Introduction to the Continual Service Improvement Toolkit Welcome

Welcome to the Continual Service Improvement toolkit. Within this toolkit you will find lots of useful information, that will not only help you to update your knowledge and understanding of the new ITIL version 3 Continual Service Improvement phase and accompanying processes, but also provide you with relevant bonus materials and practical, useable materials for use within your working environment.

How it works Follow the ‘Toolkit Roadmap’ to navigate your way through the documents within the toolkit. This will direct you through the relevant stages of Continual Service Improvement. CSI Governance Service Level Mgmt Six Sigma ITILV3

Aim of the Toolkit  Provide a detailed over view of the Continual Service Improvement phase from a ITIL Version 3 perspective.  Provide relevant bonus materials such as, ISO 20000, ISO 9000, Six Sigma and Return on Investment information and calculators.  Provide practical and user friendly documents for you to use within your organization, including a Continual Service Improvement Readiness Assessment.

CSI - Introduction ITIL v3

Purpose of CSI The primary purpose of CSI is to continually align and realign IT services to the charging business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to IT services that support business processes. These improvement activities support the lifecycle approach through Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation. In effect, CSI is about looking for ways to improve process effectiveness, efficiency as well as cost effectiveness. Consider the following saying about measurement and management: You can not manage what you can not control You can not control what you can not measure You can not measure what you can not define.

CSI Objectives Review analyze and make recommendations on improvement opportunities in each lifecycle phase Review and analyze Service Level Achievement results Identify and implement individual activities to improve IT service quality and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of enabling ITSM processes Improve cost of effectiveness of delivering IT services without sacrificing customer satisfaction Ensure applicable quality management methods are used to support continual improvement activities.

CSI Scope There are 3 main areas in CSI that need to be addressed: Overall health of ITSM as a discipline Continual alignment of the portfolio of IT services with the current and future business needs Maturity of the enabling IT processes for each service in a continual service lifecycle model. To implement CSI successfully it is important to understand the different activities that can be applied to CSI.

CSI Approach The CSI Model © Crown Copyright 2007 Reproduced under license from OGC

Value to the business There are 4 commonly used terms when discussing service improvement outcomes: Improvements Benefits ROI (Return on Investment) VOI (Value on Investment).

Justification To justify any improvement, the IT organization should compare costs and revenue. The difficulty in doing this, however, is that while the costs are relatively easy to measure the increase in revenue as a direct result of the Service Improvement Plan (SIP) is more difficult to quantify. Understanding the organization’s target and current situation should form the basis of the Business Case for a SIP. A stakeholder assessment and a goal-setting exercise will help focus on the results and aims.

Benefits Benefits must be clearly identified to help justify the effort involved in gathering, analyzing and acting on improvement data. It is important to: Consider both direct and indirect benefits. Identify the benefits for each group of stakeholder at every level in the organization. Define the benefits in clear measurable way.

Benefits Other benefits that will be realized by implementing CSI within an organization: Business/customer benefits Financial benefits Innovation benefits IT organization internal benefits

Cost A Service Improvement Plan (SIP), just like any other major plan, will have cost associated with executing its activities: Staff resources trained in the right skill sets to support ITSM processes Tools for monitoring, gathering, processing, analyzing and presenting data Ongoing internal/external assessment or benchmarking studies Service Improvements either to services or service management process Management time to review, recommend and monitor CSI progress Communication and awareness campaigns to change behaviors and ultimately culture Training and development on CSI activities.

Interfaces to other lifecycle practices. © Crown Copyright 2007 Reproduced under license from OGC

CSI & Service Strategy Service improvement opportunities could be driven by external factors such as new security or regulatory requirements, new strategies due to mergers or acquisitions, changes in technology infrastructure or even new business services to be introduced. Feedback from the other lifecycle phases will also be important.

Design takes the strategy described in the first phase and transforms it through the design phase into deliverable IT services. Service Design is also responsible for designing a management information framework that defines the need for: Critical Success Factors (CSF’s) Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) Activity Metrics for both the services and the ITSM processes. CSI & Service Design

As new strategies and design are introduced this provides an excellent opportunity for continual improvement. Service Transition is also responsible for defining the actual CSF’s, KPI’s and activity metrics, creating the reports and implementing the required automation to monitor and report on the services and ITSM processes. CSI & Service Transition

CSI & Service Operation Every technology component and process activity should have defined inputs and outputs that can be monitored. The results of the monitoring can then be compared against the norms, targets or establishes Service Level Agreements. When a deviation is identified, between expected and actual deliverables, a service improvement opportunity Is created.

All or Nothing? At this stage it is easy to assume that all aspects of CSI must be in place before measurements and data gathering can begin. However, this is not the case.  Measure now  Analyze now  Begin reviews of lessons learned now  Make incremental improvements now. Don’t wait, improvements can start now!