Situation

The Information Security organization supports many customers on several different ITSM applications and in many cases from a leveraged model (one group supporting multiple customers). Dedicated account Service Managers deliver reporting metrics—operational and SLA/KPI—from the account’s standpoint, but these leveraged teams and Senior Leadership needed a more holistic view on a monthly basis. Not only from a service delivery and customer satisfaction standpoint but as a requirement to maintain ISO:27001 compliance. In an effort to deliver this, two individuals would work tirelessly to manually combine raw data into Excel from several different application sources for incident, request, and change management to present to management. This took the two individuals three and a half weeks each month, and unfortunately, contained several gaps and did not create actionable operational or SLA/KPI metrics. Any callouts or abnormalities were not discussed with management until the hour and a half monthly meeting. These items were never addressed because of the research needed and lack of accountability on follow through.

Task

As a Project Manager and ITIL Expert, I was promoted and brought in to establish an ITIL/Service Management program specifically for Information Security. Not only was my first task to fill in the reporting gaps and produce actionable metrics, but I needed to increase efficiency as well in order to have time to make continual service improvements.

Action

After performing a gap analysis on the raw data fields, groups, customers, ITSM applications, and operational and SLA/KPI metrics, I started working towards filling in the gaps. Utilizing Agile Project Management methods, I worked with management stakeholders every month to make improvements to the manual reporting process and presented monthly performance metrics.

Result

At the end of a 12-month project, there was a massive improvement in the metrics and efficiency. This monthly process now only took one person three weeks to deliver, cutting wasted time by over 50%. All support groups, customers, and ITSM applications were identified, verified, and added to the process. Utilizing Excel Pivot Tables I create actionable metrics for Incident, Request, and Change Management for operational and SLA/KPI items.

Any callouts or abnormalities were documented and delivered to the necessary managers prior to the now hour-long monthly meeting—a cut of 33%. Items were typically addressed in open forum during the meeting. Any improvement activities could now be identified. This was indeed a huge win, but it left me with a week to go through requests to me, emails, and other service management duties. I still needed more time, so I began doing research on automation solutions, which will be discussed next time.