ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

Definition of ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI) is the fifth and final stage of ITIL Service Lifecycle under ITIL’s IT Service Management Framework (ITSM). It aims to deal with measures to be adopted to improve the service quality by learning from past successes and failures. Continual Service Improvement also aligns and realigns IT Services to the changing business requirements by identifying and implementing changes for improvements. For doing this, it takes the similar approach described in Deming Cycle (PDSA Cycle). The ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI) describes the best practices for achieving incremental and large-scale improvements in services quality, operational efficiency, and business continuity. It effectively describes and utilizes the concept of Key Performance Indicator (KPI), which is a metrics-driven process, for reviewing, evaluating, and benchmarking performance of services. CSI is part of all the stages and ITSM processes and services It is important to consider CSI processes subject to improve as well.

The CSI Practice relies upon five major guiding principles defined in the CSI book:

The CSI Approach
Seven Step Improvement Process
The Deming Cycle
Professor Kotter’s Eight Steps for Successful Transformation
Knowledge Management

The figure below illustrates the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Continual Service Improvement (CSI) seven-step process. The individual steps overlayed by the more general Deming (plan-do-check-act) Cycle.

source: Geant.Org

Scope of Continual Service Improvement The CSI Implementation process may vary and the correct way to implement it rely upon the organization's goal; it may be long term goals or short time dependent on the nature and policy of the organization. Generally the scope looks into three areas of ITSM.

ITSM Processes
IT Services
The Service Lifecycle

Cartlidge & Lillycrop(2007) thinks it is very hard to decide from where to start, but one of the above three areas can be taken as a starting point. Case ITIL (2006) suggests the organizations to address the pain points first for getting value of Investment (VOI) as well as gaining the business and functional group support. Case (2009) opines some quick wins like low hanging fruits can be experienced during the implementing process.

ITSM Processes- Where Do we start?: Organizations are not aware of from where to start the implementation of CSI in business. They can approach through change management, Incident Management and problem management by going into mature documenting process. Case (2009) argues change management as a control process and helps in attaining a maturity level for organizations protecting the production environment with the efficiency and effectiveness the process requires. Request for Change (RFC) can be a quick win if one doesn‟t exist, or change advisory board highlighting the possible changes, procedures to implement changes, creating risk models and so forth.
IT Services- Where do we start? Case (2009) states that it is crucial to choose right IT services once the ITSM process is implemented in our business, to ensure the business value is delivered. But the problem is to identify the right services but can be simply done through identifying the services falling out to meet the satisfaction levels or which are continuously giving a threat. In case of absence of service level data a discussion is to be carried on with the business highlighting the services that are deemed mission critical. Impact assessment is to be conducted either to give continuity to the service or discard the service.
Service lifecycle-where do we start ? Starting the improvement initiatives of processes organization will find our many turning points for making improvements in the service lifecycle itself. Thus it is crucial that organization keeps tracks of the communication and feedbacks between different service lifecycle phases. Organizations should look for improvement opportunities associated with the business requirements Case (2009) and Nickols (2010).

CSI is often viewed as an ad hoc activity within IT services. The activity is only triggered when someone in IT management flags up that there is a problem. This is not the right way to address CSI. Often these reactionary events are not even providing continual improvement, but simply stopping a single failure from occurring again. CSI takes a commitment from everyone in IT working throughout the service lifecycle to be successful at improving services and service management processes. It requires ongoing attention, a well-thought-out plan, and consistent attention to monitoring, analysing and reporting results with an eye toward improvement. Improvements can be incremental in nature but also require a huge commitment to implement a new service or meet new business requirements seven steps of improvement, each of which needs attention. There is no reward for taking a short cut or not addressing each step in a sequential nature. If any step is missed, there is a risk of not being efficient and effective in meeting the goals of CSI. IT services must ensure that proper staffing and tools are identified and implemented to support CSI activities. It is also important to understand the difference between what should be measured and what can be measured. Start small – don’t expect to measure everything at once. Understand the organizational capability to gather and process the data. Be sure to spend time analysing data as this is where the real value comes in. Without analysis of the data, there is no real opportunity to truly improve services or service management processes. Think through the strategy and plan for reporting and using the data. Reporting is partly a marketing activity. It is important that IT managers focus on the value added to the organization as well as reporting on issues and achievements. In order for steps 5 to 7 to be carried out correctly, it is imperative that the target audience is considered when packaging the information. An organization can find improvement opportunities throughout the entire service lifecycle. An IT organization does not need to wait until a service or service management process is transitioned into the operations area to begin identifying improvement opportunities.