Organizational Maturity and ITIL Adoption

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Organizational Maturity and ITIL Adoption

Raul Filipe Lopes Nunes da Silva

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em

Engenharia Informática e Computadores

Júri

Presidente:

Professor José Tribolet

Orientador:

Prof. Miguel Mira da Silva

Acompanhante:

Nelson Gama

Vogais:

Prof. José Borbinha

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Agradecimentos

Gostaria de dedicar esta secção para dedicar os meus sinceros agradecimentos a todos os que me apoiaram, não só ao longo deste trabalho, mas também durante todo o meu percurso académico que aqui culmina.

Sendo assim, agradeço à minha família, que tornou possível que eu continuasse os meus estudos longe do meu país, com todos os sacrifícios e preocupações que isso envolve.

Agradeço ao Prof. Miguel Mira da Silva, que me guiou ao longo deste ano, ajudando a que me focasse no essencial e a trilhar o caminho certo, e que sempre se mostrou disponível quando precisei de ajuda.

Ao Nelson Gama, que me ajudou não só na escrita, mas também na própria concepção deste estudo, dispensando grande parte do seu tempo nesse sentido.

A todas as pessoas das organizações envolvidas, que se mostraram disponíveis para ouvir as minhas ideias e que me abriram as suas portas.

Ao Instituto Superior Técnico, que me disponibilizou espaços de estudo e de trabalho, acesso a conhecimento em forma de livros, artigos científicos, Professores e colegas.

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Abstract

Information Technologies (IT) and Information Systems (IS) play a fundamental role in or-ganizations. We have witnessed a IS transition from a support role to a business partner role. This increased responsibility and impact in business performance leads to a tighter control and higher demand on IS Departments. To respond to these requirements, organi-zations turn themselves to Service Management frameworks, ITIL being the most widely used. However, many ITIL projects fail, and the most commonly documented cause is organizational resistance. The goal of this work is to test the hypothesis that using best practices described in the People CMM framework for improving organizational maturity has impact on achieving a greater ITIL maturity as well.

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Resumo

As Tecnologias de Informação e Sistemas de Informação são um componente funda-mental das organizações. Assistimos à transição destes componentes de um papel de suporte para um papel de parceiro de negocio. Isto levou a uma maior responsabili-dade e impacto no desempenho do negócio e consequente aumento de exigência em relação ao desempenho dos Sistemas de Informação. Como resposta a esta exigência

as organizações recorrem aframeworks de gestão de serviços, sendo o ITIL a mais

uti-lizada. No entanto, muitos projectos relacionados com ITIL não têm sucesso e estudos demonstram que a principal causa está relacionada com a resistência organizacional. O

objectivo deste trabalho é testar a hipótese de que usar aframework People Capability

Maturity Model(P-CMM) para gestão dos recursos humanos tem impacto nas implemen-tações ITIL.

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List of Figures

1.0.1The three gears of ITIL . . . 2

1.0.2Factors that prevent ITIL adoption in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore (Bittinger, 2005) . . . 3

1.2.1Framework proposed by Eisenhardt (1989) for developing theory with case studies (Gallagher & Worrell, 2008) . . . 5

2.2.1First page of the second version of the questionnaire. Grey cells mean that the question doesn’t concern the process area of that column. . . 10

2.2.2Screenshot of the online questionnaire. . . 11

2.2.3First page of the questionnaire introduction document . . . 12

3.1.1Key links, inputs & outputs of the service lifecycle stages (Rudd & Hodgkiss, 2004) . . . 17

3.2.1Excerpt of the SFIA Framework (SFIA, 2006) . . . 21

3.2.2The People CMM framework Curtiset al.(2002) . . . 27

3.3.1The Scalable Model (Roepkeet al., 2000) . . . 30

4.1.1Organization A’s Hierarchy . . . 34

4.1.2Score of each area for Organization A . . . 35

4.2.1Organization B’s Hierarchy . . . 36

4.2.2Score of each area for Organization B . . . 37

4.3.1Organization C’s Hierarchy . . . 38

4.3.2Score of each area for Organization C . . . 39

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List of Acronyms

ABC Attitude, Behavior and Culture

BPM Business Process Management

CMDB Configuration Management Data Base

CMM Capability Maturity Model

EFQM European Foundation for Quality Management

GIP Gross Internal Product

HRM Human Resource Management

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IS Information Systems

IT Information Technology

ITIL Information Technology Infrastructure Library

ITSM Information Technology Service Management

SEI Software Engineering Institute

SFIA Skills Framework for the Information Age

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Chapter 1

Introduction

The impact of Information Systems (IS) on business is ever growing. We have witnessed

the transition from the industrial age to the information age. (van Bonet al., 2007)This

growing impact on organizations success lead to an also growing demand on IS man-agement. To satisfy these demands, organizations turn themselves to the IT Service Management (ITSM) discipline.

ITSM strives to improve the alignment of IT efforts with business needs, and to manage the efficient provision of IT services with guaranteed quality.Several frameworks were developed to help organizations reach their goals - not only in terms of performance but also in terms of being legislation compliant. One of the most popular frameworks is ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library. As the name implies, it’s a collection of the industry’s best practices over the years, documented in a way that organizations can structure themselves around the services lifecycle.

ITIL involves three major components: People, Processes and Technology. These com-ponents work together as gears (Figure1.0.1). Processes improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. Technology can help execute those processes by re-ducing time, effort and costs of executing those processes. People play a fundamental role: they execute the processes and use the technology. If they don’t adapt to the pro-cesses or technology, all is rendered useless.

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Figure 1.0.1: The three gears of ITIL

ITIL benefits are documented on its books, but nevertheless a good number of ITIL adop-tion projects don’t reach their end. A study conducted by Cater-Steel & Tan (2005) con-cluded that about 30% of the organizations who made part of the study were disappointed

with ITIL implementation. The fact is that implementing ITIL is not easy (Roepkeet al.,

2000).

A recent study (Pereira & Mira da Silva, 2010), conducted in several organizations with the objective of creating an ITIL maturity model, demonstrated that the number of orga-nizations who have a poor ITIL implementation should not be ignored. Worse than that, the same research concluded that most of those organizations aren’t aware of that fact.

