Measuring andImproving thePerformance ofan ITSupport Organization inManaging Service Incidents

Incident management istheprocess through which organization anddescribe itsinner working atamuchfiner theITsupport organization manages torestore normalservicegrain level ofdetail. operation asquickly aspossible andwithminimumdisruption to Building onthis first level ofperformance assessment, it thebusiness. Oneoftheultimate measures ofanITsupportsoonbecomes clear that thebest waytoassess performance is organization's success istheamountoftimeittakes toresolve an m termsofwhatthebusinesses that theorganization support incident. Reducing this valuenotonlyreduces total costand enperm s of inssesltha thergizatisuppor t resource allocation butalsoincreases customer satisfaction, experience asaresult ofitsdealng with service disruptions. whichisoneofthemostimportant measures ofasupport cen- Inthepoint above, weaddress theperformance indealing with ter's performance. However, thesupport organization isoften incidents. Butnotallincidents arecreated equal. Somehavea unable tocollect dataontheir performance, letalone experimenthigher penalty costthanotherifthey arenotclosedbya withtheconsequences ofreshuffling theorganization andplayingspecified deadline. Otherconditions being even,some withalternative staffing levels. incidents mayaffect morestrategically important partners than Inthis paper, wepresent ourapproach toassessing andim- other, andthis mustbetaken into account whendefining the proving theperformance ofanITsupport organization inman- impact oftheservice disruptions on thebusiness thatthe aging service incidents, basedonthedefinition ofa setofper- formance metrics anda methodology forguided analysis that organization supports. allows ausertofindtherootcauses ofpoorperformance and Lastbutnotleast, havingassessed thehistorical decide oncorrective actions tobetaken. Weprovide validation of performance, andidentified areasforimprovements, itis theapproach bydiscussing itsapplication areal-life casestudy of usually nottrivial tounderstand theimprovements brought aleading ITprovider fortheairline industry. about byrestructuring thesupport organization byincreasing orcutting staffing levels, moving operators around support Keywords: Business-driven ITmanagement (BDIM), busi- groups (possibly onretraining), andevenimplement different ness-oriented performance measures, modeling, performance prioritization policies forthetechnician whendealing with evaluation, decision support, datawarehousing, Information Tech- queues ofincidents. nology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), incident management.