IT Service Validation

Measurement and validation capabilities should be a first priority when considering IT Service Management. Effectively, you cannot manage what you cannot measure and putting in place any proactive management framework, from service level management to capacity planning, is fruitless if you cannot measure what is actually happening in your data center.

Metrics are critical to improving business performance. In order to prove that the ITSM implementations are effective and beneficial to the business, IT must be able to measure and validate the benefits of the ITSM implementation and the process improvements.

The importance of this cannot be overstressed, as inclusion of processes that cannot be effectively monitored almost always result in disputes and eventual loss of faith in the ITSM process. A lot of organizations have discovered this the hard way and as a consequence, have absorbed heavy costs both in financial sense as well as in the terms of negative impacts on their culture.

Metrics can also help to prove the value of ITSM before and after the projects gets approved. The best way to “sell ITIL” to the CIO is to provide concrete examples and figures on how ITSM benefits the organization. For example,

  • Cut incident resolution rates by 40%
  • Cut network failure downtime by 30%
  • Reduce labor waste by 25% (labor waste include time IT personnel has to run around to obtain information necessary to do their job)
  • Reduce IT infrastructure cost by 20%

This Best Practices guide will explain how log data can be used effectively to measure and validate the core IT Service Management processes. To ensure success of the ITSM implementations, TIBCO LogLogic has defined the following Service Validation steps based on collecting and analyzing log data that is already available in any data center today:

Assess the current state of the IT services

Monitor the ongoing status of the IT services

Measure the result of the process implementations

Validate the effectiveness and benefits of the process changes

Assess the current state of the IT services

In order to understand the IT services, IT must be able to assess the current state. The current state gives IT organizations a starting point in which to define improvement criteria and design processes to meet those criteria. For example, based on the assessment of the network infrastructure, the IT organization may determine that it needs to reduce the number of network failures by 30%. The assessment allows the IT organization to set specific target metrics and measure against these targets. These targets set the direction for the IT organization.

Monitor the ongoing status of the IT services

To ensure the successful outcome of the process implementations, IT must be able to continuously monitor the IT services to ensure process improvement. Continuous monitoring allows the IT organization to intervene and adjust the processes as needed. If the new processes being implemented to reduce network failures by 30% is not meeting the goals at preset milestones, the IT organization will have the opportunity to review the processes and technologies, and adjust the implementation to ensure the success of the implementation.

Measure the result of the process implementations

What cannot be measured cannot be understood, what cannot be understood cannot be improved. IT must periodically measure the result of the process implementations to ensure improvements are being made. Reporting should be used to show no adverse impacts have been introduced and improvement goals are met. Measuring results early on may also identify “quick wins” that can be used to justify further ITSM implementation projects.

Validate the effectiveness and benefits of the process changes Based on the reports from step 3, IT must validate that the improvements are meeting the set goals. For example, if the original goal is to reduce network failure incidents by 30%, IT must validate that the new processes implemented are indeed meeting this goal.

Conclusions:

Nothing should be included in the IT Service Management process unless it can be effectively measured and validated.

Existing measurement capabilities should be reviewed and upgraded as necessary.

Ideally this should be done ahead of, or in parallel with, the approval of any IT Service Management process.

A universal, economical and effective way to measure core IT Service Management processes and objectives is by collecting and analyzing log data.