Conducting a Needs Assessment

In order for IT organizations to be successful, we must align ourselves with our business partners. Business and customer requirements must drive service and process continual improvement activities. As a service provider, we must ask ourselves if we really understand our customer’s needs and expectations. When was the last time we checked with our business to determime if we are delivering value? When was the last time you asked the business, “How are we doing”?

One of the gathering techniques we learn in the Certified Process Design Engineering (CPDE) course is how to conduct a needs assessment. Here are the steps for conducting a successful assessment:

2 to 4 weeks prior to the assessment:

Establish a high-level interview schedule
Identify interview participants
Develop a detailed interview schedule
Contact each participant to determine availability
Develop a list of interview questions/solicit feedback
Refine your list of interview questions

1 to 2 weeks prior to the assessment:

Send an email to each participant outlining:

The purpose of the interview
The agreed upon date and time of the interview
The list of interview questions

During the weeks of the assessment:

Verify participants availability
Conduct the interviews/gather data
Prepare requirements definition report
Publish report/solicit feedback
Revise report as needed
Publish final report
Develop an improvement plan

Needs assessments ask about customer expectations, use direct interviewing and include documentation reviews and analysis and physical reviews of the business process. Encourage participants to solicit the perspective of employees and co-workers. Conduct your assessment at least annually and align the assessment to the budget cycle.

Comments

Four Service Characteristics

Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.” Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...

What is the difference between Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner?

This article was originally published in 2015. With the Introduction of ITIL 4, some of the concepts have changed in ways that are described below. ITIL 4 has also introduced new roles, as explained in our blog ITIL 4 and the Evolving Role of Roles . Before we dive into the difference between these roles, let’s first look at a key update in ITIL 4 – the shift from processes to practices. ITIL 4 has evolved to focus on holistic practices vs. isolated processes. By definition, a practice is a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. For example, the purpose of the incident management practice is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. All organizations recognize the need to allocate resources to the management of incidents and mature their capabilities in that area. In ITIL 4, each practice includes resources based on the four ...

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group. As a service provider, we can’t stop there! We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer. Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include: Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods. Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you. You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you. ...

Search