Metrics for Service Management (Spanish Edition) - Softcover

Brooks, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9087536488 ISBN 13: 9789087536480

Publisher: Van Haren Publishing, 2012

Synopsis

This title is the sister book to the global best-seller Metrics for IT Service Management. Taking the basics steps described there, this new title describes the context within the ITIL 2011 Lifecycle approach. More than that it looks at the overall goal of metrics which is to achieve Value. The overall delivery of Business Value is driven by Corporate Strategy and Governance, from which Requirements are developed and Risks identified. These Requirements drive the design of Services, Processes and Metrics. Metrics are designed and metrics enable design as well as governing the delivery of value through the whole lifecycle. The book shows the reader how do achieve this Value objective by extending the ITIL Service Lifecycle approach to meet business requirements.

About this title

From the Author

This book concentrates on practical advice - not just on using metrics, but, more importantly, how to design metrics - for services (as part of the SDP - Service Design Package), processes and activities.This blog entry on the van Haren site gives more background:"Why do I so seldom hear 'design' and 'metric' in the same sentence?February 7, 2013 - IT & IT Management, IT Service Management - Tagged: Balanced Scorecard, ITIL, Metrics - no commentsMetrics are a vital part of management. They are not the whole of management - one mistake people make is letting the 'tail wag the dog' when metrics drive what they do, rather than using metrics as a tool for making good decisions.
Because they are powerful, metrics, if used improperly, can also be dangerous. The ITIL book 'Continual Service Improvement' (CSI) describes a seven step process for improvement - one step in that process (step 4, Process the data) involved understanding what a metric actually means, in context, so, in the next step 'Present and use the information' it can be presented effectively and used to make sound decisions on what to improve and how. If metrics are misunderstood effort can be wasted in the wrong areas or, worse, the effort intended to make thing better can actually make them worse.
This is why deciding what metrics to measure is not a trivial matter. In fact metrics must be designed - and design takes account of all aspects of why something should be measured, what value it will bring the business and how it will be measured. So that when it comes time to evaluate the results, it is properly understood.
That is why the book Metrics for Service Management: Designing for ITIL specifically mentions design. The book does not simply present lots of metrics with the suggestion that they might work. What it does is, describe how to design metrics.
Metrics have to be designed for services - which requires an understanding of the service and what value it will deliver to the business and the user. The value is defined in the Service Strategy stage of a new service and the detail is documented in the Service Design Package (SDP). The SDP also includes the metrics along with an explanation of what they have been designed to measure and why.
Metrics are also designed to measure processes, both Service Management processes and business processes. The design of these metrics is integral to the design of processes. The whole point of defining things as processes is to enable them to be managed, and improved, effectively, properly designed metrics make the difference between a process delivering value to the business reliably and one that is ineffective and inefficient.
Metrics are important for understanding how well Service Management itself is performing and form the basis for the IT Balanced Scorecard. To design metrics properly it is necessary to understand, top-down, what value IT will deliver to the business, how Service Management will contribute to that and then how progress delivering the value can be measured and improved.
The process of designing metrics give value far beyond simply the metrics themselves. To do the design you have to understand the business, your customer, your users, the services you provide and all the value propositions that make up the business and its processes. This understanding enables you to be more effective in providing value and understanding what, exactly, the business requires in terms of services, processes and support.
Remember, to mention just one practical spin-off from designing metrics properly, that the utility of a service, as defined in ITIL, consists both of the Performance Supported (what the service does - the stuff that IT understands very well) and also the Constraints Removed (which IT tends not to understand at all. Designing metrics involves understanding exactly what the constraints are to the business that prevent it from succeeding in delivering value to its customers. Understanding this enables IT to then design services properly, not just to do impressive looking things, but to actually solve real business problems. Without the detailed work involved in designing metrics it is highly unlikely that IT will be able to understand these. So even the design process itself delivers business value!
Summarising this brief description of the importance of designing metrics, I'd say that you cannot have an effective Service Management capability unless you have an effective design capability to produce the metrics that both measure and define the value.
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About the Author

After working for Hewlett-Packard for 20 years, mostly in the UK, the author has been a self-employed consultant based in Cape Town for the past 13 years. More details, including all my publications are: · Service Management deployment
o    ITIL V3
o    ISO 20000
o    Business Analysis
o    Metric Implementation
o    Process Implementation and management
o    Process of Management
Training:
· ITIL V2 & V3 qualifications (Foundations + Intermediate)
· ISO20000
· Business Analysis Training (IIBA - BABOK)
Workshops:
· Metrics - itSMF Conference Gutenberg 2009 (25 people)
· Metrics - eBusiness Brazil - Sao Paulo 2012 (69 people)
Writing
· Books
o    Service Management Metrics (VHP - ITIL V2 2007 & ITIL V3 2012)
o    Collaborative Consulting (TSO - Published 2013)
o    Service Management & Business Analysis  (itSMF - Published 2013)
· White Papers & Reviews
o    Business Analysis & Service Management
o    Service Management & the SDP (Service Design Package)
o    Review of Management of Risk (M_o_R)
o    Review of Management of Value (MoV)
o    Review of Management of Portfolios (MoP)

Edition details

• Publisher: Van Haren Publishing
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 9087536488
• ISBN 13: 9789087536480
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: Spanish
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180