CSFs are defined: these are elements essential to achieving the mission
• The KPIs following on these CSFs determine the quality, performance, value and process compliance. They can either be qualitative (such as customer satisfaction) or quantitative (such as costs of a printer incident)
• Determine if the KPI is suitable by answering these questions:
• Do we achieve our goals if we achieve the KPI?
• Can the KPI be interpreted correctly? Does it help in determining the action needed?
• Who needs the information? When? How often? How fast does the information need to be available?
• Is the KPI stable and accurate or subject to external, uncontrolled influences?

Data, information, knowledge and wisdom (DIKM)

• Metrics supply quantitative data
• For instance, that the service desk registers 12,000 incidents each month
• CSI transforms this data into qualitative information, a received and understood message which stems from processed and grouped data
• E.g. 18% of the incidents reported are related to the organization’s email facility

CSI policies and procedures

• CSI policies capture agreements about measuring, reporting, service levels, CSFs, KPIs and evaluation
• An IT organization should implement the following CSI policies:
• All improvement initiatives must go through the change management process
• All functional groups are responsible for CSI activities
• CSI roles and responsibilities are recorded and announced

Main CSI process activities

• Check:
• Check the results of the processes and examine customer satisfaction
• Check whether the staff follow the internal guidelines
• Analyze the measurement data and compare these to the goal set in the SLA
• Report:
• Propose improvements for all phases in the lifecycle
• Consider the relevance of existing goals
• Improve:
• Introduce activities to increase quality, efficiency, effectiveness and customer satisfaction of the services
• Use appropriate quality management methods to improve activities

The CSI improvement process
Steps from measuring to improving:

• What should you measure?
• What can you measure?
• Gather data (measure)
• Process data
• Analyze data
• Present and use the information
• Implement corrective action

Roles and responsibilities
Service Manager

• Manages the development, implementation, evaluation and ongoing management of new and existing products and services
• Responsible for:
• Achieving company strategy and goal
• Financial management
• Benchmarking
• Customer management
• Vendor management
• Full lifecycle management
• Inventory management

CSI Manager

• Accountable for CSI in the organizations
• Manages the measuring, analysis, investigating and reporting of trends and initiates service improvement activities
• Makes sure that sufficient CSI supporting resources are available
• Responsible for:
• Development of the CSI domain
• Awareness and communication of CSI throughout
• Allocating CSI roles
• Identifying and prioritizing improvement opportunities to senior management together with the service owner
• Identifying monitoring requirements together with the service level manager
• Defining and reporting upon CSFs, KPIs and activity metrics

Service Owner

• Appoint one person responsible for each service
• Central point of contact for a specific service
• Main responsibilities:
• Owning and representing the service
• Understanding which components make up the service
• Measuring the performance and availability
• Attending Change Advisory Board(CAB) meetings if these changes are relevant to the service they represent
• Participating in internal and external service reviews
• Maintaining the service entry in the service catalogue
• Participating in the negotiation of SLAs and OLAs

Process Owner

• Ensures that the organization follows a process
• Must be a senior manager with enough credibility, influence and authority in the organization departments which are part of the process
• Performs the essential role of process champion, design lead, advocate, coach and protector

Other roles which are important to CSI:

• Service Knowledge Manager
• Designs and maintains a knowledge management strategy and implements this
• Reporting Analyst
• Evaluates and analyzes data, and identifies trends
• Often cooperates with SLM roles (see Service Design)
• Must have good communication skills because reporting is an essential element of communication
• Communication Manager
• Designs a communication strategy for CSI

Assessments
Assessment compares the performance of an operational process against a performance standard. E.g. Agreement in an SLA, a maturity standard, a benchmark of companies in the same industry. There are 2 types of assessments:

• Internal: Against baseline, another department
• External: Against industry standards or similar organizations

Internal assessment
Advantages:

• No expensive consultants
• Self assessment sets are available for free
• Promotes internal co-operation and communication
• Promotes internal level of knowledge
• Good starting point for CSI
• Internal knowledge of existing environment

Disadvantages:

• Less objective
• Disappointing acceptance of findings
• Internal politics can get involved
• Limited knowledge of skill
• Labour intensive

External assessment
Advantages:

• Objectivity
• Expert ITIL knowledge
• Wide experience with several IT organizations
• Analytical skills
• Credibility
• Minimal impact on the provision of services

Disadvantages:

• High costs
• Risk as to acceptance
• Limited knowledge of existing environments
• Insufficient preparation limits effectiveness

Benchmarks
A benchmarks is a particular type of assessment: organizations compare (parts of) their processes with the performance of the same types of processes that are commonly recognized as “best practice”. This can be done in four way:

• Internal – against an earlier starting point (baseline)
• Internal – against another system or department
• External – against industry standard
• External – directly with similar organizations; this is only useful, however, if there are enough similar organizations in terms of environment, sector and geographical placement

Benchmarking
A type of assessment where organization compare their processes with the same type regarded as the best practice. To benchmark require the following key components:

• Company information profile
• Basic information such as scope and type of organization
• Current assets
• Hardware such as desktops and servers
• Current best practices
• Policy, procedures and tools and the degree to which they are used in the organization
• Complexity
• The number of end users and the quantity and type of technology in your organization

It provides the following result:

• Obtain performance results relative to standards
• Show the gaps
• Helps set priorities
• Helps in communicating the information well

Two special forms of benchmarking are:

• Process maturity comparison
• The maturity level of the organization is compared with that of another organizations; for example CMMI can be used as a maturity model
• Total cost of ownership
• The sum of all the costs of the design, the introduction, operation and improvement of services; it is often used to compare specific services in one organization with those of another organization

Need to identify the purpose of the benchmark:

• Measurements of costs (price) and performance of internal or external service provider
• Compare process performance with the existing industry standard
• Compare the financial performance of high-level IT costs with industry standard or other organization
• Measure effectiveness in achieving the required customer satisfaction

Sample aspects of SWOTs
Possible Strengths

• Core competences
• Financial means
• Recognized as a market leader
• Proven management

Possible opportunities

• Creation of new customer group
• Application of skills for new products

Possible weakness

• No clear strategic direction
• Outdated facilities
• Low profits
• Little insight into performance

Possible Threats

• Foreign competition with lower prices
• Lower market growth
• Expensive legislation and regulation

Source: OGC