We often write about how customers should start their Service Management improvement journeys by undertaking a benchmarking assessment, so we thought it was about time we wrote a little more about how it all works and why we believe it's so important.
When thinking about an IT or Enterprise Service Management assessment, one must first consider the benefits. In all cases, a Service Management assessment provides customers with a facility to determine these important start points:
Current State Maturity: which provides an overall current state baseline of Organisational Service Management and Service Value
Current maturity baseline of each Practice included within the assessment. If the assessment is based upon ITIL® the baseline(s) might include all 34 practices and each Guiding Principal.
An Improvement Roadmap for Organisational IT Service Management and Service Value
Our assessments have a huge emphasis on Service Value and are therefore suitable for any organisation, regardless of current maturity level, not just those seeking a maturity against ITIL®. Lets face it, best practice isnt necessarily 'right practice', but knowing where you are and steering your efforts towards creating Value is critical for any organisation.
Maturity scores will focus upon an overall Service Management capability, along with maturity scores for each assessed Practice area and Guiding Principal (if the assessment is based on the current version of ITIL®).
Having an overall capability score enables the potential for benchmarking against industry peers, whereas the maturity scores for each practice area and Guiding Principal allows customers to focus in on specific capabilities ear-marked for improvement (e.g. Problem Management, Capacity Management, etc.)
For some organisations, maturity understanding and aspirations can then also lead to obtaining Industry Standards, Certifications and Awards - typically maturing their Service Management organisational capability in order to boost their own market presence and status (e.g. in service quality, customer experience, service value, trust, etc.)
Critically though, having the ability to focus on specific practices with an awareness of what good looks like, provides the foundation for pin-point improvement towards the goals you set out, which you can periodically benchmark against as you progress towards those goals.
Having a before and after measurement helps demonstrate the improvement within a specific area, but the secret to the improvement is the tangible and intangible value that comes from the exercise, not the maturity score itself.
In fact in a recent meeting with a prospective big banking client, the CIO said, "why do I need a score when I already know it's shit". Good question Mr CIO..
In all honesty, we see the score as a 'bonus' of the output, and not the the thing to focus on. Most importantly, what you (and everyone involved) learn at a detailed level from an assessment and bringing those stakeholders on the journey, is without doubt the most important output.
Whilst it varies depending on the scope of the assessment, typically we recommend interviewing at least 10 -15 stakeholders of the service, and critically these shouldn't all be in 'IT'. The consumers of the service(s) are just as, if not more important to talk to!
This enables us to then work with you to build out a prioritised roadmap of improvements and a realistic set of targets to work towards, based on the organisations own maturity desires. It's important to remember, that not everyone wants to, or needs to score at the highest levels of 'best practice'. The most important thing to master, is 'right practice'.
With budgets and resources tighter than ever for many organisations, having this data-led methodology to determine specific improvement areas provides tremendous value in creating problem statements and setting goals, rather than blindly throwing scare resources at a problem, in the hope that the improvement efforts might hit an unknown target.
If you'd like to learn more about our assessments and how we can support you on your improvement journey, please contact us at hello@itsmpeople.co.uk
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