Whether or not an organization has formally adopted a framework such as ITIL, IT service management (ITSM) practices are doomed if you fail to recognize the need for continual improvement.
Capability assessments can be used to determine how well your practices are established and improving,
and they serve as a diagnostic tool for continual improvement.
A capability assessment typically involves a straightforward
set of activities.
- Plan and prepare – define the scope, objectives, and participants of the assessment. Define and organize the supporting elements of the assessment model.
- Conduct the assessment – collect input through interviews, workshops, observations, or surveys and validate evidence against the defined criteria.
- Analyze, interpret, and report out the results – aggregate the findings to identify the current capability level. Identify gaps, improvement opportunities, and options. Formulate prioritized recommendations for improvement. Compile a report and present the findings and recommendations along with expected benefits, assumptions and constraints.
- Develop and execute an improvement action plan or roadmap – translate the prioritized results into a clear, measurable plan for capability growth. Carry out improvements or experiments and study the results. Act on what you’ve learned.
Planning and Preparation
A starting point for many organizations is to assess the ITSM practices that are causing the greatest pain or business impact. For example, it is common to start with practices such as incident management or change enablement, because these practices are directly tied to service stability and user experience. And they typically are areas where the complaints are loudest. This reactive approach makes sense when there is a need to stabilize performance, deliver quick wins, and build a solid foundation for future improvement efforts.
Focusing on a single practice, however, has its downsides.
One downside is that improvements can lead to local optimization – where
improvements that benefit one practice may not benefit, and can even hinder, the
overall system. Another downside is that a single practice can never progress
beyond capability level 2 on its own. This is because capability level 3
requires defining and implementing dependencies and integration with supporting
practices and the overall service value system.
Value Stream Aligned Assessments
- Development of a new service
- Restoration of a live service
Many practices contribute resources to these value streams. Some of these practices
may be performing well. Others may need incremental improvement. One represents
a constraint. Making improvements at the constraint will enable the greatest
end-to-end improvement in the value stream. Consider that practice the primary
focus of your assessment, and the others supporting practices.
Strategic Focus Aligned Assessments
- Business alignment and integration/effectiveness
- Organizational resilience
- Organizational agility
- Operational excellence/efficiency/efficient use of IT resources
Going back to where organizations typically start… focusing
on the incident management or change enablement practices (along with practices
such as problem management and service validation and testing) would absolutely
be a great starting point if the organization’s strategic focus is
organizational resilience. If the focus is organizational agility, however,
practices such as strategy management, business analysis, software development
and management, release management, deployment management, and continual
improvement would demand greater attention.
In 2021, AXELOS (now a part of PeopleCert) introduced the ITIL
Maturity Model. The AXELOS publication An
Overview of the ITIL Maturity Model provides an example mapping of
common strategic focus areas, objectives, and practices. This publication
acknowledges that while an organization might not have a clearly defined list
of its objectives, it usually can explain its current priorities in terms of
strategic focus. This then can be used as a starting point when scoping an
assessment.
Example:
The ITIL Maturity Model also
recognizes the need to identify primary and supporting practices during
assessment scoping. As an example, if the scope of assessment is identified
based on the organization’s strategic objectives, the practices directly contributing
to the achievement of those objectives should be classified as primary for the
assessment. Supporting practices are needed for the primary practices to
effectively achieve their objectives and to function at higher capability
levels.
A practice can be identified as primary or supporting for different scopes of assessment.
In the ITIL Maturity Model, for a primary practice within the scope of an assessment to achieve capability level 3, all supporting
practices within the scope of that assessment must achieve capability level 1. This again recognizes that it is not really possible to focus only on a single
practice when scoping and performing assessments.
Gaining clarity on the organization’s strategic areas of focus and objectives, and taking care to define a manageable scope for assessments is essential as it:
- Ensures alignment with organizational priorities
- Influences (or is dictated by) the availability of resources
- Highlights the importance or relevance of specific practices
- Encourages collaboration across practices
- Helps to minimize change fatigue
Assessment Participants
A practice capability assessment typically involves a
cross-section of stakeholders who represent different perspectives on how the
practice performs and delivers value. Key participants include:
Practice owners and managers who provide insight into the design, governance, and performance aspects of the practice
Practitioners and support staff who describe how work is actually performed and where challenges exist
Practice customers who provide feedback on practice deliverables (outputs) and share how the practice impacts outcomes and satisfaction
Facilitators or assessors who guide the assessment process, ensuring alignment with the chosen assessment model and encouraging consistency in scoring
Together, these stakeholders provide a balanced view that
blends strategic intent, operational reality, and employee and customer
experience.
A well-scoped assessment will allow your organization to
build out an actionable improvement plan or roadmap that is grounded in reality
but guided by vision. A clear, intentional scope transforms assessments from a
checklist into a course of action that helps your organization focus its energy
where it matters most, and lays the groundwork for measurable, sustainable
improvement.
Other relevant blogs include:
ITIL Maturity and Practice Capability Assessments
Assessing Practice Capability – Part 2 – Conducting
Assessments
- Certified
Process Design Engineer (CPDE)
- Value
Stream Mapping Fundamentals (VSMF)
- ITIL 4
Foundation (a prerequisite for all advanced ITIL 4 courses)
Our advisory services also include Process to Practice Workshops
in which we help your team to successfully and rapidly evaluate and improve
your selected service management practices.
In the ITIL 4 Qualification Scheme, a Practice Manager
designation is available for professionals that want to prove and validate
their skills in specific practice areas. Each of the ITIL 4 Managing
Professional and Strategic Leader courses also introduce a set of practices
that are relevant to the focus of the course.
Click
here to learn more about the ITIL 4 Qualification Scheme.
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