All organizations that implement IT service management solutions require methods to measure the return on their investment. However, digital transformation is expensive. Therefore, business leaders must employ a solid review cycle to determine if the added tools, processes, and structure redesigns yield the expected results.
This ongoing evaluation is crucial as IT organizations that look to improve their strategies continuously outperform competitors satisfied with maintaining the status quo. As such, businesses should consider an IT service management maturity model to assess how well they perform today and identify future improvement areas.
What is a Maturity Model?
The standard maturity model represents an organization’s ability to continuously evolve in a specific field (in this case, IT Service Management). As an organization matures, it becomes more capable of turning incidents or errors into quality improvements. In addition, it evaluates several business-related components, such as people, culture, procedures, and technology.
Maturity models also help organizations determine their maturity level and provide crucial insight into which service areas require improvement.
IT Service Management Maturity Model: 10 Best Practices
Organizations can evaluate maturity levels by identifying a practical starting point for their ITSM implementation strategies. The initial struggle is not necessarily determining which processes and functions lack workforce and other resources. Instead, the biggest challenge might be integrating ITSM best practices into robust IT environments with closely interconnected operations.
Any proposed solutions require thorough strategic planning and process prioritization, and assessing the resulting impact requires the correct contextual information.
The following ten best practices might help you solve these complex problems and design an IT governance strategy to develop ITSM maturity capability:
- Know your business. Before making a plan, business leaders must understand their companies and adjust the assessment process accordingly. These adaptations might require identifying critical business-level requirements, such as promoting agility or meeting regulatory requirements.
- Focus on process impact. Organizations might measure the impact of process improvement activities, concentrating on efforts that result in a modest but steady improvement in ITSM maturity.
- Start where you left off. Not all organizations possess the necessary staff and resources to make substantial leaps at one time. Businesses can instead leverage existing (and successful) services from the current state, using those as a launching pad to make the next jump.
- Identify and collaborate with stakeholders. Identifying critical stakeholders in relevant ITSM operations is an integral part of any improvement project. This group might consist of managers, third-party providers, customers, and users. IT leaders should include these parties early in the process, recognize their contributions, and thoughtfully consider the assessments.
- Use questionnaires for better feedback. Management can make it easy for those stakeholders to provide input by distributing questionnaires before rolling out any new programs. The questionnaires should encourage users to be as specific as possible regarding issues they want to improve.
- Use that feedback to iterate and evolve. After receiving the necessary feedback, management should apply ongoing and iterative improvements to processes and assess the results. They might also consider studying the service lifecycle for possible risks and opportunities for further enhancement.
- Take a holistic approach. End-to-end visibility is often necessary to make effective decisions over the entire service lifecycle, meaning businesses should consider the interdependencies and integrations between all processes. Organizations might also utilize automation techniques to reduce the need for manual labor and the danger of errors.
- Maintain a straightforward and practical approach. Management should focus on frequent but tangible successful outcomes to boost maturity levels. These enhanced ITSM capabilities should demonstrate added business value and increased customer satisfaction.
- Pay attention to consistency and documentation. Organizations should look for inconsistencies in the process, evaluate how straightforward and user-friendly each solution is, and whether all hand-off points to related processes are well-documented. If there are any inconsistencies in these evaluations, it should raise red flags.
- Disseminate results to all appropriate parties. IT leaders should communicate their findings as part of a continual service improvement (CSI) approach to refine the processes and continuously promote further progress. They might also include the maturity assessment outputs in a CSI record to document and implement each improvement strategy.
Know Where You Stand With ITSM Maturity
Effective IT service management solutions promote the positive integration of IT into the overall business structure. This can lower IT costs, boost employee productivity, and produce higher service levels and standards.
Furthermore, knowing where your organization stands regarding ITSM maturity allows you to create specific goals and focus on critical areas for growth. This insight can assist you in formalizing the best set of ITSM tools requirements to size your technology investment appropriately.
Request a quote today and learn how Cask and ServiceNow can help you evaluate your IT Service Management efforts, identify areas of improvement, and revise strategies to improve the return on your investment.