If ITIL is composed by those 3 components - People, Processes, Technology (Figure1.0.1) - then they (individually or not) should be the origin of the problem. If we analyze these factors we see that technology is available in the market. So, if there are successful im-plementations and poor imim-plementations with the same technology, that shouldn’t be the source of the problem. Processes are also the same for all organizations who implement ITIL, although some organizations may find some processes easier to adopt due to, e.g. similarities with existing practices. But mainly, the “People” component is the variable. Or-ganizations are composed of different people, different organizational structures, different communication models and cultures.

Another study, conducted by Evergreen (2006), shows that the main factor that affects ITIL projects is organizational resistance to change. This reinforces the idea that the “People” component is what organizations need to control in order to increase the suc-cess of their ITIL projects.

A Gartner study (Bittinger, 2005) (see Figure 1.0.2) shows that around 25% of ITIL adopters in the Australia region identified the lack of time due to fighting fires as a reason for not implementing ITIL, and additional 12% consider that they don’t have enough inter-nal skills maturity. In Hong Kong only 7% are too busy fighting fires, but a slightly larger number (13%) also considers that they don’t have enough internal skills maturity.

These are problems related to people or human resources management. We can also consider them as organizational maturity problems. In fact, there are authors who

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Figure 1.0.2: Factors that prevent ITIL adoption in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore (Bittinger, 2005)

(...) an organization’s maturity is derived from the workforce practices routinely performed inside it, and the extent to which these practices have been integrated into an institutional-ized process for improving workforce capability. In a mature organization, responsible in-dividuals perform repeatable workforce practices as ordinary and expected requirements of their positions. The more mature an organization, the greater its capability for attract-ing, developattract-ing, and retaining the talent it needs to execute its business.

We will follow this point of view through the course of this work.

1.1 Research Issue

Organizations must build an infrastructure based on People, Processes and Technology that is able to leverage IT’s potential. When IT leaders recognize that people are one of the major problems preventing the success of ITIL projects, or from another perspective

one of the critical success factors for ITIL implementation (Evergreen, 2006)(Sharifiet al.,

2008), it means that an organizations people infrastructure is a main building block that can prevent it from moving forward.

There are many little things organizations can do to improve their performance before they invest on a full blown ITIL project. For instance, people may simply be too overscheduled to do everything that they have to do and that can have an impact on incident reporting (part of the Incident Management process in ITIL). Or people may not be aware of their responsibilities in certain activities and what impact that has on their performance.

The solution isn’t finding the right people to implement ITIL. The challenge is on how to leverage the organizations workforce in order to extract all the potential provided by ITSM best practices.

The research issue that this study will address is:

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By addressing and overcoming this problem, we are taking a big step towards more and better ITIL adoption projects that result in better IT services.

1.2 Research Methodology

This study follows the framework proposed by Eisenhardt (1989)for developing theory with case studies (1.2.1). The following description was taken from Eisenhardt (1989):

“The case study is a research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings. Examples of case study research include Selznick’s (1949) description of TVA, Allison’s (1971) study of the Cuban missile crisis, and Pettigrew’s (1973) research on decision making at a British retailer. Case studies can involve either single or multiple cases, and numerous levels of analysis (Yin, 1984). For example, Harris and Sutton (1986) studied 8 dying organizations, Bettenhausen and Murnighan (1986) focused on the emergence of norms in 19 laboratory groups, and Leonard-Barton (1988) tracked the progress of 10 innovation projects. “

Another advantage of using case studies is that we are not limited to one type of analysis or conclusion. The data and information extracted from the case studies can be varied:

“Moreover, case studies can employ an embedded design, that is, multiple levels of anal-ysis within a single study (Yin, 1984). For example, the Warwick study of competitiveness and strategic change within major U.K. corporations is conducted at two levels of anal-ysis: industry and firm (Pettigrew, 1988), and the Mintzberg and Waters (1982) study of Steinberg’s grocery empire examines multiple strategic changes within a single firm. “

Case studies aren’t limited to one type of data collection methods, which provides one degree of freedom to the researcher, because he can adapt to the reality of the subject. In one subject it may add value to interview people, while on another the main data source is number reports:

“Case studies typically combine data collection methods such as archives, interviews, questionnaires, and observations. The evidence may be qualitative (e.g., words), quanti-tative (e.g., numbers), or both. For example, Sutton and Callahan (1987) rely exclusively on qualitative data in their study of bankruptcy in Silicon Valley, Mintzberg and McHugh (1985) use qualitative data supplemented by frequency counts in their work on the Na-tional Film Board of Canada, and Eisenhardt and Bourgeois (1988) combine quantitative data from questionnaires with qualitative evidence from interviews and observations.”

Also, case studies can be used to test and generate theory, which is the goal of this work:

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Figure 1.2.1: Framework proposed by Eisenhardt (1989) for developing theory with case studies (Gallagher & Worrell, 2008)

Figure 1.2.1 describes visually the steps that will be followed to accomplish this work. Section 1.3 matches the steps with the document structure. In this work the final step (“Enfold Existing Literature”) was skipped since it is not only outside of the scope of this work, but also because the current literature on people management during ITIL adoption is close to nonexistent.

1.3 Document Structure

The work begins with theoretical background (Section 3), introducing ITIL, examining the various approaches to overcoming organizational resistance in general and particularly in ITIL, and also introducing the People CMM framework that will be used in this work.

The document then presents the hypothesis that tries to answer the research question (Section 1.1), as well as the data collection methods as described in Section 1.2. Next, three case studies are presented (Section 4) with the description of each organizational context and how the data was collected, addressing eventual problems and particular differences. Results are presented for each case study and are discussed as a whole in Section 5, which also says if the hypothesis was rejected or not.

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Chapter 2

Hypothesis

We saw in Chapter 1 that ITIL has 3 components or gears: People, Processes and Tech-nology. We related this structure to the difficulties that organizations face when adopting ITIL. We concluded that a pertinent hypothesis could be that one of the main factors re-lated to ITIL projects failing is rere-lated to people, a variable that can change drastically between organizations, both in quantity and type.

The theory behind this hypothesis is that managing people (or human resources) is an important measure in the management of ITIL adoption projects. By effectively monitor-ing, controlling and managing the human resources involved in the project, we can, e.g. detect problems or know if someone is struggling with the new assignments and provide extra training.

