ITIL v3 (Foundation) - Continual Service Improvement

IF YOU'VE EVER WORKED IN AN ORGANIZATION that uses Lean Methodology, then you've got a running start into the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) phase.  CSI concerns itself with:

• measuring and analyzing service level achievements by comparing them to the requirements in SLAs (Service Level Agreements)
• Recommending improvements in all phases of the life cycle.
• Introducing activities which will increase the quality, efficiency, effectiveness, and customer satisfaction of the services and the IT service management processes.
• Operating more cost effective IT services without sacrificing customer satisfaction
• Using suitable quality management methods for improvement activities.

CSI accomplishes this via measuring and monitoring;

• Process Compliance
• Quality
• Performance
• Business value of a process

Key Concepts/Methods/Tools:

• Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle: Deming's 4 steps which guide process improvement.
• Metrics: Measurable attributes which determine whether a variable meets its target.
• CSFs (Critical Success Factors): high-level objectives essential to meeting a business mission
• KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) can be qualitative or quantitative and help to define whether the CSFs are being met.
• Benchmark: An agreed upon metric which is considered a baseline (may be determined from industry standards/best-practices)
• Gap analysis - Determines where the organization is now and the size of the gap of where it wants to be.
• Balanced scorecard - includes different perspectives on organizational performance - customer, internal processes, learning and growth, financial, etc.
• SWOT Analysis - Looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of an organization/component.
• Swim-lane diagram - Visualizes relationships between process and organizations
• 7-step Improvement process: