Planning and Conducting an IT Service Management Assessment – Steps Involved

Planning and conducting an IT Service Management (ITSM) assessment is a key activity undertaken when an IT organisation aims to improve its IT service effectiveness and business value. The key steps involved are highlighted below:

Step 1: Understanding the purpose, scope and expected outcome of the assessment

At this stage, it would be good to confirm the scope of the assessment, what is the objective and expected outcome and define what information is to be collected. The assessors (especially if they are not internal staff) would need to understand the business goals, IT goals, vision and mission and IT strategy. This is normally done through looking at documented IT strategy and plans and also interviews with the project sponsor to get his vision and goals.

Step 2: Planning and Preparation

Various factors would need to be considered when planning the assessment. A copy of the organisation chart should be obtained. The organisation chart provides useful information that helps the planners identify who are the key managers and stakeholders and who may have the information needed. Meeting and interviews will have to be planned and scheduled at least one or two weeks ahead of the actual event. Meeting or interview rooms would need to be booked. Any visits to restricted sites should be highlighted and authorisation obtained. The output is usually a fairly detailed project plan. A typical assessment would have duration of two to three weeks.

Step 3: Kick Off Meeting

A kick off meeting is recommended. The kickoff meeting starts the assessment formally. Invited attendees may include process managers, interviewees, data providers, stakeholders and external consultants involved in performing the assessment. It is a good practice to invite the project sponsor or most senior of the stakeholder to this meeting and say a few words to define the purpose of the assessment, show management support and to introduce and empower the assessors. Depending on the culture, the sponsor may have to set expectations that the purpose of the assessment is not an audit and all staff should collaborate with the assessors fully.

Step 4: Data Gathering

The scope of the assessment would often cover only the key Service Operations and Service Transition processes. Data are gathered though interviews, workshops session, reviewing of documentation and site visits. Visits to the service desk and data center may be necessary.

A checklist of questions is often used. A maturity-based assessment would aim to determine the level of maturity of each ITIL processes. Other data to gather includes availability of tools, skills, organisation role and responsibilities, availability and quality of documentation, evidence of continual improvement, metrics and reports, circulation and usage of the reports.

Step 5: Analysis

Based on the responses to the questions gathered, the scores are tabulated using a spreadsheet tool and presented. A maturity-based assessment may use the 5-level ITSM maturity model to rate the individual process.

 

Spider diagrams or bar charts can be used to compare current state with desired state and highlight key gaps and deficiency areas.

 

Benchmarks with the maturity levels of other companies in same industries are useful and that is one advantage of engaging external consultants to perform the assessment instead of conducting a self assessment.

Gaps, issues, constraints should be identified as compared to the vision, mission, goals and objectives. The analysis should include highlighting potential risks to the quality and reliability of current service delivery.

Step 6: Action Planning

Having understood the current state versus the desired state and armed with the information obtained in the earlier steps, viable solution approaches would need to be identified, including products and services that are needed. An IT service improvement initiative may require multiple sub-projects to address what needs to be done at each step of way. Each project should be defined with a possible project scope or charter, estimated timeline and costs, products and services.

Step 7: Presentation

The presentation should not be a lengthy session to discuss the details of the assessment or findings. Instead, it should be a high level, executive presentation focusing on key pain-points uncovered, business implications and what are the recommended solutions and next steps. The desired outcome is to seek sponsorship and approval from the management team to proceed with service improvement action plans.

Step 8: Produce the Assessment Report

A formal assessment report should be produced. The aim of this report is to document the objectives of the assessment, key findings, issues uncovered and solutions proposed. This document is important as it serves as the baseline upon which comparisons of the "before" and "after" snapshots of the situation can be made subsequently.