Managing human resources, however, is not trivial and involves several dimensions: re-cruiting, monitoring and controlling performance, rewards and compensations, among others. Due to that fact, we must come up with a model for measuring HRM (Human Resource Management) that includes the main dimensions.

This is where the People CMM framework helps us. The framework is further described in Section 3.2.3, but is basically a model with 5 maturity levels, each one comprised of best practices that should be performed by organizations. Those best practices are split into different areas that vary according to maturity levels.

The People CMM framework has documented success cases and benefits in

organiza-tions such as Boeing, Ericsson or Lockheed Martin(Curtiset al., 2002). It also provides a

broad view on the human resource management components, including Staffing, Train-ing, Communication and Compensation.

Another important factor is being free of charge, which means that any organization can fully access it and use it without any membership or fees required. This overcomes an important barrier in the adoption and testing of this proposal.

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The goal of this proposal is assessing if we can use the People CMM framework to estab-lish a relation between the quality human resource management and the success of ITIL adoption projects. This relation is expected to be positive, meaning that an organization with a better human resource management is better prepared and has a more mature ITIL adoption. This comes from the fact that the framework itself defends that there must be a balance between people, processes and technology.

If this proves correct, organizations can measure their maturity level and assess their readiness to adopt ITIL. This way, not only can they see room for improvement in the way they manage human resources, but also save an amount of frustration and money that would be spent in adopting ITIL and invest it somewhere else.

In conclusion, the hypothesis that was tested in this work is:

Using best practices described in the People Capability Maturity Model for human re-source management positively influences ITIL projects.

A positive relation won’t automatically prove causality. There can be other factors that can influence both scores. However, if this study eventually demonstrates that organizations with a higher P-CMM maturity have lower ITIL maturity, the hypothesis is rejected.

2.1 Assessment Method

For this work, we chose to focus on the Level 2 of the People CMM project. This is due to the fact that the organizations who were the subject of this experiment didn’t have an ongoing People CMM adoption project. It was very likely that while some processes may be implemented, the full list of processes wasn’t, thus the organizations were unlikely to have a maturity level higher than 2.

Also, after studying the framework, we came to the conclusion that Level 2 was enough to determine if a relation exists or not. Level 3 also has some important process areas, like Competency Analysis or Workgroup Development; but the process areas in Level 2 can determine the failure of an ITIL adoption project. This conclusion was also the subject of testing during the course of this research.

After choosing the scope of the assessment, we chose to perform a questionnaire based

assessment. Curtis et al.(2002)say that this method is best applied as an initial,

first-time, or incremental self-assessment, which allows organizations to focus on areas that need the most attention. Awareness of, and buy-in to, the improvement activities is pro-moted through participation in the questionnaire process. Also, the recommended size of the team performing a questionnaire based assessment is 1-5, whereas the other rec-ommended assessment methods require more than 1 person.

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A first version of the questionnaire was created, that included all goals, practices, and so on. However, this version had 14 pages and a 10 point scoring scale, making it highly unlikely that individuals were open to answer. A lighter version was created, reformulating questions to include more than one practice. The questionnaire was shortened to 3 pages and the scoring system was simplified (5 points scale), making it more accessible. However, rigor was also lost and that should be taken into account when analyzing the results.

Although the practical assessment is described in detail in Section 4, it should be noted that there is both a paper and an online version of the tool. The questionnaire was created with the purpose of being answered online, in a less intrusive manner. This way people could analyze the questions, think about the answers and eventually use their best judgment. However, in one of the cases results were poor. People didn’t answer, leaving it for later and eventually never responding. Because of this, a paper version to be answered face to face was also created with some slight changes to adapt to the new format.

2.2 Questionnaire Creation

In order to create the questionnaire, we limited its scope to the transition between Levels 1 and 2, as was described in Section 2.1. We analyzed the P-CMM framework and took note of all the practices and processes described, for all the process areas, which resulted in a total of 130 processes, divided by 6 areas:

• Staffing: 28 processes;

• Communication and Coordination: 21 processes;

• Work Environment: 18 processes;

• Performance Management: 24 processes;

• Training and Development: 18 processes;

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Figure 2.2.1: First page of the second version of the questionnaire. Grey cells mean that the question doesn’t concern the process area of that column.

It should be noted that this only concerns Level 2. So, the first version of the questionnaire had 130 questions, each question regarding one process. The processes could then be scored using the following scale:

• 0-1: this practice is not required and is (almost) never done;

• 2-3: this practice is sometimes required or is sometimes done;

• 4-5: this practice is required but not always done, or the practice is regularly per-formed although is not required or checked;

• 6-7: this practice is normally required and usually done;

• 8-9: this practice is required, is done and it is checked (the practice is institutional-ized);

• 10: this practice is institutionalized and is a world class example;

• ? : if the participant doesn’t know the answer;

• N/A: the practice is not applicable.

We came to the conclusion that a questionnaire of this sort wouldn’t have an acceptable answering rate, since people would be too busy to answer it, or would just consider it worthless.

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Figure 2.2.2: Screenshot of the online questionnaire.

because one question concerned different processes. However, since the objective was to gather a general view of the organizational maturity, combining different processes in one question wouldn’t affect the final conclusion.

Some questions were shared among process areas, particularly questions regarding the existence of an organizational role responsible for that area, or if adequate resources were provided to the execution of the tasks regarding that area. For that reason we chose to create a table where each line corresponded to a question and each column to a process area. An example of this table is represented in Figure 2.2.1. We were able to reduce the questions from 130 to 37, and the number of pages from 6 to 3. Also, we reduced the scoring scale from 1-10 to 1-5 in order to simplify the process:

• 1: Never done;

• 2: Rarely done;

• 3: Usually done and checked;

• 4: Needed, done and checked;

• 5: This practice is institutionalized and we are a world class example on this matter;

• ?: I don’t know / don’t answer.

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schedule constraints. With this in mind we created an online version of the questionnaire, represented in Figure 2.2.2. Since the questionnaire was ansered remotely and there was no previous interview to introduce the framework and the context of the study, we created a document that contained a brief description of the purpose of the assessment, an introduction to the framework as well as instructions about how to fill the table (see Figure 2.2.3).

