Best Practices › Collect Data from Your Organization

Collect Data from Your Organization

The following are guidelines for services and service level information each customer should collect from their organization. These guidelines are developed based on ITIL Methodology and CobiT™ Principles. Once the data is collected, analysis of the information will help the organization answer the following questions:

• Who delivers which services where, to which organization or organizational groups, and at what cost?
• Who requests which services from which IT group and at what volume?
• What level of service is currently in place within the organization?
• Who are the stakeholders?
• How can we use the template catalog?

The first step in the guidelines is to determine whom to interview. Candidates are:

• Chief Information Officer
• IT senior management
• IT Contract / Service Level Administrator
• IT Operations management
• User management

The purpose of the interview is to obtain and understand organization-wide policies and procedures relating to provider/user relationships. Examples are:

• IT policies and procedures relating to:
  • Service level agreements
  • Operational reporting content, timing and distribution
  • Performance tracking methods
  • Corrective action activities
• IT documentation relating to:
  • Service level performance reports
  • Service budget and costing procedures
  • Charge-back algorithms and methodology for calculating charges
  • Service improvement programs
  • Recourse resulting from non-performance
  • Service level agreements with internal and external users and providers of services

Once the information is collected, the following documents must be reviewed and analyzed:

• Service level agreement process
• Definitions of responsibilities of users and providers
• Management reports on the achievement of the specified service performance criteria and all problems encountered

The purpose of analyzing the documents is to validate that:

• Appropriate users are aware of and understand service level agreement processes and procedures
• Users' level of satisfaction with the current service level process and actual service level agreements is sufficient
• Service fulfillment data is available to track performance
• A performance improvement program is in place
• Accuracy of actual charges matches agreement content
• Historical performance against prior service improvement commitments is tracked
• Reports on achievement of the specified service performance are appropriately used by management

The next step is to perform a series of activities such as:

• Benchmarking of service level agreements against similar organizations or appropriate international standards and recognized industry best practices
• Review of service level agreements to determine qualitative and quantitative provisions confirming obligations are defined and being met
• Review of selected service level agreements to confirm resolution procedures for problems, specifically non-performance, are included and being met

The result will help the organization identify:

• Adequacy of the provisions describing, coordinating and communicating the relationship between the providers and the users of information services
• Incorrect calculations for selected categories of information
• Ongoing review and corrective action by management of service level reporting
• Adequacy of proposed service improvements in comparison with cost/benefit analysis
• Adequacy of the providers' ability to meet improvement commitments in the future

Once collected and analyzed, this information should be organized in service specification sheets that offer descriptions of each of the services offered.