THE FOLLOWING ITIL INTERMEDIATE EXAM OBJECTIVES ARE DISCUSSED IN THIS CHAPTER:

• ✓  CSI and organizational change
• ✓  Ownership
• ✓  CSI register
• ✓  External and internal drivers
• ✓  Service level management
• ✓  Knowledge management
• ✓  The Deming Cycle
• ✓  Service measurement
• ✓  IT governance
• ✓  Frameworks, models, standards, and quality systems

In this chapter, we explore how the principles of continual service improvement are adopted throughout the lifecycle. We review some specific relationships with continual service improvement and other lifecycle processes, and the relationship of continual service improvement with the Deming Cycle. We conclude the chapter by reviewing the role of continual service improvement and governance, and the use of standards and frameworks.

CSI and Organizational Change

In this chapter, we consider CSI principles and how the success of CSI depends upon an understanding of organizational changes, establishing clear accountability, and the influence of service level management.

Although service level management is a service design process, it has a close relationship with CSI, so it is necessary to understand the important elements of service level management.

This chapter also introduces tools such as the Deming Cycle (covered as part of the Foundation syllabus) and service measurement as used in conjunction with knowledge management and frameworks, models, standards, and quality systems to provide adequate governance.

Because service management is about how the staff of an IT service provider works to deliver the service, any improvements are likely to challenge current working practices. Staff may feel defensive and see the improvement initiative as a criticism of their work—if the change is to succeed, winning their support is essential. Many improvement initiatives fail to achieve lasting benefits because they have ignored this aspect of change.

Formal project management will help clarify the goals and measure success against them. Addressing the “soft” issues of staff resistance to change is essential. This should include looking at approaches to organizational change such as Dr. John P. Kotter’s eight steps to transform your organization, which identifies and addresses common reasons for failure.

Ownership

To ensure that CSI retains the focus required, a manager should be appointed with specific responsibility for continual service improvement. Fundamental to CSI success is a manager who has ownership of the process. If there is no single point of ownership, improvements may be dropped due to pressure of other work. The CSI manager becomes the CSI owner and chief advocate. Their responsibilities include selling the benefits to the staff and maintaining focus on improvement. They must also ensure that there are sufficient resources and adequate tools. They are responsible for the ongoing CSI activities, such as monitoring, analyzing, and evaluating trends, and reporting as well as project-based service improvement.

CSI Register

Several initiatives or possibilities for improvement are likely to be identified. ITIL recommends keeping a CSI register to record all the improvement opportunities and ensure that they are categorized and tracked.

Each entry in the CSI register should be categorized as a small, medium, or large undertaking, and an assessment should be made as to whether they are “quick wins” or medium- or long-term improvements.

The projected benefits should be clearly stated, and this information will enable the suggested improvements to be prioritized. There is a danger that lower-priority improvements will never be addressed, so a system whereby the priority level is increased over time will ensure that these improvements reach the “top of the pile.” Benefits should be assessed in terms of aspirational key performance indicator (KPI) metrics to ensure that priorities are based on the resulting business benefit.

The CSI register helps to ensure that all improvements are properly recorded, assessed, and tracked consistently. The benefits of improvements are also measured and captured here. It provides a coordinated, consistent view of the potentially many improvement activities. It is important to define the interface from the CSI register of initiatives with strategic initiatives and with processes such as problem management, capacity management, change management, and service level management. In particular, the service review meeting is likely to result in a number of requirements for improvement.

The CSI manager should have accountability and responsibility for the production and maintenance of the CSI register.

External and Internal Drivers

There are two major areas within every organization driving improvement: The first area includes aspects that are external to the organization, such as regulation, legislation, competition, external customer requirements, market pressures, and economics. The second area includes aspects that are internal to the organization, such as organizational structures, culture, new knowledge, new technologies, new skills, existing and projected staffing levels, and union rules.

In some cases these aspects may serve to hinder improvement rather than drive it forward. A SWOT analysis (examining strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) may be helpful in illuminating significant opportunities for improvement. The strengths and weaknesses focus on the internal aspects of the organization, while the opportunities and threats focus on aspects external to the organization.

Service Level Management

Adopting the service level management (SLM) process is a key principle of CSI. SLM is no longer optional because business demands that IT be driven by service requirements and outcomes. IT must become a trusted partner of the business because it is a core enabler of every critical business process.