Figure 2.2.3: First page of the questionnaire introduction document

2.3 Results Analysis and Validation

As mentioned in Section 2.2, the assessment was focused on the six Level 2 Process Areas: Staffing, Communication & Coordination, Work Environment, Training & Devel-opment and Compensation. Each one of these areas has a set of questions regarding different practices which can be answered with the following scores:

• 1: Never done;

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• 3: Usually done and checked;

• 4: Needed, done and checked;

• 5: This practice is institutionalized and we are a world class example on this matter;

• ?: I don’t know / don’t answer.

In the scope of this work, an organization should have an average score of at least 3,5 in each Process Area. This is because the organizations that are part of this study aren’t following a People CMM program; so the requirements couldn’t be too strict. Also, that score usually indicates a satisfying balance between “Usually done” and “Needed, done and verified”. In principle, if a practice is verified there is physical evidence that it is performed. On the other hand, an average score of 3 is closer to “Rarely Done” which isn’t such a good indicator.

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Chapter 3

Related Work

In this chapter we analyze some of the theory that is related to this work. Since the area of this research is people management in ITIL adoption projects, it makes sense that we split this chapter in two: ITIL and People Management.

We will see how ITIL works, what is its structure and some of the documented success factors in ITIL implementation.

In the section about People Management, we will introduce the main frameworks directly related to people in the IT area. In this section we will introduce the People CMM frame-work that will be the main building block of this research, and we will understand what’s the reason for that.

We also talk about the organizational resistance theme, since its directly related to people and people management. Its also one of the big reasons why ITIL adoption projects fail, and in conclusion its the main reason why this research is being made.

3.1 ITIL

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of publications, trainings and certifications for individuals, among other tools. It focuses on the main concepts and processes related to IT Management. It was created and it’s maintained by the British Government IT provider, the Office of Government Commerce.

ITIL was created in the following of a number of private initiatives that used the same approach to manage their IT. One example is IBM that in the 1980 decade published a set of books about IS Management. These books became known as Yellow Books. ITIL’s objective was to create a solution that was independent from suppliers, both internal and

external (van Bonet al., 2007).

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In this work we won’t differentiate ITIL v2 from v3. This is because the goal of this work is to understand the relation between two maturity levels. While ITIL v3 has differences from v2, the maturity we’re measuring is conceptually the same: maturity of ITSM practices.

Service Strategy

The Service Strategy volume is expected to be useful for IT organizations in developing capabilities in service management that set up and maintain a strategic advantage in their goals of being valuable service providers. Service Strategy covers several aspects of service management. It provides guidance useful in defining strategic objectives, pro-viding direction for growth, prioritizing investments, and defining outcomes against which the effectiveness of service management may be measured.

It is useful for influencing organizational attitudes and culture towards the creation of value for customers through services. The publication identifies objectives for effective communication, coordination, and control among various parts of a service organization

having contact with customers, partners and suppliers (Tayloret al., 2007d).

Service Design

The ITIL Service Design volume (Tayloret al., 2007b) provides good-practice guidance

on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Significantly, design within ITIL is understood to encompass all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself.

As such, Service Design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architec-ture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service.

Service Transition

The scope of Service Transition includes the management and coordination of the pro-cesses, systems and functions to package, build, test and deploy a release into produc-tion and establish the service specified in the customer and stakeholder requirements

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Service Operation

Best practice for achieving the delivery of agreed levels of services both to end-users and the customers (where "customers" refer to those individuals who pay for the service and negotiate the SLAs). Service operation, as described in the ITIL Service Operation

volume (Tayloret al., 2007c) is the part of the lifecycle where the services and value is

actually directly delivered. Also the monitoring of problems and balance between service reliability and cost are considered.

Continual Service Improvement

Figure 3.1.1: Key links, inputs & outputs of the service lifecycle stages (Rudd & Hodgkiss, 2004)

The primary purpose of Continual Service Improvement is to continually align and realign IT services to the changing business needs by identifying and implementing improve-ments to IT services that support business processes. These improvement activities support the lifecycle approach through Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transi-tion and Service OperaTransi-tion. In effect, Continual Service Improvement is about looking for

ways to improve process effectiveness, efficiency as well as cost effectiveness(Taylor

et al._{, 2007a)}_.

3.1.1 ITIL Implementation

Sharifiet al.(2008)states that there is a set of common reasons in ITIL implementation

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1. Lack of management commitment: It can be said that no project can be succeed without management commitment and drive. It is possible to achieve isolated wins with ITIL without management commitment, but these wins will be few and far be-tween. In addition, management should involve on project to access organization to its objectives.

2. Spending too much time on complicated process diagrams: In the first step of im-plementing ITIL in such organizations, there is a great temptation to are ultimately therefore produce complex and detailed process maps. But it seems that produc-ing such complex processes it is not necessary for most of the processes and it is wastes valuable time and resources. For example some processes, such as inci-dent management, are performed hundreds of times daily, and do not need rigid process maps, and that simple process maps need to be created processes.

3. Not creating work instructions: There is no need to create any complicated of com-plex because process map which some is waste time the organizations fail to es-tablish written work. It is better to have written, published, and continually reviewed work instructions.

4. Not assigning process owners Majority of IT departments are silo-based silo-based, not process-oriented. ITIL is process based therefore a process owner should be assigned to each of the ITIL processes that cross functional silos. It is better to the process owner, concentrate on the structure and flow of the process, without having to focus on staffing and other departmental issues. Process owners should carefully monitor and manage the assigned processes, so that it can be continually improved.

5. .Being too ambitious: Base on ITIL structure, there are several service management processes. Many of staff unrest, and poor the organizations attempt to implement all or many of the ITIL processes at once, that it causes confusion, integration be-tween the processes. Therefore it is better to select the most important processes for target organization and then schedule their implementation.

In conclusion, each of these aspects must be carefully considered and monitored pre-viously and during an ITIL implementation project. These are common problems, but organizations must be aware that other particular problems may occur.

3.1.2 ITIL and People

ITIL adoption projects have a great impact on people. The processes that are docu-mented in the ITIL books will be executed by people, in one way or another, depending on the organization. However, the execution of those processes can be challenging, since it introduces ways to do things that people may not understand. This may lead to problematic situations.

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recorded or documented and the printer settings are now unknown to the rest of the organization, which can cause everyone else not being able to print documents.

ITIL documents the processes but puts the responsibility of understanding the bureau-cracy on the shoulders of the organizations. Since ITIL certifications are given to individ-uals, it isn’t viable to pay an ITIL course to every employee.

