The first step in charting a course to effective and efficient management of IT services is getting a baseline of your current resources and capabilities. This assessment phase includes evaluating not only your processes, but the people in the organization and their skills, the technologies that enables effective management and the external partners you rely on to provide goods, services and support.

In conducting many of these assessments, the characteristics of the IT staff are usually remarkably similar across enterprises—for the most part: IT staff have a very solid work ethic and staff members want to “do the right thing” for the company. These are great qualities to start with; folks who work hard and want to do a good job coupled with the right skills are truly an asset to any IT organization. These cross-enterprise similarities continue with most  IT staff not exactly clear on:

• Who their “customer” is.
• What business services they support.
• What service levels, if any, they are expected to meet.
• How they are being measured.
• How to prioritize the myriad of tasks they are asked to perform on a daily basis.
• How they should be interacting with other members of the organization with respect to incidents, problems and changes.

Unfortunately, the latter set of traits has a tendency to outweigh the value of the hard work and fortitude when it comes to delivering effective and efficient services.

There are many jewels of IT service management (ITSM) guidance in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), but of the most valuable is the inherent accountability model that is referenced throughout the framework. Utilizing this accountability model can make all the difference in changing “hard work” efforts to “smart work” efforts.

Having clearly defined accountability and responsibility allows for individuals to understand what service they provide; what their role is in the overall management of a given service, process, or function; and provides a mechanism for aligning their daily activities with business priorities. Within the ITIL framework the identification of “roles” with processes, the RACI matrix and contracts associated with Service Level Management help to lay the groundwork for unambiguous, goal-based, service-oriented accountability.

Roles

Many roles have been defined in ITIL v3 outlining responsibilities required for an effective ITSM program. Two important roles are process owners and service owners. These people have the overall accountability for the delivery of an IT services and the processes used to manage services. The identification of a single individual to define, coordinate and mind the store of each service and each process required to manage these services means there is ownership of oversight and, hopefully, assurance of success.

Of course, it is also important that this person be empowered and have the supporting resources to be successful. But the definition of these and other supporting roles brings clarity to the overall accountability for these critical elements. Once assigned the “ownership” role, these individuals can then put a structure around the management of the service and the process for which they are accountable using a RACI matrix.

RACI

The RACI matrix is a simple, yet important tool to clearly document the roles and responsibilities of a team of people responsible for delivering a service or a process. The RACI matrix spells out the activities or tasks associated with a specific service or process, the roles that are associated with these activities and the types of responsibilities a role has for a particular activity.

The responsibility types include:

• Responsible – a doer or worker bee that performs the activity.
• Accountable – only one person can be accountable. The “buck stops here”.
• Consulted – these are people with related expertise or knowledge who should weigh-in on the activity.
• Informed – individuals who must be kept abreast of the progress of the activity.

The matrix has each of the activities of a process listed horizontally, the roles listed vertically. The columns adjacent to the activities specify R-A-C-I depending on the responsibility that role has for the corresponding activity. The RACI matrix is an important mechanism for documenting a process and contributes greatly to efficiency and effectiveness of the process by eliminating ambiguity of roles and responsibilities.

The first step in charting a course to effective and efficient management of IT services is getting a baseline of your current resources and capabilities. This assessment phase includes evaluating not only your processes, but the people in the organization and their skills, the technologies that enables effective management and the external partners you rely on to provide goods, services and support.

In conducting many of these assessments, the characteristics of the IT staff are usually remarkably similar across enterprises—for the most part: IT staff have a very solid work ethic and staff members want to “do the right thing” for the company. These are great qualities to start with; folks who work hard and want to do a good job coupled with the right skills are truly an asset to any IT organization. These cross-enterprise similarities continue with most  IT staff not exactly clear on:

• Who their “customer” is.
• What business services they support.
• What service levels, if any, they are expected to meet.
• How they are being measured.
• How to prioritize the myriad of tasks they are asked to perform on a daily basis.
• How they should be interacting with other members of the organization with respect to incidents, problems and changes.

