CHAPTER 8: ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

Never rest on your laurels.

Not done yet

In this book, we’ve focused on the measurement of IT provision from both customer and provider perspectives.

Enlightened IT providers will have a disciplined approach to their work, often based on IT industry standards and leading frameworks such as ITIL. Enlightened clients may well demand that their provider use standardised approaches – or proof that the provider’s approaches are to an equivalent high standard.

The use of a disciplined approach makes it easier to use measurement as a basis for improvement, in the same way that it’s easier to measure an engineer’s work and use the measurement for improvement, than it is to do that with an artist’s work.

If you need to improve your IT provision, you should consider using industry-leading frameworks and measurement associated with the frameworks, to raise your game.

If you think there’s a bewildering array of IT management frameworks that overlap and leave gaps, consider the following. The leading frameworks between them cover most of the ground associated with IT provision. So you can use things like:

• the Balanced Scorecard approach to improve strategic management of the business (and IT as a business in its own right);
• Lean and SixSigma to improve business processes;
• ISO9000 and capability maturity model integration (CMMI^®) to help ensure you have a disciplined approach to quality management and IT provision respectively;
• Managing Successful Programmes (MSP^®), Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^®) and/or PRINCE2 to manage programmes and projects;
• COBIT^® to foster good governance;
• Application Services Library (ASL^®) to manage application software; and
• ITIL for IT service management.

When to use each of these, and how to deploy measurement based on them, would fill at least one book in its own right. So: use the Web; do your research, talk to others and make choices relevant to your situation and the imperatives faced by your organisation.

Conclusion

IT is a service to businesses and often a business in its own right. It exists in a dynamic environment, with technology advances being made all the time. These advances enable businesses to do new things and to do existing things better: to be more customer-friendly and more efficient. IT operations are highly visible to customers, whose lives and work in all likelihood depend on it.

IT expenditure is a sizeable chunk of most organisations’ spend. IT’s contribution is typically much more significant than the amount spent on it.

Being an IT provider is an important, challenging role. Being a client is the same.

Being a good provider or a good client demands understanding and continual attention – sometimes likened to running to stand still. You can only do it effectively with measurement.

Measurement is a means to the end of satisfied IT customers, provided with a good IT service that meets their needs now and in the future, and that represents value for money.

If you’re an IT provider, measuring yourself this year against last year should show an improvement in satisfaction, service quality, process quality and value for money. There are two exceptions: if you were perfect already or if you have experienced significant change. If you aren’t improving year-on-year, you need to understand why and may need to take action.

If you’re a business that uses IT, your provider should be giving you better satisfaction, better service and better value for money this year compared with last: unless, of course, you were completely satisfied last year that your service was already excellent in terms of quality and value for money. Equally, you can’t expect everything to keep getting better in times of hefty change.

It isn’t enough just to improve; providers need to be a match for competitors. They can compare themselves with others, through measurement or benchmarking communities.

Power to those who measure up and improve!

Postscript

Whether you see IT as a business enabler or as a necessary evil will depend on your perspective, your job and your experience. If it allows your business to revolutionise itself or to attract a lot of new customers, you’ll look on it positively. If you’re a sole trader who has lost data and had to rebuild your system twice this year, you may not be so well disposed.

We’ve been exploring how to measure IT to check it does what it says on the tin, without having to spend too much.

Be careful, though, not to use measurement to optimise the wrong thing. ‘Doing IT right’ is, of course, what everybody wants, but ‘doing the right things with IT’ is why the business invests in it in the first place. So don’t forget to check the business value of IT. If you’re lucky, your organisation will have a business case justifying the expenditure on IT and setting out the value the business expects to get from it. The benefits can’t always be measured, but it’s important nevertheless to check they’re being achieved, month by month, year by year. Don’t make your IT efficient or economic by putting its effective support to the business in jeopardy.