ISO 20000, which is an ITIL v2 certification for organizations, helps monitoring and con-trolling practices, checking if they are in fact executed correctly. However, it is just a checklist that doesn’t provide training and comprehensive explanations about the ITIL philosophy.

This way, ITIL doesn’t provide organizations a mean to educate their employees in the implementation phase. If this existed, the ITIL framework would be more complete and holistic, being a more complete organizational maturity framework.

We also weren’t able to find relevant academic work on the subject of the people role on ITIL adoption. This area lacks documentation and research, something that hopefully this work can improve.

3.2 People Frameworks

In this section are presented the main frameworks related to IT people management. These include ABC of ICT, SFIA and the People CMM framework.

3.2.1 ABC of ICT

ABC of ICT™ stands for the ’Attitude’, ’Behavior’ and ’Culture’ within ICT organizations. Is it part of the ABC at Work broader approach that is directed towards organizations deploy-ing ITIL, PRINCE2 and other best practice frameworks. There is a growdeploy-ing recognition in the ITSM community that the ABC factor is important in ensuring ITSM improvement initiatives work (Wilkinson & Schilt, 2008) and ABC of ICT addresses those issues. ABC is described as follows (Wilkinson & Schilt, 2008):

“Attitude” This is what people think and feel. It is their demeanor and how they react to the world about them. How they react to a change initiative, a colleague, or a customer. An example of attitude is somebody thinking “The users are always complaining...just ignore them, they will soon go away”.

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“Culture” This can be described as the accepted ways of working within an organization, the values and standards that people find as normal. An example of culture is “knowledge is power”, or the “hero culture”. In this type of culture people believe that sharing knowledge diminishes their own value, therefore they want to be the only ones with the expertise and knowledge, they are heroes. This type of culture can negatively influence attitudes and behavior.

In fact you could say that “attitude” is individual and comes as a result of personal beliefs and experiences which influence “behavior”. Culture is often difficult to grasp but could be described as the corporate attitude. Often employees in an organization are unaware if the culture and how this influences their personal attitude and behavior. This is why culture is one of the most difficult things to change.(Wilkinson & Schilt, 2008)

ABC of ICT describes a set of critical fail factors or worst practices. It describes a set of behaviors and patterns that are common in organization adopting best practices, and are known to be counterproductive and ineffective. It also addresses the problem of organizational resistance in ITIL adoption projects.

However, it only addresses punctual problems and interpersonal conflicts, as for instance, “No respect for, or understanding of users”. It helps to create a better environment for organizational change, which is important, but it doesn’t help to measure, control and improve people management within organizations. It is reactive and not preventive.

The approach helps organizations recognize problems when they are already happening or starting to happen.

3.2.2 SFIA

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) provides a common reference model for the identification of the skills needed to develop effective Information Systems (IS) making use of Information Communications Technologies (ICT). SFIA is owned and man-aged by the SFIA Foundation, a consortium formed in July 2003 by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS), e-skills UK, and the British Computer Society (BCS) (SFIA, 2006).

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Figure 3.2.1: Excerpt of the SFIA Framework (SFIA, 2006)

One axis presents the whole set of SFIA skills. These are defined in a way that makes them recognizable in the workplace: the practical nature of the descriptions means that they can be used to construct an organization’s internal competency framework.

The skills are presented for in categories which are further broken down into subcate-gories. The categories and subcategories are purely for the convenience of the SFIA user: they form a navigation aid.

SFIA does not claim to be offering a standard definition of the term ‘Business change’, nor is it suggesting that this should be the title of a business role or job. It is simply a con-venient heading under which to group certain related skills (Business analysis, Benefits management, etc) SFIA (2006). The categories are divided in six different areas:

1. Strategy and Architecture

2. Business change

3. Development

4. Service provision

5. Procurement

6. Management Support

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1. Follow

2. Assist

3. Apply

4. Enable

5. Ensure & Advise

6. Initiate & Influence

7. Set strategy, Inspire and Mobilize

Each of seven levels has its own generic definition, cast in terms of autonomy, influence, complexity and business skills. These result in 263 tasks defined. The framework is further expanded by SFIAPlus (developed by the BCS) which supplements these task descriptions with detailed breakdown of what is required to be able to fulfill those tasks, e.g.: Knowledge, training.

The model is a little complex and it is only useful for analyzing skills and competencies and it doesn’t provide a full insight of human resource management within the organiza-tion.

3.2.3 People CMM

The People Capability Maturity Model (People CMM) is a maturity framework that de-scribes the key elements of managing and developing the workforce of an organization. It describes an evolutionary improvement path from an ad hoc approach to managing the work-force, to a mature, disciplined development of the knowledge, skills, and motivation of the people that fuels enhanced business performance.

The People CMM framework was created and is currently maintained by the Software

Engineering Group1, who also created the popular CMMI2framework for software

devel-opment. The framework was originally developed to improve the software development process, but the concepts are general enough to use the framework as a reference of human resource management.

The People CMM framework has 5 maturity levels (Figure 3.2.2), where 1 is the most basic. At each maturity level, a new system of practices is added to those implemented in earlier levels. Each overlay of practices raises the level of sophistication through which the

organization develops its workforce (Curtiset al., 2002). Each maturity level is described

below. Maturity levels 1 and 2 are described more extensively since this work was focused in the transition between Level 1 and 2 (see2.1).

Level 1 - Initial: Staffing is identified by Curtis et al.(2002) one of the main problems faced by organizations in Level 1:

1_{http://www.sei.cmu.edu}

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Organizations at the Initial Level of maturity usually have difficulty retaining talented indi-viduals. Even though many low maturity organizations complain about a talent shortage, the inconsistency of their actions belies whether they actually believe it. Low maturity or-ganizations are poorly equipped to respond to talent shortages with anything other than slogans and exhortations.