Unfortunately, the latter set of traits has a tendency to outweigh the value of the hard work and fortitude when it comes to delivering effective and efficient services.

There are many jewels of IT service management (ITSM) guidance in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), but of the most valuable is the inherent accountability model that is referenced throughout the framework. Utilizing this accountability model can make all the difference in changing “hard work” efforts to “smart work” efforts.

Having clearly defined accountability and responsibility allows for individuals to understand what service they provide; what their role is in the overall management of a given service, process, or function; and provides a mechanism for aligning their daily activities with business priorities. Within the ITIL framework the identification of “roles” with processes, the RACI matrix and contracts associated with Service Level Management help to lay the groundwork for unambiguous, goal-based, service-oriented accountability.

Roles

Many roles have been defined in ITIL v3 outlining responsibilities required for an effective ITSM program. Two important roles are process owners and service owners. These people have the overall accountability for the delivery of an IT services and the processes used to manage services. The identification of a single individual to define, coordinate and mind the store of each service and each process required to manage these services means there is ownership of oversight and, hopefully, assurance of success.

Of course, it is also important that this person be empowered and have the supporting resources to be successful. But the definition of these and other supporting roles brings clarity to the overall accountability for these critical elements. Once assigned the “ownership” role, these individuals can then put a structure around the management of the service and the process for which they are accountable using a RACI matrix.

RACI

The RACI matrix is a simple, yet important tool to clearly document the roles and responsibilities of a team of people responsible for delivering a service or a process. The RACI matrix spells out the activities or tasks associated with a specific service or process, the roles that are associated with these activities and the types of responsibilities a role has for a particular activity.

The responsibility types include:

• Responsible – a doer or worker bee that performs the activity.
• Accountable – only one person can be accountable. The “buck stops here”.
• Consulted – these are people with related expertise or knowledge who should weigh-in on the activity.
• Informed – individuals who must be kept abreast of the progress of the activity.

The matrix has each of the activities of a process listed horizontally, the roles listed vertically. The columns adjacent to the activities specify R-A-C-I depending on the responsibility that role has for the corresponding activity. The RACI matrix is an important mechanism for documenting a process and contributes greatly to efficiency and effectiveness of the process by eliminating ambiguity of roles and responsibilities.

The first step in charting a course to effective and efficient management of IT services is getting a baseline of your current resources and capabilities. This assessment phase includes evaluating not only your processes, but the people in the organization and their skills, the technologies that enables effective management and the external partners you rely on to provide goods, services and support.

In conducting many of these assessments, the characteristics of the IT staff are usually remarkably similar across enterprises—for the most part: IT staff have a very solid work ethic and staff members want to “do the right thing” for the company. These are great qualities to start with; folks who work hard and want to do a good job coupled with the right skills are truly an asset to any IT organization. These cross-enterprise similarities continue with most  IT staff not exactly clear on:

• Who their “customer” is.
• What business services they support.
• What service levels, if any, they are expected to meet.
• How they are being measured.
• How to prioritize the myriad of tasks they are asked to perform on a daily basis.
• How they should be interacting with other members of the organization with respect to incidents, problems and changes.

Unfortunately, the latter set of traits has a tendency to outweigh the value of the hard work and fortitude when it comes to delivering effective and efficient services.

There are many jewels of IT service management (ITSM) guidance in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), but of the most valuable is the inherent accountability model that is referenced throughout the framework. Utilizing this accountability model can make all the difference in changing “hard work” efforts to “smart work” efforts.

Having clearly defined accountability and responsibility allows for individuals to understand what service they provide; what their role is in the overall management of a given service, process, or function; and provides a mechanism for aligning their daily activities with business priorities. Within the ITIL framework the identification of “roles” with processes, the RACI matrix and contracts associated with Service Level Management help to lay the groundwork for unambiguous, goal-based, service-oriented accountability.

