A Method To Select Goals, Indicators and Strategies for IT Services

Abstract

Background: Measurement is a key process to support organizations in management and improvement of processes, products and services. Indicators are measures used to monitor whether a goal is reached, increasing feedback and objectivity on judgment and helping organizations to focus attention and effort on what matters. IT services literature, such as libraries, frameworks, standards, and maturity models, requires proper identification of critical business process and definition of relevant measures to support decision-making. However, there is no clear direction about what should be those critical business processes and indicators. IT service departments often spend time and effort measuring without being sure about what the measurement results represent and organizations consider the indicators selection as a difficult task. Aims: We conducted this work aiming to answer the research question: “How to support selection of IT services indicators in different organizational levels and aligned to business goals?” Method: Considering this scenario, we proposed SINIS, a method to help organizations select indicators for IT services in several levels in alignment to business goals. SINIS was created based on concepts from process improvement models and approaches related to IT Services Management. We evaluated SINIS in the IT Infrastructure and the IT Security areas of a global large company. Results: By using SINIS IT Infrastructure was able to define indicators and an appropriate set of strategies aligned with IT Service goals in which teams could focus work and IT Security was able to better understand and document indicators, associate them to business goals and strategies and discard those ones that were not considered useful. Conclusion: SINIS was evidenced as applicable to different IT Service areas, supporting definition of strategies and indicators for members to work on that could help attending IT service and business goals, instead of working in several and unfocused initiatives..