In my experience, people who work in IT love statistics. They love to know how many people (in percentage terms of course) are doing this and that, and how they themselves compare against their peers. Thus benchmarks are sought after and different types of internal assessments often undertaken. With IT service management (ITSM) maturity assessments a common source of data.
In fact, in Navvia's 2013 ITSM survey, 49% of respondents had conducted an ITSM maturity assessment in the last 18 months. A live poll during a webinar that accompanied the release of the Navvia survey results placed the figure at 48% - so a consistent one-in-every-two respondents (but of course this could biased by the participation of people who want to acquire such statistics).
The emperor's new statistics?
So an ITSM maturity assessment gives an IT organization a snapshot of where they are. But does it really?
As with IT metrics or KPIs, one has to be careful about the power and usefulness of ITSM maturity assessments. If all a maturity assessment is used for is to show how well a corporate IT organization is doing then, as with KPIs that are always green, it's a missed opportunity.
I'm sure that we all know corporate IT organizations that have jumped from maturity assessment to maturity assessment with little improvement activity happening in between. And thus one has to question the drivers behind the undertaking of ITSM maturity assessments.
What's the real role of ITSM maturity assessments?
But first you'll have to pardon my cynicism as I play with this a little.
Imagine an ITSM maturity assessment conducted merely to show how well an IT organization is doing — a maturity will probably be overinflated to show how great everything is. Or conversely, an assessment conducted merely to access funds set aside for ITSM process improvement might find the reverse to be true. That maturity is underplayed. Another interesting consideration is: Which is the most mature IT organization — the one with a few high-scoring processes or the one with many lower-scoring processes? Many will opt for the latter, but are they really more mature? Surely it depends on what is actually needed to best serve the parent business?
But my real issue is that ITSM maturity assessments are often conducted for singular purposes, such as the two above, rather than being part of a multi-year strategy to improve ITSM operations, service delivery, and service experience. With the key word being "improve." So, as with appropriate metrics, the assessment should be more than just a snapshot in time — an isolated output of a process. Instead it should be the input to some form of improvement activity that seeks to better the performance, services, and service of the survey-taking organization.
But you can get even more out of ITSM maturity assessments
A common ITSM process question to industry analysts, consultants, and software vendors is: "We already do X, Y, and Z, what should we do next?" To which there are a number of popular answers such as:
- "Well it depends on what your business needs you to do"
- "What's keeping you awake at night?"
- "Companies often start with X and Y, or A and B, before moving to C"
All of which have some merit but not enough to really help the customer make an informed decision based on their personal circumstances.
So what if, post-ITSM-maturity-assessment, you not only knew where you were on the maturity scale, and maybe against an overall average, but also where other similar organizations are and were over time?
"That's just benchmarking!" I can hear you shouting. Well it is and it isn't. What if you could see how similar organizations have progressed with ITSM maturity and process adoption over a period of time? Not so you can do exactly the same thing — that would be so wrong — but so you can consider what has worked and hasn't worked for other organizations that:
- Are of a similar size, in the same vertical, in the same geography, etc.
- Were in a similar "maturity position" position previously
- Have been using ITSM or ITIL for a similar amount of time
- Use the same ITSM tool or a different one.
It's not a silver bullet
But it does help IT organizations looking to improve to understand where they are and to consider what has gone before them when looking at where they want or need to be. It definitely helps us to help our customers. For instance, my colleague Bradley Owen has found that using ITSM maturity (or capability) assessments from Navvia really helps ServiceNow to better help customers:
"One of the biggest challenges that business process consultants (and other Professional Services (PS)) staff face when working with customers is quickly understanding where the customer is in terms of ITSM process maturity in order to provide the most applicable (and adoptable) guidance to them.
In some cases, we arrive on-site with very little information about the customer's IT environment. And in order to overcome this challenge, we have designed and developed capability assessments with Navvia to capture this information before the PS engagement begins.
Armed with this information, the PS team is now in a better position to more accurately scope the engagement and more quickly recommend process improvement opportunities and appropriate ServiceNow features to the customer."
And we are opening the capability assessments to all
As part of Navvia's participation in Knowledge14 they will be helping customers and potential-soon-to-be-customers use the complimentary ServiceNow capability assessments. Just stop by their booth.
But you don't have to be at Knowledge14 to use the assessments. In fact you don't even have to be a ServiceNow customer. You can register to take the assessment online until June 14th at http://i.navvia.com/snow-assessment.
And as they say in infomercials: But that's not all!
There will also be a post-Knowledge14 webinar to present back aggregated views into the capability of customer (old or new) and non-customers. A great opportunity to see where you stand relative to your peers and start to develop your roadmap. And you can sign up for that webinar also at http://i.navvia.com/snow-assessment.
So look out for Navvia at Knowledge14 and take the survey either before, during, or immediate after the event. You might just learn where to take your ITSM improvement activities next.
