Did you know that ITIL 2011 has 26 process towers and you could measure more than 200 elements within those towers to gauge effectiveness of each process? As you can imagine, measuring more than 200 elements would take a staff of two or three just to collect and analyze the data.
Deciding on the meaningful elements to measure is key to the success of your ITIL implementation. One must start with a basic evaluation of the maturity of each ITIL process tower implemented. The table below can be used to measure each of the processes in place.
| Level | Maturity | Description |
| 0 | Does not Exist | No evidence of any activities supporting the process being evaluated. |
| 1 | Ad-Hoc | Random activities supporting the process are observed, but no one is aware of how each activity relates to the other. No formal documentation or dedicated resources identified to own the process. |
| 2 | Aware | Activities support the process but there is no measurement of the effectiveness of the process. A tool is in place to support the process, resources are defined but roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined between the resources and other functional IT areas. |
| 3 | Controlled | Process is defined and measured. Resources understand their roles and responsibilities. Processes are measured and reviewed on a regular basis. Management conducts formal improvement planning and resources are measured on their effectiveness. |
| 4 | Integrated | Processes are well defined, measured and continuous improvement is in place. Linkage between processes are defined and understood by all in the organization. |
| 5 | Optimized | Process have direct links between IT and corporate policy, continuous improvement is embedded into the process and teams. |
Any organization should strive to at least achieve a maturity level 3 and have well defined processes in place for the ITIL process towers implemented. One should also review the process towers not implemented and develop a roadmap to continue to introduce ITIL processes and enhanced the processes in place to improve IT service management and operations.
What’s the “magic” in identifying the right service elements to measure which will drive value?
There are some basics that will yield the most benefit to drive the desired outcomes for your customers. These basics are considered the fundamental IT service management processes that provide the organization the necessary process framework to operate and expand capabilities.
Focus on the core: Incident, Problem, Change, Availability and Service Catalogue. Wavestone US recommends measuring and tracking the following:
Service Catalogue Request Management
- Percentage of time a service request is fulfilled with in the expected time
Incident Management
- Mean time to restore service
- Count of Incidents by priority
- % of incidents which caused lost sales, product or SLA penalties.
Problem Management
- Root Cause Analysis responsiveness – expected time for the RCA to be created
- % of SEV 1 and 2 incidents where root cause was identified and corrected
Change Management
- Number of undocumented/unauthorized changes
- Number of failed changes as a percent of all changes
- Count of changes by category (critical, standard, etc.)
- Count or percent of changes that caused outages
Availability Management
- Infrastructure availability
- Application availability
- System availability
Organizations that embrace ITIL standards and drive continuous improvement realize operational efficiency benefits that translates into overall service improvement and lower operating costs. Some organizations fear ITIL because it appears to be too complex, time consuming and costly. Service management requires an investment in tools, technology and people and should be a journey versus a destination. These five (5) process areas represent a service foundation that every IT organization needs to be proficient in order to provide good fundamental IT services.
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