IT departments find it difficult to change from a culture that is
focussed on the technology and the production of technological artifacts. An outward focus
on the internal customer has been difficult to achieve. IT - business culture gaps are all
too prominent in human resource issues, attitudes to users, and delivery of services. It
is no wonder that so many information systems have failed when there is a lack of
recognition of the service nature of IT. The development of networks and applications are
really a means to an end and not an end themselves.
Attitudes of IT departments have led to a general perception of
intransigence, leading to unproductive outsourcing. Help desks are seen as unhelpful, IT
technologists patronise users, technology change is used as a barrier to exclude the user,
IT becomes a cost sink and is treated as an organisational parasite rather than a key
business driver.
There is a general lack of recognition that IT involves the delivery of
business services, not computer systems. Business benefits are obtained from the service
delivered, not from the hardware installed.
There is a need for IT and IS departments to shift to a service culture
and mindset. This involves a shift from product to service, from user to customer, from
technology to business, from projects to people and from discrete projects to continuous
services. The days when IT departments built computer systems, put them on
"user's" desks and went on to build the next system are over. IT departments
need to recognise that they are service organisation with a service-orientation. Linear
technology-focussed projects may be inappropriate. Until recently, there has been a
reliance on the orthodoxy of systems development methods and systems development
lifecycles that are out of tune with the continuous evolution of systems and the move
toward componentisation.
A service-oriented approach involves: involving the user as a
participant in IT delivery, cultivating a service culture, integrating back office and front office
and taking a customer-oriented attitude to users.
The Centre for IT Service Management exists to address this problem. By
applying service management research and ideas, and developing new service management
research and ideas specific to IT functions in organisation, the Centre will contribute
towards the development of IT departments for the 21st Century;. These will be
oriented towards service design, implementation and evaluation in a networked business
world where the boundaries between internal and external information systems are
increasingly blurred and global information system penetrate every aspect of business.
What is Distinctive about IT Service Management
Most organisations have an IT department of some kind. This may vary
from over a thousand employees in a bank to one or two in a SME. The IT department
supports all information requirements for the organisation.
While the focus of most IT departments may be on the technology, the
technology itself is only the tool for the delivery of a service to the organisation. This
service involves managing information flow, delivering business benefits and enabling
business process. IT departments need to develop a deep understanding of service
management and to apply service management concepts to the delivery of IT within the
organisation.
IT departments face a number of issues in service delivery which need
to be addressed in service management research:
There is often a cultural gap between the IT professionals and the
business professionals within the organisation which the IT department serves. This
results in communication barriers, misunderstandings and the sidelining of the IT from the
strategic aspects of the business. The concept of internal customers may be a foreign
concept in the IT department.
The IT service is inherently unstable in terms of both technology and
business processes.
Rapid technology change brings about instability, difficulty in
developing services and barriers due to the complexity of the service being delivered.
Constant changes require particular attention to service development and design.
Any business change can have a major impact on the nature of an IT
service, its content and process. A constant need for changes in process and data put
significant strain on service delivery.
The services are particularly critical to the organisation, requiring
7x24 availability.
The large variety of services within an IT department and the range of
customer involvement increases the complexity of service management. Many IT services
require a high level of customer participation.
Since no one user's requirements, no one information system development
project and no one service request is the same, consistency of service is hard to achieve.
The variety of customers for IT services is wide, including internal
users, external users over the Internet and suppliers. Within the organisation the
customer profiles are heterogeneous in terms of previous IT skills, education, level of
seniority and IT usage.
The benefits of IT services are difficult to isolate in return on
investment (ROI) terms and may be widely distributed throughout the organisation. This
makes it difficult to justify the services and obtain financial support.
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Role of the Centre for IT service Management Research
The Centre for IT Service Management Research is committed to
developing strategies to enable both internal IT departments and external IT companies to
recognise the service nature of their business and develop a service-oriented mindset.
The Centre develops research projects centred on practical change
within organisations to enable effective and responsive IT services to be developed.
The Centre for IT Service Management Research exists to apply the
concepts which have developed in service management research over the last 10-15 years to
the complex area of IT service management. It is committed to close integration between
the industrial community and the research community and to the development of ideas which
have practical application in IT service management.
