While many organizations have undertaken IT Service Management (ITSM) assessments, results and satisfaction to date have been mixed. These assessments have ranged from full-fledged, comprehensive reviews that have turned out to be very expensive to more shallow tactical reviews that have been essentially just checking the boxes. However, many of these assessments, regardless of approach, fell short of achieving insight and action that improved organizational performance. Building upon the latest points of view from ITIL v3 and ISO 20000, Windward has developed a holistic approach to ITSM maturity assessments that is both thorough and efficient. This article covers just a few major assessment themes from this methodology, which Windward is already putting to use for our clients.
Making the Full-Service Lifecycle Practical
To achieve real insight for the organization, service management must begin with a steadfast outward focus, capturing the strategy, utility and warranty required by the business and operational customers. However, many ITSM assessments have traditionally been inwardly focused, limited to IT operations itself. To be effective, business and operational drivers must be well defined and infused within functional service management requirements for successful process development, tool design and integration. Our assessments look holistically at this full-service lifecycle model by factoring in existing operational environment limitations, service demands and customer requirements. With this approach, we develop a roadmap for our clients that identifies critical relationships affecting service performance and helps pinpoint the best means to improve them.
Leveraging Organization Knowledge
Many organizations have found that the ability to design, develop, sustain and improve services rests largely with how well they use corporate knowledge. In accordance with ITIL v3, Windward takes a hard look at whether and how efficiently our clients' use organizational knowledge to tailor service attributes and guide critical operational and business decisions. Windward has recognized the importance of evaluating Knowledge Management (KM) practices and systems for some time and is now taking advantage of improved tools provided by ITIL v3.
ITSM Agility
Modern business and mission requirements demand greater flexibility and adaptability than current service approaches can deliver. Too often, however, service management projects focus on sustaining the status quo - keeping current services within acceptable quality limits. Windward has always believed that a basic premise for service management includes the ability to respond to strategic requirements of the organization, such as agility. Windward builds in formal process mechanisms to quickly authorize and control changes, with particular focus on the efficient and accurate management of service requests and related provisioning activities. Our ITSM maturity assessments look closely how well our clients introduce and handle changes across services.
Windward's experience as a certified ISO 20000 consultant has been a powerful lever in building a holistic ITSM methodology that delivers results. Applying principles gained through experience, we guide our clients through the ITSM maturity assessment phases of discovery, gap analysis and roadmap definition in a thorough, but efficient manner. Using a wealth of tools, intellectual property and experience, this approach results in real insight and compels value-driven action within the organization.