Customer Reviews

Metrics for IT Service Management

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Meat and potatos metrics - no fluff. Very organized approach to establishing a strong metric-based IT environment. Offers a comprehensive set of goals, mission statements, and objectives for each catagory of process. Offers specific metrics (target as well as warning level) for the gamut of IT functions. Identifies stake holders, constraints, specifications, and justification for each metric offered. Probably could use a glossary for all the acronyms, but that's a minor issue.

If you need to develop metrics for an IT environment, buy this book or hire a consultant who has read it.

This book is over-written, by that I mean a list of ITSM metrics is over-discussed and can be found for free on the web. Looking at the volume of metrics, Mr. Brooks clearly isn't in the camp of "measure what matters", he's more along the lines of "measure whatever doesn't move, and if it does move, stop it from moving, and then measure it". This could quickly lead to no one paying much attention to metrics. Pick a handful of the most important value heavy metrics and track those. Also Mr. Brooks should use bullet graphs to clean up his visuals depicted in his book. Look on page 90 and tell me how many dotted lines can you distinguish between? Because he has 8 of them in one line graph along with 9 other types of lines. It looks like a hairball mixed up with a wad a Christmas tree lights with a little fishing line tangle thrown in for good measure.

This comprehensive text should be an invaluable guide for those in a wide variety of roles across the IT supply chain, to set up a meaningful program for measuring and improving their activities, while continuing to more closely align IT to the needs of the business.

If in sales, think about how this information can help you provide improvements and measurable services/solutions to your clients.

If in delivery/management, consider how this information can help you understand a consistent version of the truth and monitor your operations and improvement.

In vendor management, there is information here of value to improve your relationships and value of suppliers.

The flow of the book is logical, and defines key topics such as:

- What are metrics all about?
- Why/where/who/and how to use metrics.
- Metric design
- Integrating metrics into related areas including governance, COBIT, Six Sigma, and more.

In addition, operational definitions of metrics for the following ITIL and related processes are provided:

- Incident Management
- Service Desks
- Configuration Management
- Change Management
- Release Management
- Operations Management/ICT Infrastructure Management
- Service Level Management
- Problem Management
- Financial Management for IT services
- Capacity Management
- IT Service Continuity Management
- Availability Management
- Security Management
- Continuous Service Improvement Programs
- Risk Management
- Documentation Management
- Competence, Awareness, and Training (CAT)
- Program & Project Management
- Business Perspective Metrics (including business and supplier relationship management metrics, and more).

Each reference metric provides a:

- Description
- Specification
- Justification
- Audience
- Constraints
- Danger value
- Target value
- Possible values

Within the book, are examples of formulas for calculating metrics, as well as examples of good and bad metrics.

There are also repeated clear caveats about going overboard on metrics and ensuring that what is measured, is used, and has value. As an example, chapter 11 "Continuous Improvement with Metrics" states "It is important to understand exactly what actions can be taken if a particular metric delivers a result that is outside the desired range. If there is no particular action then it is better not to collect the metric. It costs money to collect information and this is justified only if the information is useful."

All in all, this a fine reference source with appropriate balance and pointers toward more information (e.g. COSO, COBIT, et al) when necessary.

Very helpful and can be used as a framework for setting up ITSM measurements. It would be a great book to compare existing measurements to a standard set.

Good compilations of metrics about IT service, can be a guide on measures already tested.