F & P in CSI: 7 Steps from Measurement to Improvement

Step 1: What should you measure?

• The service owners determine what they should measure. For this reason, they will chart the activities that are needed for the services management processes, or to provide services
• Input:
• Service level requirements and goals
• Service catalogue
• Vision, mission, goals and objectives of the organization as a whole, and of the various units
• Legal requirements
• Governance requirement
• Budget
• Balanced scorecard
• Output - A list of what you should be measuring, including:
• CSF
• KPIs
• Metrics
• Measurements

Step 2: What can you measure?

• Based on existing tools, organizational culture and process maturity, determine what can measure
• Determine the differences between the “ideal list” and the list with possible measurements
• Input:
• List including what to measure from step 1, including CSFs, KPIs and metrics
• Process flows
• Procedures
• Work instructions
• Technical and user manuals for existing tools
• Existing report
• Output:
• List of what can be measured, including CSFs, KPIs and metrics
• List of required adjustment to tools
• List of required new tools

Step 3: Gather data (measuring)?

• Define measurements according to smart. In order to collect data, you must monitor.This can be done using tools, but also manually
• If staff are collecting data manually, they must agree to the following:
• Who is responsible for monitoring and collecting data?
• How will data be collected?
• When and how often will data be collected?
• Which criteria guarantee the correctness and reliability of data?
• Data gathering consists of the following activities:
• Based on the SIP,goals, objectives and business requirements, specify which process activities you must monitor:
• Specify monitoring requirements
• Define requirements for data collection
• Record results
• Apply for approval from the internal IT department
• Determine how and how often you want to collect data
• Determine which tools are required, develop or buy these, or customize existing tools
• Data gathering consists of the following activities:
• Test and install tool
• Write monitoring procedures and work instructions
• Create a monitoring plan and discuss it; ask for approval from internal and external IT service providers
• Realize availability and capacity planning
• Start monitoring and gather data
• Organize the data in a logical fashion in a report
• Evaluate data in order to be sure that it is correct and useful
• Input:
• List stating what you should measure
• List stating what you can measure
• List stating what you will be measuring
• Existing SLAs
• New business requirements
• Existing monitoring and data gathering options
• Availability and capacity planning
• SIPs
• Prior tend analyses
• Gap analysis report
• Customer satisfaction studies
• Output:
• Current availability and capacity planning
• Monitor plan
• Monitoring procedures
• Selected tools
• Data concerning the ability by IT to meet business expectations
• Data collection
• Agreement on the reliability and applicability of data

Step 4: Process Data

• Input:
• Data gathered by monitoring
• Reporting requirements
• SLAs and OLAs (Operational Level Agreement)
• Service catalogue
• List with metric, KPIs, CSF, objectives and goals
• Reporting frequency
• Reporting templates
• Output:
• Current availability and capacity planning
• Reports
• Processed, logically grouped data ready for analysis

Step 5: Analyze Data

• Analysis evaluates whether IT services support the goals and objectives determined
• The data will be applied to answer question such as:
• Can clear trends be observed?
• Are they positive or negative?
• Are they in line with goals?
• Did we expect these trends?
• What are potential explanations?
• Are changes necessary?
• Will we meet planning and goals?
• Are there structural, underlying problem?
• A good analysis of the information is also to the business’ advantages
• This will allow a more accurate determination of whether improvement is required on the basis of strategic, tactical and operational goals
• At this point information becomes knowledge, according to the DIKW model

Step 6: Present and use information (service reporting)

• Service reporting must translate knowledge into wisdom which is required to make strategic , tactical and operational decisions
• Adjust the message and method to your target group and its requirements
• Staff members in different organizational level have different requirements. Therefore, distinguish these by staff members and their requirements, such as strategic thinkers, directors managers and supervisors, team leaders and staff
• In order to provide useful reports to a customer, these reports should be set up from a business perspective, which is to say, from an end-to-end perspective
• Take the time to setup a reporting framework together with the business and service Design: a policy that is formulated according to the rules by which you report

Step 7: Implementation corrective action

• Options should be assigned a priority based in the organizational goals and external regulations determined in the Service Strategy

Source: OGC