I bumped into a colleague over lunch and asked how things were going and he said with a degree of dismay on his face
“It’s time for me to submit my Service Management metrics to IT leadership.”
He didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of this.
“What’s the challenge?” I asked.
“It’s the same thing I hear each month; the managers from each of the groups I report on complain that the numbers aren’t right. Yet they never seem to do anything with them.”
I stood there nodding in agreement.
He went on to outline the following that they report on the usual suspects
- Incidents by workgroup.
- Incident volumes
- Incident Resolution times
- Priority breakdown
I mentioned to him that comparing against the silos in IT was really like comparing apples and oranges. the incident resolution time from one group may not be expected from another. I asked him if he had a way to report against services. These current metrics really only allow the group that owns them to work on an internal component of the way that they provide service. At the end of the day all that really matters is that your service is provided to business expectations.
My colleague mentioned that they are way far away from being able to talk about service metrics and sharing those with their customers in even a limited way. I totally understood where he was coming from.
This is as good a place to start as any. It’s time to stop thinking about things in the limited IT scope and start thinking about reporting in terms that the business will not only understand but be able to contribute in a way that you will be able to work together to improve the delivery of service.
Find out what is causing the roadblocks to achieving this. If it is a process, for example you aren’t able to map services to CI’s because you don’t have a structured CMS, or maybe one at all. Maybe you don’t truly understand your business services.
Once you get the ball rolling start the discussion with the business. Let them know that you are in the beginning of this journey and that you need their help to get you to a place that collaboratively you are achieving your business outcomes together