Roles

Many roles have been defined in ITIL v3 outlining responsibilities required for an effective ITSM program. Two important roles are process owners and service owners. These people have the overall accountability for the delivery of an IT services and the processes used to manage services. The identification of a single individual to define, coordinate and mind the store of each service and each process required to manage these services means there is ownership of oversight and, hopefully, assurance of success.

Of course, it is also important that this person be empowered and have the supporting resources to be successful. But the definition of these and other supporting roles brings clarity to the overall accountability for these critical elements. Once assigned the “ownership” role, these individuals can then put a structure around the management of the service and the process for which they are accountable using a RACI matrix.

RACI

The RACI matrix is a simple, yet important tool to clearly document the roles and responsibilities of a team of people responsible for delivering a service or a process. The RACI matrix spells out the activities or tasks associated with a specific service or process, the roles that are associated with these activities and the types of responsibilities a role has for a particular activity.

The responsibility types include:

• Responsible – a doer or worker bee that performs the activity.
• Accountable – only one person can be accountable. The “buck stops here”.
• Consulted – these are people with related expertise or knowledge who should weigh-in on the activity.
• Informed – individuals who must be kept abreast of the progress of the activity.

The matrix has each of the activities of a process listed horizontally, the roles listed vertically. The columns adjacent to the activities specify R-A-C-I depending on the responsibility that role has for the corresponding activity. The RACI matrix is an important mechanism for documenting a process and contributes greatly to efficiency and effectiveness of the process by eliminating ambiguity of roles and responsibilities.

Agreements and Contracts

One of the most logical and elegant mechanisms for accountability offered through ITIL are the agreements and contracts associated with Service Level Management: the Service Level Agreement (SLA), Operational Level Agreement (OLA) and the Underpinning Contract (UC). Within this triad of pacts, the Service Level Agreement or SLA is the contract made between IT and the business. In order to meet any commitments specified in this agreement, there must be some assurances that the resources and capabilities required within the organization and outside of organization to fulfill service commitments are in place.

To align these resources and capabilities there is an agreement put in place with internal organization that represents their commitment to deliver on these promises via the OLA. The OLA is a commitment that must be communicated and internalized by those functional units involved in the delivery and ongoing operation of the services and can also be translated to each individual’s personal performance metrics.

The internal accountability hierarchy is Customer » IT Organization » Functional Unit » Individual. This makes it apparent to everyone how they are being measured and what they are being measured on. External organizations also play a large role in assuring that SLAs can be met. Similarly, with external organizations, the UC should align to the SLA.

Let’s look at a 24x7 email service that has an SLA specifying a two hour response time on priority one issues and 99.99% availability as a point of illustration of how OLAs and UCs work. It’s practical to assume that this email service requires a messaging application, a server farm, some number of network devices providing connectivity, Internet access for Internet-based email and storage for mailboxes/messages.

In this scenario, there would be an OLA between the Service Level Management process owner and the team responsible for the messaging application, the team responsible for the management of the email servers, the team responsible for networking and the team responsible for storage. Each of these groups would sign up and therefore prepare appropriately from a technology and staffing perspective to meet this two hour response time and 99.99% availability requirement.

External organizations involved might include an ISP for Internet service, the vendor for the messaging application and the hardware vendors for networking, servers and storage. The contracts in place for these vendors must have service levels that are rigorous enough to meet the needs of the SLA between IT and the business customer.

The accountability model that is outlined in ITIL via “roles”, the RACI matrix and the contract structure associated with SLM can bring clarity and order to what today is a pain point in many IT organizations. Utilizing this guidance as a framework for clearly defined roles and responsibilities enables better communication and prioritization resulting in dramatic improvements in effective and efficient service management.

Valerie Arraj is principal and managing partner for Compliance Process Partners, an IT compliance focused consulting and training company that uses service management and control objectives to help organizations lay the groundwork for compliance to regulatory and governance guidelines.