How to Ensure a Successful ITIL Implementation - Part II

Holub said it is vital to select a balanced set of metrics to gauge the health of processes from both an efficiency and effectiveness perspective.

“If either efficiency (cost) or effectiveness (quality) is overemphasized, you may inadvertently drive the wrong behavior,” he said.

Potter, on the other hand, highlighted the value of dashboards. While more in-depth status reports should be provided bi-monthly or monthly, dashboards offer a quick indicator of project component progress. Simple red, yellow and green are usually sufficient.

“There should be two measures: one is current status and other is the trend,” he said. “This helps management better determine where attention is most needed.”

In addition, he called for post-implementation performance reviews. Such reviews answer the questions: “Did we accomplish what we set out to do?”, “Was it a smooth and quality implementation and if not, what parts of the implementation process need changing?”, and “Is this new process providing the expected benefit and if not, what changes need to be made?”

Remember TCO

While ongoing metrics are important, it may be even more key to long-term ITIL success to put in place mechanisms to measure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Gartner's measurements, after all, show that moving from no adoption of ITIL to full adoption can reduce an organization's TCO by as much as 48%.