Emtec Adviser - ITSM Governance Lacking
Most organizations that have adopted IT Service Management (ITSM) have done so as the underpinning framework for meeting regulatory requirements. However, a recent survey indicates that few of these organizations have any sort of defined, implemented and enforced ITSM governance in place.
Only 26 percent of organizations report that they have implemented and enforce ITSM governance, according to the sixth annual ITSM survey conducted by Consulting-Portal, an ITSM implementation firm. Only 22 percent reported having “actionable” metrics — meaning they actually do something to improve the processes based on objective evidence. The lack of follow-up threatens to negate the benefits of ITSM implementation and makes it difficult to comply with standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II. It also weakens the organization’s ability to quantify the return on investment (ROI) from costly IT projects.
Other notable findings in the survey, conducted between January 13, 2010, and March 9, 2011, include:
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Executive management support for ITSM continues to grow. This year, 69 percent of the respondents report VP or higher support for their ITSM programs. That is up from 56 percent last year and even more from previous years. In addition, 60 percent report that they have a dedicated ITSM organization with fulltime resources.
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Version 3 of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the preferred IT process framework. Eighty percent of respondents use ITIL v3 as their process framework, up from 60 percent in 2010. Ninety-three percent of the participants are using ITIL and 7 percent use other frameworks.
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Acceptance of Software as a Service (SaaS) for ITSM continues to grow. Sixty-six percent reported that their companies are either using SaaS for ITSM or are evaluating its use. That is up from 33.4 percent in 2010.
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Certification is very important to ITSM practitioners. Only 4 percent have no ITIL v3 certification. Forty-nine percent are certified at the “foundations” level, the most basic level of certification. Twenty percent are taking intermediate ITIL training and 27 percent have either a Service Manager or ITIL V3 Expert designation. In addition, 52 percent of the organizations surveyed have a formal ITSM training program and 49 percent have their own internal ITIL trainers.
