Implementing Metrics For It Service Management

How To Implement Metrics for IT Service Management
David Smith, Global Knowledge Instructor
Introduction
It's often been said that "you can't manage what you don't measure," which is still true to this day. Without purpose and a course to follow, the destination is uncertain and almost always unpredictable. Many management books have been written on this subject, ranging from personaldevelopment to organizational leadership. They all agree in principle that a purpose, goal or destination must be determined in order to chart a course and path to achieve them. Once the path or roadmap has been defined, the journey must be carefully planned to guide the traveler safely to the desired destination in the prescribed time within planned costs.
Measurements are like navigational aids. Theyhelp identify the destination, the roadmap to follow, hazards to avoid, milestones to reach, fuel consumption, constraints or limitations, expected time of arrival, and so on. Without navigational aids, one could get lost, end up anywhere, get stranded, fall off a cliff, run out of fuel, get in an accident, or fall asleep at the wheel.
Goal of this Article
The goal of this article is to providethe reader with a flexible and scaleable measurement framework that is easy to learn, implement, manage and improve. This framework should provide process metrics and techniques to help align IT with the business objectives in order to create value, making processes and services more "efficient and effective." It should also be based on a continual improvement lifecycle and help the readerdetermine ways to
* Align IT with business objectives and verify the results
* Maintain compliance requirements for business operations
* Drive operational efficiency, effectiveness and quality
The measurement framework can be implemented as a comprehensive measurement program for all processes and services, or selectively for individual process or services. It is aligned with the ITInfrastructure Library (ITIL®), also a set of best practices. The framework can be compatible with the Control Objectives for IT (COBIT®) framework and supports the ISO/IEC 20000 standard for IT service management.
More details can be found in the book "Implementing Metrics for IT Service Management" (Smith, 2008). The book provides methods, concepts, examples, techniques, checklists and softwaretemplates to accelerate adoption through a "how-to-based" approach.
What metrics are all about
Based on the book "Metrics for IT Service Management," a "metric" is just another term for a measure. Metrics define what is to be measured. For IT, this includes technology, processes and services. Metrics provide the feedback mechanism that allows management to steer, control and guide IT toward strategicobjectives. The book further explains that metrics help to
* Align business and IT objectives,
* Achieve compliance (ITIL®, ISO/IEC 20000, COBIT®), and 
* Establish operational excellence.
Implementing Metrics
Metrics for IT service management need to measure process and service effectiveness in addition to the functions and technologies that provide them. Metrics in IT havetraditionally been measured in functionally-oriented silos, like the help desk, server technical services or the operations department. Information technology departments are shifting to process- and service-centric organizational models requiring metrics that report beyond the functional boundaries to determine success. For example, both the application development and IT operations departments arefunctionally very mature and, when independently measured, appear successful. However, they don't work well with each other and when together, they frequently fail to deliver deployments.
Basic Concepts
There are four critical success factors for an effective measurement framework.
* Enable validation of the strategy and vision
* Align with the IT goals and objectives
* Validate...