Information Service Management Of ITIL

Ten Critical Success Factors for Implementation of ITIL

Discuss about the Information Service Management Of ITIL.

Information technology Infrastructure Library or ITIL is a process of Information Service management that aims at aligning Information Technology Services with the needs of the business. ITIL explains the processes, procedures and tasks that an organization can apply for establishing the integration with the organization’s strategy and maintaining different levels of competency. It further helps in establishing a baseline for organizations for planning, implementing and measuring certain tasks. Different organizations are implementing Information technology Infrastructure library in order to deliver better services and support to its customers (Ahmad and Shamsudin 2013). Implementation of ITIL requires certain criteria and preparation, which includes adoption of ITIL principal on a long-term basis. Furthermore, a clear service structure is needed to be developed before the implementation of ITIL. Apart from these, proper definition of interface and establishing a proper process control is necessary for successful implementation of ITIL in an organization. The report elaborates ten critical success factors of ITIL implementation. It further discusses the details of the organization that have successfully implemented ITIL and their critical success factor.

Critical success factor is a process or specifically a management term for the elements necessarily considered by an organization or a project to achieve its target or mission. The critical success factors defines the key areas that are needed to be performed properly in order to achieve the objective of Information Technology Infrastructure (Ahmad et al. 2013).  The ten critical success factor for successful implementation ITIL in organizations are listed below-

1)  Project Management- One of the significant critical success factor of ITIL implementation is proper project management. This is essential because success of any project largely depends on the proper execution of the project. Therefore, a dedicated ITIL project manager is needed to be appointed who will be responsible for achieving the project objective and should be given full authority to take project take project related decisions. However, the person who would be appointed as the project manager should possess strong project management skills.  The project manager appointed would directly report to the IT director of the organization and would have a complete authority to facilitate communication process with the top management (Kerzner 2013).

2) Business case: A reasonable business case is needed to be constructed and the financial impact of the ITIL implementation is needed to be identified. Moreover the risks associated with the system is to be identified in order to reduce the total cost of ownership by a considerable percentage.

JPMorgan Chase

3) Staged Approach: The project manager is responsible for project planning and dividing the whole project into different phases. A staged approach would define a steady project progress rather than risk interruption of business processes. This ensures a smooth project progress. The capacity management of the ITIL to be implemented can be considered as a primary phase of this project implementation. Furthermore, the staged approach can help in demonstrating the improving performance of the system and improving the existing system.  

4) Roles and responsibilities- Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of the different team member in execution of ITIL is another critical success factor of this project. This provides a wider benefit as everyone knows their specific duties they are needed to perform and the expected output. This is important for eliminating a tremendous amount of duplication in time, cost and money, as well as it minimizes the dropped handoffs. Therefore, defining and allocating a clear role and responsibility of every member is one of the significant critical success factors of ITIL implementation (Iden and Eikebrokk 2013).

5) Exception Handling: Effective exception handling is necessary. This is because it is not possible to cover all the eventualities in the planning and initiation stage. In is possible to have missed processes or workflows, which are infrequently used and therefore, exception handling is necessary to quickly address and minimize the impact of scope change in the business.

6) Performance Reviews: Performance review and or feedback are necessary and an important criterion for project success. The performance reviews unhide the loopholes present in the system and the improvement the project requires. This criterion ensures that all the team members have a common goal and understands the importance of ITIL project in the organization.

7) Consensus Building:  A consensus on reasons of implementing ITIL is necessary to gain broad agreement on the expected business. Consensus building mainly deals with improving the service, reducing the cost and improving the communication between IT and the present business. Therefore, consensus building is also considered as an important success criteria for implementation of ITIL.

8) Be patient: patience is a key to success and therefore, reasonable expectation of project progress must be set. The project should not be implemented in a tight schedule as it may result in adverse effects. This is particularly because implementation of ITIL is complex, comprehensive and work intensive and thus requires a larger amount of time. Therefore, the project it is to be understood that the implementation process would be taking a long time and patience is of the critical factor of project success.

Victorian State Revenue Office in Australia

9) Selective Change:  The processes that cannot be used in the project or which are broken are only changed. This is essential to identify and determine the processes that are working well. With the help of this data, the poorly functioning processes that need primary attention is prioritized. This is essential to ensure that the project is successfully completed and ITIL is implemented according to the plan.

