I’ll know it when I see it – NOT!!
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This week I got back on track with my home building project. I began looking again at floorplans and lots as well as started buying home decorating magazines with a renewed zeal. Last night, however, after surfing my 20th home plan website, it dawned on me that I could be doing this for the next 20 years! I found numerous plans that could work, but none that were perfect. There was always something that I could tweak or adjust. As my eyes began to water from staring at my computer screen for two straight hours, it occurred to me that I should probably put together some minimum, objective criteria for both the lot and the house plan. That would allow me to quickly evaluate the potentials and know when I had succeeded in finding a lot or plan that would meet my needs.
Unfortunately, many IT organizations today start their service improvement programs the same way I started my house plan hunting project – with no objective measures of success. As a result, they may spend a great amount of time and resources only to still wind up with a dissatisfied business customer.
It is absolutely vital to any Service Improvement Program to define objective measures of success up front. To say you want to improve availability is much like me saying I want a one or two story house plan. There are literally hundreds of thousands of plans that fall into that category (trust me on this – I’ve looked at most of them). Without some objective criteria (e.g. the kitchen must have an island and be adjacent to the great room, which must be at least 16’ x 20’) I would spend years perusing plans and not get any closer to selecting one. In the same way IT organizations that start without specific objectives will never be able to definitively declare completion or success.
To avoid this problem, I suggest following the S.M.A.R.T. approach when defining service improvement success goals. This approach requires your goals to be:
- Specific – Define very specific goals. “Improve service” is not specific. “Improve the availability of the order entry service” is much more specific.
- Measurable – Make the goal something that can be measured. What does “improve” mean anyway?! Your idea of improvement may not be consistent with your customers. By specifying a objective, measurable goal (e.g. “Improve the availability of the order entry service to 99%”) you now have a mutually agreeable way of objectively determining success or failure. By the way, an implicit assumption in this step is that you have the means of measuring the objective goal. In other words, don’t establish a measure that you don’t know how to measure.
- Achievable – Ensure that whatever measure you establish is actually achievable. It would be impossible for you to deliver 99% availability for the order entry service if the supporting network was only capable of delivering 98% availability. In that scenario the 99% is unachievable.
- Realistic – Although the goal may be achievable, it may not be realistic. For example, if you are currently at 85% availability, it’s probably not realistic to believe that you can get to 99%. A more realistic goal might be 87-90%.
- Time Related – Your service improvement goal should also include a time component. How long will it take you to improve the availability of the order entry service to 99%? Without a time factor you and your customer may (and probably will) have completely different views on what “timely” means. Improving the availability of the order entry service to 99% by the end of the next quarter tells people when they can expect results.
Following the S.M.A.R.T. approach to establishing success criteria will not only help you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, but will also help your customer know exactly what they can expect and when they can expect it. As I’ve mentioned before, this expectation management process will go a long way to achieving quality results in the eyes of your business customers.
Okay, let’s see. My house can’t be any wider than 34’, the master bedroom can’t be at the front of the house…