Despite the importance of talent, workforce practices in low maturity organizations are often ad hoc and inconsistent. In some areas, the organization has not defined workforce practices, and, in other areas, it has not trained responsible individuals to perform the practices that exist. Organizations at the Initial Level typically exhibit four characteristics:

1. Inconsistency in performing practices;

2. Displacement of responsibility;

3. Ritualistic practices;

4. An emotionally detached workforce.

Management practices are also ad-hoc and inconsistent, which leads to problems in lead-ership and performance:

Generally managers and supervisors in low maturity organizations are ill prepared to per-form their workforce responsibilities. Their management training is sparse and, when provided, tends to covers only those workforce practices with the greatest legal sensi-tivity. The organization may typically provide forms for guiding workforce activities such as performance appraisals or position requisitions. However, too often little guidance or training is offered for conducting the activities supported by these forms. Consequently, managers are left to their own devices in most areas of workforce management.

Low maturity organizations implicitly assume that management skill is either innate or is acquired by observing other managers. However, if managers are inconsistent in man-aging their people, nascent managers will be learning from inconsistent role models. (...)

Since low maturity organizations rarely clarify the responsibilities of managers, incon-sistencies are to be expected. Consequently, how people are treated depends largely on personal orientation, previous experience, and the individual “people skills” of their manager, supervisor, or team leader. While some managers perform their workforce responsibilities diligently, others perform some workforce activities with little forethought and ignore other responsibilities altogether.

Studies have consistently shown that one of the major causes for voluntary turnover is related to individual’s relationships with their manager or supervisor. Managers in low maturity organizations rarely share a common vision about the fundamental responsi-bilities of management. They perceive management to be about producing results, not about producing people who produce results. (...)

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Level 1 organizations don’t develop their workforce which prevents them to attach new opportunities because they don’t have the talent required to do so. This happens because they never developed it or because they don’t have the capability of retaining or recruiting new talent:

In immature organizations, many workforce practices are performed with little or no anal-ysis of their impact. Recruiting campaigns, classroom training, and bonuses are among the many practices that are performed more as a ritual of organizational life than as pro-cesses that have been designed to achieve specific and measurable results. In the worst case, the failure to evaluate workforce practices ensures the failure to detect occasions when their impact is counterproductive to their intended effect. Consequently, ritualism can be as damaging to organizational effectiveness as inconsistency.

When an organization fails to proactively develop its workforce, career-oriented people pursue their own agendas. Mediocre performance and high turnover are typical when organizations provide few financial or career incentives for individuals to align themselves with the organization’s business objectives.

Loyalty declines when individuals do not perceive the organization to be a vehicle by which they will achieve their career aspirations. In these circumstances individuals per-ceive the organization as an opportunity for developing specific skills that, once devel-oped, will be used to pursue career opportunities elsewhere.

Constant churn in the workforce diminishes its capability. Although some turnover, or vol-untary attrition, may be necessary or even beneficial, high turnover limits the level of skill available in the workforce, limiting an organization’s ability to improve its performance.

Improvement programs guided by the People CMM are most often initiated when an or-ganization faces a talent shortage exacerbated by an inability to attract or retain talented individuals. The first step in changing this state of affairs is to get managers to take responsibility for the capability and development of those who report to them.

Level 2 -Managed: In Level 2 the concept of management is introduced. Individuals now identified as managers are responsible for the execution of some practices:

The workforce practices implemented at these Managed Level focus on activities at the unit level. The first step toward improving the capability of the workforce is to get man-agers to take workforce activities as high priority responsibilities of their job. They must accept personal responsibility for the performance and development of those who perform the unit’s work.

The practices implemented at Maturity Level 2 focus a manager’s attention on unit-level issues such as staffing, coordinating commitments, providing resources, managing per-formance, developing skills, and making compensation decisions. Building a solid foun-dation of workforce practices within each unit provides the bedrock on which more so-phisticated workforce practices can be implemented at higher levels of maturity. (...)

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practices are expected to develop repeatable methods for activities such as interviewing job candidates or providing performance feedback.

Although managers or groups may differ in how they perform workforce activities, those working within a unit are able to develop consistent expectations about how they will be treated. In addition, the regularity with which practices are performed in each unit, regardless of the method or style, is the first step in creating greater consistency across the organization.

In applying the People CMM it is important to distinguish between management and managers. There are responsibilities that need to be managed and there are people called managers, but there is no required one-to-one mapping between them.

Managers are responsible for overcoming some of the problems that people face in Level 1 organizations. This represents a productivity boost that affects the whole organization:

Focusing at the unit level first also establishes a foundation in managing performance that can be enhanced with more sophisticated practices at higher levels. If people are unable to perform their assigned work, sophisticated workforce practices will be of little benefit to individuals or the organization. In a Maturity Level 2 organization, managers are vigilant for any problems that hinder performance in their units. Frequent problems that keep people from performing effectively in low-maturity organizations include:

• Work overload;

• Environmental distractions;

• Unclear performance objectives or feedback;

• Lack of relevant knowledge, or skill;

• Poor communication;

• Low morale.

Level 2 organizations can retain their talent due to this improvement in organizational infrastructure:

One of the first benefits organizations experience when they implement improvements guided by the People CMM is a reduction in voluntary turnover. At Maturity Level 2, the People CMM addresses one of the most frequent causes of turnover: poor relations with their boss. When people begin to see a more rational work environment emerge in their unit, their motivation to stay with the organization is enhanced. As their development needs are addressed, they begin to see the organization as a vehicle through which they can achieve their career objectives.

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Organizations at the Repeatable level find that although they are performing basic work-force practices, there is inconsistency in how these practices are performed across units. The organization is not capitalizing on opportunities to standardize its best workforce practices, because it has not identified the common knowledge and skills needed across its units and the best practices to be used for developing them.

The organization is motivated to achieve the Defined level in order to gain a strategic com-petitive advantage from its core competencies. The workforce capability of organizations at the Defined level is based on having a workforce that possesses the basic knowledge and skills to perform the core business functions of the organization. Workforce devel-opment is introduced which reduces the churn rates:

Knowledge and skills in the organization’s core competencies are more evenly spread across the organization. The organization has improved its ability to predict the perfor-mance of its work activities based on knowing the level of knowledge and skills available in its workforce. Also, it has established a foundation on which continuous development of knowledge and skills can be built.

Level 4 - Predictable/Managed: In Level 4 organizations take workforce development to another level of efficiency:

(...) the organization takes the first steps in capitalizing on managing its core competen-cies as a strategic advantage. It sets quantitative objectives for growth in core compe-tencies and for the alignment of performance across the individual, team, unit, and or-ganizational levels. These measures establish the quantitative foundation for evaluating trends in the capability of the organization’s workforce. Further, it seeks to maximize the effectiveness of applying these competencies by developing teams that integrate com-plementary knowledge and skills.

