Process

The IT Infrastructure Library, commonly known by its acronym ITIL, is a globally recognized framework of IT Service Management best practices that has been in existence for over 40 years.  Some of the practices included in the ITIL framework are:

• Service Configuration Management
• Change Enablement
• IT Asset Management
• Problem Management
• Infrastructure and Platform Management

In addition to being ITIL certified, I have implemented ITIL principals and best practices for several organizations. Some examples of these implementations include:

• At IMA Financial Group, I sponsored and managed a project to acquire and implement an ITIL management suite called Freshservice by Freshworks.  This integrated management suite included applications to support ITIL practices, such as Help Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Configuration Management, Change Management and release management. Along with the implementation of Freshservice, the Technical Operations team was able to streamline and automate its processes thus improving productivity, system up time and customer satisfaction.
• At International Catastrophe Managers (ICAT), I utilized ITIL best practices to implement Change Management and Release Management programs.  These programs decreased system defects in releases by 33% and improved system uptime by 42%.

Business processes should be neither fixed nor static but constantly assessed, updated and improved based on learnings or business requirements. Creating an environment of continuous improvement for team members is key to successful improvement. Rather than complaining about a broken or suboptimal process, team members are encouraged to look for and propose improvements. This provides stakeholder buy-in and ownership. The end result is higher productivity and reduced error rates.

While the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is often used in reference to software development, it is very applicable to process improvement as well.  There are 5 levels to the CMM:

1.  Initial: the starting point for use of a new or undocumented repeat process.
2. Repeatable: the process is at least documented sufficiently such that repeating the same steps may be attempted.
3. Defined: the process is defined/confirmed as a standard business process
4. Capable: the process is quantitatively managed in accordance with agreed-upon metrics.
5. Efficient: process management includes deliberate process optimization and improvement.

In my experience, I find many business and IT processes to be in either the Initial or Repeatable states. The key to Continuous Process Improvement is to focus on the Defined stage. This is where IT Governance plays a key role.  By establishing a governance entity or team, comprised of stakeholders for a given process, the governance body can develop not only official definitions for a process but also establish metrics, measurements and goals for a process, making it a quantitatively managed process. This will ensure key processes are efficient and optimized. Additionally, a well-defined and standardize process is on that is easy to automate, thus further increasing productivity.

As mentioned above, the starting point for automation is a standardized process. Once standards are established, manual tasks can be automated. The tool used for the automation is dependent on any related systems and business requirements. With the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence, automation is experiencing an unprecedented ascension. However, the need for a standardized process, or approach, is still crucial for a successful implementation.