You can’t improve IT, if you are not measuring IT

 

The 7-Step process in CSI phase of ITIL has identification of what needs to be measured as one of the steps.

There is no way of improving a service or a process, if we are not measuring. Measurments allow us to do two things

1. Know where we are

2. Help determine where we want to go

Often in my experience, we take the standard set of metrics and put all of them on a dashboard for various stakeholders to review, irrespective of the relevance of these beautiful looking graphs. I would in this post and in future try to put together some  tools which help in identifying what needs to be measured. One of such tools is GQM – Goal Question Metric Approach. In some of the next posts, I would write about illustration of the GQM related to ITSM Processes.

Read more about the GQM here and here.

 

(Whitepaper) The Five Essential Metrics For Managing IT

Craig Symons in this Forrester Whitepaper has summarized the 5 key metrics that should be used to Manage IT.

Craig suggests that the CIOs must create a scorecard that is

1. Understandable and relevant to business executives
2. Connected to business outcomes

The metrics that should ideally form the core of an IT scorecard are then defined as :

Metric #1: Alignment Of IT Investments To Business Strategy

IT Portfolio by Strategic Initiative

The size of the circle represents the amount invested
Discretionary Investments are not mandatory

Metric #2: Cumulative Business Value Of IT Investment

Metric #3: IT Spend Ratio — New Versus Maintenance

Metrics #4: Critical Business Service Availability

Metric #5: Operational Health

You could download the whitepaper by clicking here or you could also read an html version here.

All images are from the Forrester Whitepaper