10)  Training: last but certainly not the least criterion for successful implementation of the ITIL is imparting proper training to the members. Members are trained according to the process they contribute to. The training applies to the business as well as the IT staffs. Certain organization provides additional benefits to the employees who attend the training programs. Training is essential for everyone to become familiar with the work and the workflows of ITIL (Eikebrokk and Iden 2012).  

The above described are the ten critical success factors that would most probably affect the successful implementation of ITIL in an organization. These factors are needed to be considered while implementing ITIL.

Out of many organizations that have Implemented ITIL in past years, the two chosen organization for this topic is JPMorgan Chase and Victorian State revenue office in Australia.

The three critical success factor that have helped in successful implementation of Information Technology Implementation Library are listed below (Anthes 2013)-

 1) Proper project Planning:  The ITIL implementation of JPMorgan Chase was properly planned and the processes that were laid out in ITIL were properly aligned with the plans of improving the incident priority management at JPMorgan chase. The global vice president of the organization, Robert Barnes wanted to pull his teams together to respond to the three levels of incident severity and manage the customers’ queries. These specifications were incorporated in the project plan, which in turn helped in a successful adoption and implementation of a process driven ITIL.

2) Documenting the needs and proper change management- The objective of the ITIL implementation were clearly defined and the proper change management was employed on basis of the global customer base of the organization. The best processes were laid for the successful implementation of ITIL. These laid out processes ensured the reduction in number of tools in used in the project. This was therefore one of the major success criteria of successful implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan chase.

3) Training programs: A proper training program was imparted to the user before the launching of the system. This reduced the human error for operating the ITIL and therefore it considerably helped in successful implementation of the project. Training was imparted according to the role of each member and it defined the responsibility of every member towards the project.

The above described critical success factor have majorly contributed to the successful implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan Chase. The result of implementation of ITIL was that, it helped the organization in streamlining the processes, building in house consistent and managing the global service desk (Hsu 2011). Moreover, it helped in achieving the company’s goal and reduction of complexity along with a better customer satisfaction. This improved the service desk operations and eliminating more than 5000000service desk calls. Therefore, JPMorgan Chase is a successful example of implementation of ITIL in organization (Ravasan et al. 2014).

The three critical success factor for implementation of ITIL in State revenue office of Australia are listed below-

1) Project Management: The whole process of project implementation was done with proper project management. This included appointed of a project head that defined and set the project goal. This was essential for correct implementation of the project. The goals includes re using of the existing AS9001 in ITIL. Moreover, the project management was focused on the schedule and deadline of the project, which were correctly defined. The IT staffs appointed of the project were committed in achieving the ITIL certification (Meziani and Saleh 2010).

2) Proper Maintenance: Proper maintenance of in-sourced environment was necessary for reducing the ongoing cost and savings along with reduction of the risks associated with the system.

3) Training: Proper training was imparted to the staffs and members of the organization. This was one of the major critical success factors of ITIL implementation. Moreover, the ITIL certification has helped a lot in attracting the staffs in attending the training and increasing their skills.

 The above-mentioned critical success factor played a significant role in successful implementation of ITIL in Victoria n state revenue office. The ITIL implemented helped the SRO (State revenue office) in delivering a number of processes such as, service level management, financial management, capacity management, release management and so on.

The CSFs that affected the implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan Chase and Victorian state revenue office includes a descriptive planning of the project, an effective project management, proper maintenance and documentation of the objectives and goals of the project.

The common factors that affected the implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan Chase and Victorian State revenue office are listed below-

1) Systemic approach to the implementation of the project and proper management support greatly helped in implementation of the ITIL in the said organizations. This was essential for maintaining a standard process in implementation of ITIL. Moreover, the implementation of ITIL in both the organization was customer oriented which helped in providing a proactive IT processes that were to be implemented in the ITIL (Cater-Steel, Toleman and Tan 2006).

2) Proper monitoring of the project was ensured that helped in successful implementation of ITIL. Monitoring the project progress is essential to determine whether the project is fulfilling the set goals and the objectives. Moreover, it is essential identifying the areas of improvement in a project.

3) Both the organizations ensured proper training programs are arranged in order to reduce the possibilities of employee resistance. Moreover, a proper training program increases the co-operation of the employees and adoption of the new process. Therefore, this factor also helped in successful implementation of ITIL.  

The non-common factors that affected the implementation of ITIL in the mentioned organization are listed below-

 1) A proper project management was undertaken by the Victorian state revenue office whereas JPMorgan Chase undertook a proper project planning for successful implementation of ITIL.