The workforce capability of Level 4 organizations is predictable because the current capability of the workforce is known quantitatively. The organization has also devel-oped a mechanism for deploying its competencies effectively through high-performance, competency-based teams. Future trends in workforce capability and performance can be predicted because the capability of the workforce practices to improve the knowledge and skills of the workforce is known quantitatively. This level of workforce capability provides the organization with an important predictor of trends in its business capability.

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Figure 3.2.2: The People CMM framework Curtiset al.(2002)

At the Optimizing level, there is a continuous focus on improving individual competen-cies and finding innovative ways to improve workforce motivation and capability. The workforce capability of Optimizing organizations is continuously improving because they are perpetually improving their workforce practices. Improvement occurs both by incre-mental advancements in their existing workforce practices and by adoption of innovative practices and methods that may have a dramatic impact.

The culture created in an Optimizing organization is one in which all members of the workforce are striving to improve their own, their team’s, and their unit’s knowledge, skills, and motivation in order to improve the organization’s overall performance. The workforce practices are honed to create a culture of performance excellence.

Skipping Maturity Levels and Process Areas

Some organizations try to skip to higher maturity levels by implementing measurement, empowerment, or continuous improvement practices without building the infrastructure of practices provided by lower maturity levels of the model. Experience indicates, however, that it usually leads to a failed improvement program. In fact, it can actually damage the organization if the workforce builds expectations for changes that are not fully deployed

when the program unravels (Curtiset al., 2002).

Similarly, some organizations may want to declare a process area non applicable in their environments. Because these process areas form systems of mutually supporting prac-tices, it is difficult to identify which process area is an obvious candidate for being ignored

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Summary

The People CMM framework provides organizations with a structured reference that they can use to improve their HR management. Although it is not dogmatic, organizations are encouraged not to ignore process areas or maturity levels.

The People CMM framework only requires that processes are executed. The focus is not evaluating how the processes are implemented. For instance, the framework only requires that performance is measured, but it doesn’t state how. This can lead to cases where the process is implemented but in an inefficient way or in a way that doesn’t bring much value to the organization. To mitigate this factor, there are Measurement and Anal-ysis practices in each level, that may help the organization evaluating their effectiveness.

The main added value of the framework is that it gives an holistic view of HR management and provides the means necessary to assess the as-is state

3.3 Organizational Change

Typically a project involves creating something new. An ITIL project, in particular, is about reorganizing the way people work. This involves a 3 phase process (Schein, 1996):

1. Unfreezing: during this phase, individuals must receive information that convinces them that change is necessary. There is no such thing as change without a rea-son. This must be clear to the individuals who are the subject of change. If this doesn’t happen, resistance may occur. This resistance is the result of people feel-ing threatened by change, e.g. because they fear they don’t have a role in the new environment, or that their skills will no longer be needed.

2. Learning new concepts: In this phase individuals learn new concepts, they let go of old habits and change their standards of evaluation. This can lead to the “unlearn-ing” of concepts that may be conflicting with new ones. For instance, a person that learns how to drive a car with an automatic transmission must “unlearn” to push the clutch pedal.

3. Freezing: During this phase, individuals turn the new learning into routines, com-pleting the learning process

Organizational resistance is a collateral effect of change. Resistance is a behavior that is meant to protect the individual from the effects of a real or imaginary change (Zander, 1950). Schein (1996) states that this behavior occurs during the first phase of the change process (Unfreezing). After they are convinced that change is needed and it’s going to occur, they can suffer from survival anxiety or learning anxiety.

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longer needed. Defensive responses can be denial of the need for change, blaming third parties or negotiating their collaboration.

Survival anxiety is a catalyst for change, because people accept that change is needed and that they need to improve to respond to external threats. This anxiety should be stronger than the learning anxiety.

Schein (1996) says that the change environment must protect individuals in order to achieve a successful change:

1. A positive and convincing vision;

2. Formal training;

3. Involving people in their own learning method;

4. Informal training of groups and relevant teams;

5. Practical cases and feedback;

6. Positive examples;

7. Support groups;

8. Systems and structures consistent with the desired changes.

3.3.1 Leadership and Commitment

Leadership also plays a major role in organizational change. Due to the particular nature if IT in organizations, being the backbone of the entire organization, IT employees must have a different and broader set of skills and roles.

A very common aspect of the IT industry is the high turnover rate of professionals. In 2002, studies revealed that the turnover rates in the Fortune 500 organizations were as high as 25% to 30% (Moore & Burke, 2002). This can lead not only to the decrease of available resources, but also to the loss of specific knowledge and skills. IT leaders must provide a motivating work environment to avoid those losses.

Roepkeet al. (2000) suggest a transition model to explain the change between the

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Figure 3.3.1: The Scalable Model (Roepkeet al., 2000)

To successfully implement the transition described in Figure 3.3.1, two leadership models should be adopted:

• Personal leadership model, directed towards operational levels.

• Positional leadership model, directed towards IT managers.

Senge et al.(1999) also identify 3 types of leadership types, all of them depending on

each other in ways that may not be clear or direct. All of these are important to initiate and maintain an organizational change process:

• Local Line Leaders: These people are in the front line of customer relationship. This line is where the business value is generated and where relationships are created and maintained. One of the reasons that prevent change in organizations is the lack of commitment by these leaders.

• Executive Leaders: This type of leadership is focused on designing and communi-cating a guideline based on values, business strategies and long term vision. These leader help local line leaders to relate immediate challenges with the organizations long term goals.

• Internal Networkers: These leaders are often ignored due to the fact that they don’t usually occupy high roles in the organizations hierarchy, despite their importance. They can be from different areas and have the skill of moving inside the organiza-tions informal channels. They can create relaorganiza-tionships between local line leaders and can help solve daily problems related to change.

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3.4 Summary

In this section we saw some previous work done in the two main areas that concern this research: ITIL and People Management. In the ITIL section we talked about the background of ITIL, who sponsors and develops the library and finally how it is structured. We saw some theories behind ITIL implementations that provide some knowledge based on previous ITIL success and failure projects, from where we extracted the main success factors and things to avoid at all costs.

