The role of quality in IT
Improve quality and make money!
When it comes to quality management, IT organisations can take a leaf out of industry’s book.
Thanks to the success of companies like Toyota and Motorola, methods such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Six Sigma are gaining rapid popularity. And with good reason. Quality is a good generator of money, and lots of it.
Unlike industry, IT has no physical chain. This makes it more difficult at first to be able to take concrete steps towards the implementation of quality management. But the parallels are easily drawn. Regard a satisfied end user as the equivalent of a faultless end product, a carefully conceived system of applications as the equivalent of a streamlined production line and so forth. And similar to industry, things can go wrong in any aspect. The faultless implementation of processes leads to significant savings (and not forgetting satisfied end users). What should you focus on to set up quality management for IT within your own organisation and subsequently make money?
The service excellence strategy
Organise a strategy of service excellence for the internal IT services, where the optimisation of service to end users receives top priority. After all, poor quality leads to high repair costs. Especially in IT. Resolving incidents costs money (direct costs). And the indirect costs, such as loss of productivity are, though often unobserved, several times these direct costs.
Focus on management and service processes
The focus within IT is often on the projects and the functionalities of the systems. But to ensure service excellence, the performance of management and service processes are equally important. If these processes are substandard, it could result in a lack of clarity, unnecessary waiting times and – in the worst case scenario – to malfunctions. A reassessment of processes is vital to prevent these discomforts and reduce relevant costs.
Measure the effect of failure and errors
The effect of failure and errors at the workplace is rarely measured. Organisations often have no idea how much these mistakes are costing them and what the consequences are for the service to their clients. The costs of incidents and malfunctions are easy to calculate by using a few simple rules of thumb. When you do this regularly, it will become clear for everyone where savings can be realised (read: how much money can be made). This will suddenly put the investments made towards achieving higher quality in an entirely new perspective.
Use simple, service-oriented KPIs
The moment you have insight into what causes the direct and indirect failure and error costs, it’s a small step to define a number of simple and service-oriented KPIs. These KPIs can form the guideline for measuring and improving service quality. Examples of such KPIs are:
- The average number of incidents per employee;
- The percentage of incidents resolved during the first contact with the helpdesk (the so-called ‘first-time right’ principle);
- The percentage of incidents caused by incorrectly implemented changes.
Implement a measurement methodology
Improvements within a quality system happen on the basis of facts. The collection of facts takes place through measurements within the operational processes, on the basis of preselected metrics (e.g. the number of complaints). The key performance indicators (KPIs) show whether a specific objective has been achieved, for example a desired decline in the number of complaints, expressed in percentages.
Don’t overestimate the power of ITIL
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) is a collection of best practices for the structuring of operational processes. Many companies have implemented ITIL in an effort to make their service more professional. ITIL lets you lay a good foundation to make the IT service more professional. But beware: it is no quality methodology. It might be good for defining IT processes, but offers no scope for actual improvement. So you will need a separate quality methodology in addition to ITIL.
Most organisations require a drastic improvement in the quality of their IT services. Perhaps the realisation that this won’t be costing any money, but will instead generate it, offers the incentive needed to set to work earnestly on the issue. The end result means two birds with one stone: a service-oriented IT company that saves costs, and an IT company that truly supports the end users in carrying out their activities optimally.
This article is based on ‘De ‘WOW’ factor – Service Excellence in IT’. A Giarte publication.
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