Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 22 | Page 38

FEATURE: IT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Having an effective IT Service Management System (ITSM) enables organisations to deliver and control the services they offer to customers. Intelligent CIO spoke to Mark Ackerman, Regional Director, MESAT and EE, ServiceNow, to discuss the policies that should be implemented. Project portfolio management • Establish project portfolio polices that prioritise project goals and success metrics at the outset as well as throughout the full project lifecycle • Take a holistic approach to defining, prioritising and evaluating strategic initiatives that integrates key business metrics such as cost, ROI, profitability, customer satisfaction, business availability, risk and compliance Demand response • Establish pre-defined evaluation criteria for assessing all requests • Automatically route qualified and approved demand requests as defects, enhancements, or projects Resource management What ITSM practices do you think organisations should adopt? Based on our real-world experience helping our customers align IT services and business priorities here is what we would recommend: Service portfolio management • Establish service portfolio policies that govern the management of the full lifecycle of each service, from inception to retirement • Ensure that the scope of each service is clearly defined and documented in the service catalogue and, where possible, provide full disclosure by also describing what is ‘out of scope’ for the service • Ensure that each service offering has an associated pricing model, unit price and cost • Ensure resource planning accounts for all relevant factors affecting resource availability, such as vacations, holidays, shift premiums, maintenance and support Project management • Baseline current performance so you can track progress over time • Establish an implementation roadmap • When implementing an agile methodology: • Target projects no longer than 12 weeks • Provide frequent incremental reports to continually demonstrate progress and value • Do not delay rollout to achieve perfection • Implement a single system of record that includes agile activity tracking • Resist product customisations • Do not underestimate the need for Elevating the service experience 38 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com