We also saw that ITIL doesn’t provide organizations a mean to educate people about its philosophy, leaving that responsibility in the shoulders of organizations who want to implement ITIL.

In the second part of the chapter we saw some frameworks related to people and IT human resources on organizations. We introduced “ABC of ICT”, an approach that tries to overcome common organizational problems that happen during these projects, such as personal conflicts, lack of communication between departments, among others.

The SFIA framework is an assessment framework that maps key competencies that or-ganizations should have. By using this framework oror-ganizations can identify gaps in their map of competencies, and assign new responsibilities or hire people who fill those gaps.

We saw that these frameworks didn’t provide the holistic HRM view that we wanted. ABC of ICT solves punctual problems and is a responsive framework. SFIA focuses only on competencies, so we can say that it only concerns the staffing area of HRM.

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Chapter 4

Case Studies

In this chapter the three case studies are presented. Each one has a brief description of the organization in matter of dimension, budget and the size of the IT department. These numbers provide a good insight of the weight that the organizations give to IT. All the numbers used in the descriptions were taken from the organizations available public information such as financial reports and strategic plans. The names of the organizations are not disclosed, and due to being public organisms, the industry is not disclosed as well because that would make clear which one it is.

Each case study includes the final questionnaire results. In the cases where more than one person answered them an average was made to determine the final results (see Section 2.3). This chapter does not include the conclusions of the 3 studies together. That analysis is done in Section 5.

4.1 Organization A

Organization A is a public organism that maintains its activity in all points of the country. It supports, coordinates and helps selling the activity of a sector that provides the em-ployment of 10,2% of the active population of the country and is responsible for 11% of the country’s GIP (as of 2010).

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Figure 4.1.1: Organization A’s Hierarchy

The organizations budget for 2010 is C229 Million, of which C5 Million concern IT. This means that the IT budget represents 2% of the total budget. This value doesn’t include expenses with staff or infrastructures.

The organization focuses IT on its core business of giving support to the sector, with activities such as infrastructure management being outsourced. There is an ongoing ITIL adoption process, with an already working Service Desk. The organization also has a CMDB but keeping it updated has been a problem for the last 2 years. This means that although the organization has some ITIL processes being executed there is much room for improvement and manual work that requires coordination and communication (such as updating the CMDB) is a major problem.

4.1.1 Interviews

A first interview was conducted to explain the purpose of the study and to evaluate the organizations availability. The response was positive, so the plan was to send the ques-tionnaire to the organizations liaison that would then become responsible for forwarding them to the people he determined that had the knowledge needed do answer them and provide valid input. However, the forwarding never happened even after further succes-sive requests.

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4.1.2 Results

Results are shown in Figure 4.1.2. Communication and Coordination, Performance Man-agement and Training and Development areas obtained a score higher than 3. However, no areas achieved the score of 3,5 and no evidences were asked. This organization shows some balance between management areas although the Compensation area falls behind the others. With some effort it’s possible to achieve a score of 3,5 in all areas which would provide a better human resource infrastructure. Despite the results, this organization still remains in Level 1 (which is described in Section3.2.3).

Figure 4.1.2: Score of each area for Organization A

4.2 Organization B

Organization B is a public institute responsible for the planning, conception, execution, maintenance and evaluation of all the IT initiatives of a Portuguese ministry. The client base is immense, because it counts with all the country’s resident population, all the private companies and the State itself.

This organization had 211 permanent workers as of 2008. All of these workers can be considered IT staff, since the organization can be seen as the ministry’s IT department. The organization has 7 different business units, represented in Figure 4.2.1. Business units represented as “Applicational Solutions 1” and “Applicational Solutions 2” are areas responsible for different public organisms whose names are not disclosed.

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Figure 4.2.1: Organization B’s Hierarchy

This organization places a strong emphasis on standards and certifications. It was rec-ognized by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) as a level 2 orga-nization.

Bureau Veritas1, a certifying agency, granted the ISO 90012(quality policies) certification

in 2008 and the ISO 270013(information security) certification in 2009.

There are 3 annual CobiT4[sic] audits, and the organization currently has a 3.2 (out of 5)

score, with the next goal being achieving a score of 3.5.

There are also 30 to 40 employees who obtained the ITIL Foundation5certification.

4.2.1 Interviews

Due to the organizations policies, we were only able to interview one contact. The contact was the responsible for the certification initiatives, being an important source of knowl-edge. Unfortunately it was not possible to perform the audit. Due to bureaucratic difficul-ties the study wasn’t formally authorized and the permissions needed to verify physical evidences weren’t conceded.

This is a massive limitation of this study, because it jeopardizes the scientific validity of the results. However, this organization performs several rigorous and extensive audits every year, by different authorities. Due to the success of these audits, the probability of these results being completely wrong is very low.

The results were used as given, but it should be kept in mind that they weren’t verified when analyzing the conclusion of this study.

1_{http://www.bureauveritas.pt} 2_www.iso.org/

3_www.iso.org/

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4.2.2 Results

Results are presented in Figure 4.3.2. Overall, they were very positive. Three areas achieved the minimum score (3.5) and the other areas were close behind, all with a score higher than 3. Although not being enough to achieve Level 2, it surpasses by far the score achieved by Organization A. Being a larger organization (211 permanent workers versus only 5) also adds value to the result, since more people are harder to manage. Also, the organization never had a human resource management initiative, so it’s normal that room to improve still exists, as well as in the other case studies.

Figure 4.2.2: Score of each area for Organization B

4.3 Organization C

Organization C is a public organism that serves the Ministry of Defense, employing 12.736 people, as of 2007. Of those, 143 were considered IT staff. This means that in 2007 IT Staff represented 1% of the organizations work force. Of those 143, only 41 were considered to have an IT related career. That means that 71,3% of the IT staff isn’t considered to be an “IT person”. This number suffered a 13% growth since 2005.

Expenses related to IT in 2007 were approximately C6 Million, which represented about 1,09% of total expenses. These expenses do not include salaries.

This organization is currently planning an ITIL adoption project and was interested in knowing if their staff was ready for such a project. Although some processes similar to the ones described in ITIL are implemented (such as incident management), the fact is that they function very poorly. The objective was to make a People CMM assessment and compare the results with previous studies.

Organization C’s IT is currently being divided into 5 departments (4.3.1) that can be de-scribed in the following way:

Organizational Maturity and ITIL Adoption