ITIL Maturity Model?

[Mathilda]

Happy new year to everybody,

I'm wondering how some organizations are able to propose something like maturity levels for ITIL. I am a SPICE assessor and also know CMM(I) but haven't found anything alike those process models within the standard or the ITIL toolkit. Counting Y/N or some such doesn't seem equal to a real assessment.
So I am wondering how to get a feeling in how good an assessed organization is with ITIL. I know that one really got a level three, but what does that mean?
Is there any additional information in the internet or elsewhere (hopefully not too expensive as ITIL toolkit + BS standards were already too much money spent).

Any help is highly welcome,

have nice time,
Mathilda

[Guest]

Hi,
indeed until lately, there was no real ITIL maturity level,which allowed ITIL implementations to be auditted against. Now, itSMF is pushing a new standard, BS15000, which should help to solve just that.

ITIL in itself is a group of best practices which give an IT organisation how to proceed in their search for service quality improvement. I would say the only "indicators" of the maturity level in ITIL , will be the internal audits for customer/user satisfaction and other management reports which give indications of a continious service quality improvement.

Ed

[leebc]

You can find the ITIL Process Maturity Framework (PMF) in the ITIL Green Book i.e. "IT Infrastructure Library – Planning to Implement Service Management". Yoy will find it in APPENDIX J THE PROCESS MATURITY FRAMEWORK (PMF).

The book provides good view on the various levels and criteria categorised as:
•vision and strategy - the overall direction as it relates to the role and position of IT within the business
•steering - the objectives and goals of IT in relation to realising the strategy
•processes - the procedures needed to achieve the goals and objectives
•people - the skills and abilities needed to perform the processes
•technology - the supporting infrastructure to enable the processes to be carried out
•culture - the behaviour and attitude required in relation to the role of IT within the business.

Hope this helps

Regards
Colin.

[Mathilda]

Thank you both for your answers. So, I should try to borrow those ITIL books, I guess, or buy them *sigh*.

Thanks nonetheless,
have a nice time,
Mathilda

[drambui]

I think that there is a bigger issue here than which CMM model to use. Gartner has one, IBM has another and of course the Carnegie people have their own.

What is at the heart of the question is how do you decide where your organization is relative to whichever model you choose. The answer to this question is quite hard to ascertain.

ITIL suggests that the way to determine this is to decide where you want to be on the model, analyze your current processes against this bar and determine the gap.

From there you can decide what action is needed.

If you are currently at Initial and want to get to Repeatable is a very different situation then if you want to get to optimized.


[Edited: Reason for edit - removal of direct link]

[Mathilda]

I agree, this is not an easy question.
Mmmh, where is our organisation? I'm trying to find that out at the moment. But - must admit - will concentrate on service and mostly ommitting security issues, they are not that important in our context, focus really lies on improving customer satisfaction and that means incident / problem management and support / service desk and so on.

(So just like with SPICE I'm picking processes).

Well where do we want to be? Difficult. Easiest answer: get better. But...

So, I'll finish the IS-Analysis and than we'll start to discus where to go from there...

Have a nice time and esp. weekend,
Mathilda

[leebc]

Looking at your organisations strategy/strategic objectives is a good starting point to identify where you "Want to be". Together with best practice you can then identify what your target or goals are or should/could be. The gap between Where you are (it Assessment) and where you Want To Be will provide you with a view of the initiatives that are required in order to get there (reach your goals). You then need to prioritise these initiatives and select those that will give you (IT) the best and most effective exposure and buy-in from the organisation. These could be full-blown projects or quick-wins requiring little effort. This is the "How we are going to get there"

In measuring maturity, you need to set goals and define metrics which will tell you whether you have or have not reached your desired level of maturity. Remember, the desired level of maturity is dependent YOUR organisation, i.e. capabilities, skills, resources etc. and not on best practice. This will tell you "if you have arrived" (at your desired destination).

Here endeth my sermon.....

Colin.

[Guest]

I try to use the Process Maturity Framework for my organisation. For that reason I read the explanation in the green book "ITIL Planning to implement Service Management". This documentation is in my opinion not detailed enough.

Does anyone have some sources that dealt with that topic e.g. from a scientific point of view or an example of an maturity analyse?

Thanks,
Marc

[javierarcal]

Hi Marc

From OGC site you can download a Self Assesment Questionnaire, a doc file, in this document you will find a brief explanation of PMF with a sort of questions.

This documents are focused to assest your organisation ITIL maturity level

Hope it helps
Javier
ITIL Consultant
Madrid-Spain

[keepitilfree]

The IT Service Capability Maturity Model (IT Service CMM®) is a maturity growth model aimed at providers of IT services, such as management of hardware and software, operations, and software maintenance.

The structure of the model is equal to that of the Software CMM, the contents of the IT Service CMM, however, are key process areas needed for mature IT service provision.

What is the IT Service CMM?

The objective of the IT Service CMM is twofold:-

1. To enable IT service providers to assess their capabilities with respect to the delivery of IT services.

2. To provide IT service providers with directions and steps for further improvement of their service capability.

The IT Service CMM aims to fulfill these goals by measuring the capability of the IT service processes of organizations on a five level ordinal scale. Each level prescribes certain key processes that have to be in place before an organization resides on that level.


[Edited: Reason for edit - removal of external link]

[Sal]

Which maturity model? Where are we at?

I think the second question is much more important. Currently I have engage Microsoft to do what they call a MOF Assesment of our applications. Basically MOF(Microsoft Operations Framework) is ITIL with a Microsoft spin. They use a different Maturity Model ISO 15504. My company has adopted ITIL and CMM however both MOF and ISO 15504 easily can be mapped back to ITIL and the CMM. What I like about this engagement is the clarity around how maturity is assessed and how gaps are identified. What is really important is not whether you are a 2 or 3 or 4 but getting a clear baseline of what you do and what you don't. Then make sure the things you work on are business need driven.