Wui-Gee Tan

Implementing it Service Management: A Case Study Focussing on Critical Success Factors

Queensland Health, a large Australian government agency, implemented a centralised IT service management model based on the ITIL framework. This paper presents an in-depth case study of the implementation. It sheds light on the challenges and breakthroughs, confirms a set of factors that contributed to the projects success and offers a learning opportunity for other organisations. The study indicates that the commitment of senior management is crucial to the projects success as is a project champion and the recognition of the need for an appropriate change management strategy to transform the organisational culture to a service-oriented focus. Maintaining close and forthright relationships with multiple vendors facilitates technology transfer to in-house staff while a benefits realisation plan is a valuable tool for tracking and communicating tangible and intangible project benefits to the project stakeholders. An effective project governance and execution process further contributes to the implementation success.

A decision support tool to define scope in IT service management process assessment and improvement

Improvements in managing IT service management (ITSM) processes are continuously sought by IT organisations. However, resources are limited and the choice of processes for improvement is a critical decision point for the managers. In this paper, we report a process selection decision model developed with task-technology fit theory as the lens as the basis for our Design Science Research approach. The model is instantiated with an outcome of a decision support tool. The process selection decision model uses service perception factors from the Service Quality (SERV-QUAL) model and business drivers from the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives to ensure that the ITSM processes are prioritised based on the key business drivers that have the highest impact on the business. Responses to a service perception survey provided by the business stakeholders combined with workshops guided the tool development as did considering the BSC perspectives with business drivers rather than ITSM processes being ranked directly by stakeholder participants. Usefulness of the tool is then demonstrated in a case organisation. The main contribution of the study is to provide evidence-based decision support for IT service providers to select the most relevant service processes to improve. Future research includes longitudinal evaluation of the tools output advice and the tools use in other organisations.

Software-Mediated Process Assessment in IT Service Management

Continual service improvement is a crucial aspect of IT service management as it enables organisations to enhance the relevance and responsiveness of their IT services providing outcomes in productivity and competitiveness. This paper describes a research project that is aimed at developing an international standards-based software-mediated process assessment tool to facilitate continual service improvement in IT service management. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of the tool by implementing it in two large Australian public sector organisations and validating the results against traditional process assessment methods. The significance of the research is that the tool will enable organisations to self-assess and improve their current IT service processes as well as transitioning international standards to industry.

A Tool for IT Service Management Process Assessment for Process Improvement

Process assessments can improve IT service management (ITSM) processes but the assessment method is not always transparent. This paper outlines a project to develop a software-mediated process assessment tool to enable transparent and objective ITSM process assessment. Using the international standards for ITSM and process assessment, the tool is being developed following the goal-question-metric (GQM) approach in collaboration with academics, standards committee members and ITSM practitioners.

Software-mediated Process Assessment

Software is increasingly been used to provide system functionality that is related to safety. From systems point-of-view safety is often considered to be a probabilistic property and development process has less significance. For software this approach is not necessarily valid. This article studies the applicable process scope in relation to safety requirements for software. Based on a new concept of process quality characteristics, process quality attributes for safety are tentatively defined. The aim of the presented process quality characteristic for safety is that risks related to achievement of safety goals in software development can be evaluated with process assessment. Key results would be increased trust in safety of software-intensive systems and established safety culture in development organizations.

Building a software tool for transparent and efficient process assessments in IT service management

Process improvements provide a structured approach for organisations to improve the way they operate. A number of process improvement methodologies such as ISO9000, TQM, Six Sigma, Lean, and Agile have been proposed over the last few decades and subsequently software tools have been developed to apply these methodologies. However determination of process ca-pability to measure improvement is predominantly conducted by expert process assessors and consultants with proprietary frameworks. We propose the use of the international standard for process assessment ISO/IEC 15504 for a transparent measurement of process capability. We also demonstrate development of a software tool based on the standard that can facilitate organisations to assess their processes efficiently. In this paper, we explain the development, implementation and preliminary evaluation of a software-mediated process assessment approach in the area of IT Service Management at a large public-sector IT organisation in Queensland, Australia. This paper’s contribution is the integration of the design science research methodology with the task-technology fit theory for the development of the software tool as a research artefact. For practitioners the project demonstrates transparent and efficient assessment of IT service processes to facilitate continual improvement.