2) Both the organization followed a different implementation strategy in designing and implementing the ITIL.

3) JPMorgan Chase ensured proper communication co-operation among the different levels and members of the project management team.

The above-mentioned points include the common and non-common critical success factors involved in successful implementation of ITIL in two organizations, JPMorgan Chase and Victorian State Revenue Office.

The implementation of ITIL has some defined critical success factors. The implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan Chase and Victorian state revenue office also considered certain critical success factors. Both the organizations had some common critical success factor with the CSFs listed at the beginning of this report. The common CSFs includes a proper project planning and management, proper monitoring of the project, setting a pre defined goal of the project, proper scheduling of the project and imparting proper training programs to the staffs and employees of the organization (Gray 2006). This are the common critical success factors associated with every projects and specifically deals with the implementation of ITIL in an organization. Proper project management is essential for proper planning, initiation and the implementation of the project. A proper project initiation requires setting up of a clear goal and objective of a project and is considered as an important critical factor of the project. Documenting the goals and objective is also essential for setting up a clear expectation from the project an in maintaining a strategic approach in project management. After evaluating the critical success factor for implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan Chase and the Victorian state revenue office, it can be said that, they are definitely in line with the critical success factor of ITIL implementation in the beginning of the project. The most important one among them is the alignment of the project with the specific goals and objective of Information technology Infrastructure library.  The Critical Success factors identified from the IT governance literature discusses the success factors of the ITIL implementation for different types and areas of ITIL implementation (Pedersen et al. 2010). However, the CSFs identified in the discussed case study are aligned with the specific goal of the organizations.

Conclusion

Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that, successful implementation of Information Technology Infrastructure Library is important in today’s business for streamlining the processes in an organization. It helps in building a stronger alignment between the IT and the corresponding business. ITIL further helps in improving the delivery of service and satisfaction of the customers. Furthermore, it helps in reducing the cost of business processes by improving the utilization of the resources present in an organization. ITIL helps in greater visibility of the IT costs and assets present in an organization. A successful implementation of ITIL helps in reducing and managing the business risk in a proper and effective manner. ITIL is essential for defining a more stable service environment, which further helps in supporting the constant change in business.  The ITIL framework consists of five stages consisting of 26 process areas that are already defined. The report discusses the critical factors that are needed to be considered for successful Implementation of ITIL in an organization. The report further discusses the critical success factors of ITIL implementation in two different organizations JPMorgan Chase and Victorian State revenue office. The report further elaborates the common and non-common critical factors of the two organizations discussed in this report. Critical success factor is essential to be analyzed and evaluated in considering the overall success of the project. The report concludes with the comparison among the identified critical success factors and the critical success factors considered for the implementation of ITIL in JPMorgan and Victorian State revenue office.

References

Ahmad, N. and Shamsudin, Z.M., 2013. Systematic approach to successful implementation of ITIL. Procedia computer science, 17, pp.237-244.

Ahmad, N., Tarek Amer, N., Qutaifan, F. and Alhilali, A., 2013. Technology adoption model and a road map to successful implementation of ITIL. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 26(5), pp.553-576.

Anthes, G.H., 2013. Model mania. MANAGEMENT, 3, p.04.

Cater-Steel, A., Toleman, M. and Tan, W.G., 2006. Transforming IT service management-the ITIL impact. ACIS 2006 Proceedings, p.81.

Gray, J., 2006. The Challenges of ITIL Implementations.

Hsu, M., 2011. The challenges of implementing the ITIL Problem Management process in IT support organisations.

Iden, J. and Eikebrokk, T.R., 2013. Implementing IT Service Management: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Information Management, 33(3), pp.512-523.

Kerzner, H., 2013. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

Meziani, R. and Saleh, I., 2010, November. e-government: Itil-based service management case study. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Information Integration and Web-based Applications & Services (pp. 509-516). ACM.

Pedersen, K., Kræmmergaard, P., Lynge, B.C. and Schou, C.D., 2010. ITIL implementation: Critical success factors a comparative case study using the BPC framework. Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 12(2), pp.11-35.

Ravasan, A.Z., Mansouri, T., Mohammadi, M.M. and Rouhani, S., 2014. Supporting the module sequencing decision in ITIL solution implementation: an application of the fuzzy TOPSIS approach. International Journal of Information Technologies and Systems Approach (IJITSA), 7(2), pp.41-60.