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ITIL, Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is an emerging standard that congeals and stabilizes best practices for information technology implementations within an organization. The standard focuses on service delivery levels and operational guidance. Wrapped up in these two focus areas are activities that were already in practice in many organizations and are now focused under the ITIL standard. The standard now offers a baseline from which to establish an organizations service level and system performance. But what does that mean in terms of Measurable Organizational Value, MOV?
ITIL Affects Measurable Organizational Value
by
JT Bogden, PMP
ITIL, Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is an emerging standard that congeals and stabilizes best practices for information technology implementations within an organization. The standard focuses on service delivery levels and operational guidance. Wrapped up in these two focus areas are activities that were already in practice in many organizations and are now focused under the ITIL standard. The standard now offers a baseline from which to establish an organizations service level and system performance. But what does that mean in terms of Measurable Organizational Value, MOV?
The first thing we must understand is MOV is aligned with the organizations strategy and it's ability to extract benefit from it's efforts. MOV is not about how well the company or it's staff do their jobs. Instead, MOV relates to the achievement of strategic objectives the organization seeks. The strategic objectives could involve many aspects of the organization to include sustainability and profitability as well as corporate governance objectives.
The measurement of organizational value closely follows Effect Based Outcomes, EBO, methodology. In EBO objectives are established. Each each objective may have two or three associated effects. Each effect may have one or two Measurements of Effectiveness, MOE's. For example, the following objective, effects, and MOE's may be typical of a company launching a social media campaign.
O.1 Promote a social media campaign
E.1.1 An increase/decrease in customer awareness of services
MOE.1.1 The number of customer queries about the services
E.2.1 An increase/decrease in customer participation of service design
MOE.2.1 The number of service enhancement suggestions
An additional element, indicators, are used to establish decision points and refocus resources. For example, once customer suggestions reach 100 per week a decision is made that the customer participation program is mature. Funding for this program is rolled back to sustainment levels and the money is refocused into other efforts. The MOE is then monitored continuously for a decision point when a decrease to 50 customer suggestions per week is hit. Then resources are allocated to increase awareness to the program. This is typical MOV initiative to sustain the desired effects and objective achievement.
Throughout the organization, various factors affect the availability of resources used to achieve MOV. ITIL provides a framework for managing those resources. Essentially, ITIL impacts MOV in many ways. While MOV is focused on organizational objectives, how well the organization stays focused and executes its tasks contributes to improved or strengthened MOV. For example, Activities that:
The measurement of organizational value closely follows Effect Based Outcomes, EBO, methodology. In EBO objectives are established. Each each objective may have two or three associated effects. Each effect may have one or two Measurements of Effectiveness, MOE's. For example, the following objective, effects, and MOE's may be typical of a company launching a social media campaign.
O.1 Promote a social media campaign
E.1.1 An increase/decrease in customer awareness of services
MOE.1.1 The number of customer queries about the services
E.2.1 An increase/decrease in customer participation of service design
MOE.2.1 The number of service enhancement suggestions
An additional element, indicators, are used to establish decision points and refocus resources. For example, once customer suggestions reach 100 per week a decision is made that the customer participation program is mature. Funding for this program is rolled back to sustainment levels and the money is refocused into other efforts. The MOE is then monitored continuously for a decision point when a decrease to 50 customer suggestions per week is hit. Then resources are allocated to increase awareness to the program. This is typical MOV initiative to sustain the desired effects and objective achievement.
Throughout the organization, various factors affect the availability of resources used to achieve MOV. ITIL provides a framework for managing those resources. Essentially, ITIL impacts MOV in many ways. While MOV is focused on organizational objectives, how well the organization stays focused and executes its tasks contributes to improved or strengthened MOV. For example, Activities that:
- Reduce costs.
- Improve IT services through the use of proven best practice processes.
- Improve customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery.
- Support standards and guidance.
- Improve productivity.
- Improve use of skills and experience.
- Improve delivery of third party services through the specification of ITIL or ISO 20000 as the standard for service delivery in services procurements.
- Service Strategy. The service strategy aligns IT with the business objectives which are measured in terms of MOV.
- Service Design. This structures the IT architectures in support of operations creating policies that impact MOV. Attention must be given to ensure that the policies are not counter productive but instead support the organizational objectives. Streamlined policies en-culture optimized processes and resource utilization increasing resource availability for MOV initiatives.
- Service Transition. This is focused on change management. The purpose of change management is to stay focused on the organizational objectives and avoid costly detours which can impact MOV if not in alignment.
- Service Operation. This covers delivery and control processes ensuring stability. All to often during the operations and maintenance phase environmental variations can lead the operations away from the objectives. This keeps the focus on MOV.
- Continual Service Improvement. This is concerned with 'tweaking' the IT service management. It wraps up best practices and processes like lean, Six Sigma, TQM, etc... in a incremental continuous improvement process. These are course corrections that emphasize MOV and increase reources available for MOV initiatives.
Overall, Measurable Organizational Value, MOV, is closely coupled to ITIL in terms of strategy-to-task service levels. Systems of systems thinking ties all aspects of the organization into its productive achievement of MOV and its initiatives.
This posting has had over 700 reads and is in the top all time posts.
This posting has had over 700 reads and is in the top all time posts.
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