Point Guard Solutions Blog

GQM: What is this Metrics for?

JC — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:05:53 +0000

I found an article that I like today, its called 5 steps to transparent metrics, written by Hank Marquis.

The presentation of the article is very plain, but the subject is very relevant: what are you using your KPIs and Metrics for?

All metrics should have an object and a purpose for improvement. Otherwise, what is the point of spending time and money on collecting the metrics?

Metrics are not free, there is often a significant cost associated to collecting, collating, calculating, and translating data for every set of KPI. So if you’re not using a KPI to make an object or a process better, faster, and cheaper - don’t bother collecting it at all as its just creating busy work and wasting money.

To ensure that Metrics are valuable, your KPIs should have at least this 5 parts

Object: What are we analyzing?
Purpose: What is the purpose for the metrics?
Focus: Which attribute of the object are we analyzing?
Stakeholder/Viewpoint: Whose perspective are we reflecting?
Context Factors: What is the context?

Metrics should have a purpose

Wikipedia on Goal Question Metric Method.

Process Optimization vs. Process Automation

JC — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:45:23 +0000

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” Bill Gates

Someone asked me today: “…isn’t automation optimization?”. The answer is: NO.

Automation is accomplished by tooling. Optimization is accomplished by humans.

Only a human can look at a set of tasks and put them in a logical and sequential order to accomplish an objective i.e. only a human can say it takes these sequential 20 steps, 8 hours, and 4 people to build a wagon. Only a person can build a process.

Continuing, only humans can do process optimization i.e. looking at the process end-to-end and determine if we reorder step 3 and 4, combine step 6 and 9, and run steps 11 and 12 in parallel, we can eliminate unnecessary effort - then it will only take us 16 steps, 4 hours, and 3 people to do build the wagon. That’s called improvement, reduction and savings.

If a process cannot be done right manually then is reasonable to assume that the process cannot simply be improved by automation. So the answer remains a no, automation does not mean optimization.

Automation is tooling: software, robots, etc. Its objective is to ensure that the steps of process dictated by humans are automatically executed the same way every time and hopefully much faster. If automation is done correctly there is a digital trail of when a task starts and ends. This will then provide the owner of the process a trend of information that can he or she can use to assess and implement even more optimization.

When somebody tells you that the tool is not working start the troubleshooting with this question first: what is this tool being programmed to do? There is a very high probability that the problem is not the tooling but in fact it is the process the tool is automating.

One thing that people often forget is that - processes change. And they change often. If your process changes every 90 days then your automation tooling must be capable of supporting this high rate of change. In this case automation is almost a requirement.

I think it is fair to say that your tooling must be as agile as your processes are. A failure of either is a failure of both. But knowing the difference is the key to success.

IT Service Management Transparency - where to start?

JC — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:44:35 +0000

ITILv3 Customer Interactions

ITIL v3 is all about providing IT Service Value.
However, the business customers do not receive and therefore cannot measure the value of IT services until the service is live in production.

Of the 5 Lifecycle Phases, Service Operations is the one chartered to deliver and manage the IT service to the customer.

How transparent are your Service Operations processes? How well can they be measured and therefore proven to deliver value to the business customers?

Up Next - What are the symptoms of Operations maturity and transparency? What are the metrics?

ITIL v3 Basics: Strategy, Design, Transition, Operations, and Improvement

JC — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:40:28 +0000

There are 5 ITIL Lifecycle Phases as prescribed in ITIL v3: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operations, and Continual Service Improvement.These lifecycles define what IT has to do to deliver value to the business and/or customers. ITIL v3 advises you to change your IT organizational functions and processes in this manner to deliver IT services and value to your customers. If your company makes the decision to launch an ITIL initiative, you have decided to introduce the necessary change to your current organizational structure and processes to align with ITIL advised structure and processes. Our intent is to help you understand what that really means!!

What is the ITIL v3 structure? ITILv3 defines 5 IT Lifecycle Phases with the following Goals:

Service Strategy: build a cost effective IT strategy. Find the right balance between performance and cost. Defines what to build and why it is needed. Its output is a business approved, business funded IT strategy.
Service Design: design IT services in alignment with Service Strategy. Defines how IT services will be built. Its output is a Service Design Package.
Service Transition: build and deploy IT services as specified by Service Design. Build and deploy services with minimal impact to the Production environment. Its output is a Live Application/Service that functions as expected.
Service Operations: Deliver and manage services at the agreed levels to business users/customers. Its expected output is managed services with happy customers.
Continual Service Improvement: Continual improvement of IT processes and metrics. Prioritize and initiate improvement projects. Its expected output is better metrics of all IT processes - cheaper, faster, better IT services.

Point Guard ITILv3 Presentation

The subprocesses and functions within each of the ITILv3 Lifecycles are:

Service Strategy:
1. Strategy Generation
2. Demand Management
3. Service Portfolio Management
4. Financial Management
Service Design:
1. Supplier Management
2. Service Catalog Management
3. Information Security Management
4. Capacity Management
5. Availability Management
6. Service Level Management
Service Transition
1. Knowledge Management
2. Evaluation
3. Service Validation & Testing
4. Transition Planning & Support
5. Release Deployment Management
6. Service Asset and Configuration Management
7. Change Management
Service Operations
1. IT Operations Management (Function not process)
2. Application Management (Function)
3. Technical Management (Function)
4. Request Fulfillment
5. Event Management
6. Access Management
7. Problem Management
8. Incident Management
9. Service Desk (Function)
Continual Service Improvement
1. Service Measurement
2. Service Reporting
3. 7 Step Improvement Process

What’s the difference between a service, a function, and a process? In ITIL v3:

a Service is a unit of measure of value to the customers (fast internet access);
a Function is a team or group of people and the tools they use to carry out one or more processes or activities (network provisioning team);
a Process is a set of structured activities that has an objective (upon request, provision fast internet access to a customer).

Why so picky with the language? Because one of the biggest benefits of adopting ITIL is that everyone in your organization will use the same terms for the same intent. It significantly reduces costly misunderstandings.

ITIL is all about IT delivering value to the customer. When I want fast internet access I don’t want to choose from 100 itemized components (routers, switches, etc) with 100 pricing options. I want one bill: $39.99 for a service level agreement that guarantees me 24 hours of 1GB of Internet throughput per day. Then if things are not working as agreed I can call, and complain, and get my bill reduced because my service wasn’t delivered as agreed. My internet now is as fast as my fingers. That’s the value for me as a customer. I can work more efficiently when I pay for fast internet connection without having to worry about how my Internet service provider built it or delivered it to me.

Before ITIL I would get an itemized bill with descriptions that I don’t understand for something that may not meet my needs because there were no standard terms or a common service catalog with service descriptions, service levels, service support, and pricing for me to choose from. When customers and providers lack a common understanding of expectations it is likely that no one is happy.

What does this have to do with Metrics? There’s an old saying: you can’t measure what you can’t define. How well defined are your IT processes?