SLM involves a number of steps to ensure that IT behaves as a provider of service. They will work with the business to identify service level requirements and understand the internal relationships within IT and how the groups within IT combine to deliver the service, documenting the relationships with operational level agreements. They will also ensure that external providers deliver their component of the overall service and that the underpinning contracts deliver what the business needs.

SLM is also responsible for identifying opportunities for improvement and feeding them into CSI.

Knowledge Management

The ITIL Service Transition volume explains knowledge management in detail, but it plays a key role in CSI.

Within each service lifecycle stage, data should be captured to enable knowledge gain and an understanding of what is actually happening, thus enabling wisdom. This is often referred to as the data, information, knowledge, wisdom (DIKW) structure. Gathering the data without a plan to analyze it is a common mistake. It is important to work through the steps of DIKW to achieve wisdom, which will lead to better decisions around improvement. This is shown in Figure 44.1.

Data capture alone is not enough. The development of wisdom will lead to new approaches and methods and improvement. This applies both when looking at the IT services themselves and when drilling down into each individual IT process. Knowledge management is a mainstay of any improvement process.

The Deming Cycle

The Deming Cycle is covered in the Foundation syllabus. W. Edwards Deming advised large companies on quality improvement, and his advice has relevance for service management, especially CSI.

Deming’s approach to quality improvement was encapsulated in the Deming Cycle, which translates very well to CSI. The four key stages of the cycle are Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), after which a phase of consolidation prevents the improvement from slipping back to its original state.

The goal in using the Deming Cycle is steady, ongoing improvement. It is a fundamental tenet of CSI.

The PDCA cycle is critical at two points in CSI: implementation of CSI, when all four stages of the PDCA cycle are used, and for ongoing improvements, when CSI uses the check and act stages to monitor, measure, review, and implement initiatives.

The seven-step improvement process is covered later in more detail in Chapter 45, “The Seven-Step Continual Service Improvement Process.” The seven-step continual service improvement process is an example of an implementation of the PDCA cycle, with each of the steps falling within one of the phases of the cycle: Plan, Do, Check, Act.

The cycle requires a process-led approach to management, where defined processes are in place, the activities are measured for compliance to expected values, and outputs are audited to validate and improve the process.

The PDCA cycle is a fundamental part of many quality standards, including ISO/IEC 20000.

Service Measurement

An important aspect of all CSI activity is the ability to measure. This can be achieved in a variety of ways, but it should always start with a baseline.

The Seven-Step Improvement Process

Fundamental to CSI is the concept of measurement. CSI uses the seven-step improvement process.

Which Steps Support CSI?

It is obvious that all the activities of the improvement process will assist CSI in some way. It is relatively simple to identify what takes places, but the difficulty lies in understanding exactly how it will happen. The improvement process spans not only the management organization, but also the entire service lifecycle. This is a cornerstone of CSI.

The seven-step improvement process shows the approach to measurement and how this relates to the PDCA cycle. The process is covered in detail in the next chapter, but this is a brief outline of each step.

Step 1: Identify the Strategy for Improvement

Identify the overall vision, the business need, the strategy, and the tactical and operational goals.

Step 2: Define What You Will Measure

Service strategy and service design should have identified this information early in the lifecycle. CSI can then start its cycle all over again at “Where are we now?” and “Where do we want to be?” This identifies the ideal situation for both the business and IT. CSI can conduct a gap analysis to identify the opportunities for improvement as well as answering the “How do we get there?” question.

Step 3: Gather the Data

To properly answer the “Did we get there?” question, you must first gather data (usually through service operation). Data is gathered based on identified goals and objectives. At this point, the data is raw and no conclusions are drawn.

Step 4: Process the Data

Here the data is processed in alignment with the specified CSFs and KPIs. This means that time frames are coordinated, unaligned data is rationalized and made consistent, and gaps in data are identified. The simple goal of this step is to process data from multiple disparate sources into an “apples to apples” comparison, which is turning the data into information. Once you have rationalized the data, you can begin analysis.

Step 5: Analyze the Information and Data

Here the data and information are analyzed to identify service gaps, trends, and the impact on business. It is the analyzing step that is most often overlooked or forgotten in the rush to present data to management.

Step 6: Present and Use the Information

Here the answer to “Did we get there?” is formatted and communicated in whatever way is necessary to present to the various stakeholders an accurate picture of the results of the improvement efforts. Knowledge is presented to the business in a form and manner that reflects its needs and assists in determining the next steps.

Step 7: Implement Improvement

The knowledge gained is used to optimize, improve, and correct services and processes. Issues have been identified and now solutions are implemented—wisdom is applied to the knowledge. The improvements that need to be made to improve the service or process are explained to the organization. Following this step, the organization establishes a new baseline and the cycle begins anew.

While these seven steps of measurement appear to form a circular set of activities, in fact, they constitute a knowledge spiral (see Figure 44.2).

In actual practice, knowledge gathered and wisdom derived from that knowledge at one level of the organization becomes a data input to the next.

Governance

With the exposure of high-level corporate fraud in the early years of this century, IT was thrust into a new area of governance and is now subject to stricter legislative controls than in the past. An ever-increasing number of external regulations and external auditors are commonplace in large IT organizations.

IT can no longer mask its operations behind a veil of secrecy. It must run an organization that prides itself on its transparency.

Enterprise Governance

Enterprise governance is an emerging term to describe a framework that covers both the corporate governance and the business management aspects of the organization. In Figure 44.3, you can see the relationships that make up the view of enterprise governance.

Achieving good corporate governance that is linked strategically with performance metrics will enable companies to focus all their energies on the key drivers that move their business forward.

This is a significant challenge as well as an opportunity. Much work has been carried out recently on corporate governance. The Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) states that enterprise governance considers the whole picture to ensure that strategic goals are aligned and good management is achieved.

Frameworks, Models, Standards, and Quality Systems

Each of the following frameworks, models, standards, and quality systems fully supports the concepts embodied in CSI:

• ISO 9000 is a quality management system concentrating on process-driven approaches to quality.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) ensures that a quality management approach is adopted throughout the organization.
• Risk management in any form is a crucial part of corporate governance. The management or risk should be carried out consistently across the organization.
• Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) specifically looks at the controls required to deliver service effectively.
• ISO/IEC 20000 and other ISO standards for IT are applicable to the delivery of IT services. ISO/IEC 20000 is the global international standard for service management delivery.
• ISO 14001 is the environmental management standard.
• Program and project management, including PRINCE 2 which is used to provide governance for projects.
• Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) identifies the skills and capabilities for specific roles in service management.
• Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) identifies the levels of maturity in processes and has been adapted for use in IT process assessment.
• ISO/IEC 27001 is the standard for information security management systems.

Summary

In this chapter, we reviewed the importance of CSI in the context of organizational change and explored the importance of ownership of CSI activities. Ownership of activities is supported by the CSI register and ensuring ownership of the register to prioritize the improvements according to business need.

Improvements are driven by both internal and external drivers and must be supported throughout the service lifecycle by all processes, but especially by service level management. Knowledge management is also key to the management of improvement.

The Deming Cycle can be used as a driver for continual improvement and constant revision to continue to meet organizational needs. This requires use of measurement techniques to identify a baseline.

Governance and other supporting service management frameworks, standards, and quality systems will drive and support CSI in an organization and should be used appropriately according to the needs of the business.

Exam Essentials

Understand the principles of CSI. Be familiar with the concepts involved in the practice of continual service improvement.

Be able to explain the importance of ownership in CSI. It is important to understand the importance of ownership of the process of CSI as well as the maintenance of the CSI register and how it’s used for prioritization.

Understand and expand on the drivers for CSI. There are both internal and external drivers for CSI, and it is necessary to know what they are and be able to differentiate between them for the exam.

Be able to explain and expand on the importance of service management processes in CSI. CSI does not simply take place as an afterthought; it is integral to the service lifecycle. Some processes are particularly critical, and you should be able to expand on the engagement of CSI with service level management and knowledge management processes.

Understand the use of the Deming Cycle within CSI. Plan-Do-Check-Act are integral parts of the improvement cycle. You should be able to describe and explain how each stage is important.

Know each of the steps in the seven-step improvement process. The CSI syllabus covers this in detail, but you should be able to identify each step and its importance to improvement.

Be able to explain the importance of service measurement in CSI. Measurement is vital for the improvement process, and you should be able to explain its importance and identify key aspects such as the use of a baseline.

Understand and explain the use of governance, frameworks, standards, and quality systems. You should be familiar with the frameworks that support CSI and understand their application.