Create a Holistic IT Dashboard

Mature your IT department by measuring what matters.

Executive Brief

Analyst Perspective

Measurement alone provides only minimal improvements

It’s difficult for CIOs and other top-level leaders of IT to know if everything within their mandate is being managed effectively. Gaining visibility into what’s happening on the front lines without micromanaging is a challenge most top leaders face.

Understanding Info-Tech’s Management and Governance Framework of processes that need to be managed and being able to measure what’s important to their organization's success can give leaders the ability to focus on their key responsibilities of ensuring service effectiveness, enabling increased productivity, and creating the ability for their teams to innovate.

Even if you know what to measure, the measurement alone will lead to minimal improvements. Having the right methods in place to systematically collect, review, and act on those measurements is the differentiator to driving up the maturity of your IT organization.

The tools in this blueprint can help you identify what to measure, how to review it, and how to create effective plans to improve performance.

Tony Denford

Research Director, Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• IT leaders do not have a single holistic view of how their IT processes are operating.
• Expecting any single individual to understand the details of all IT processes is unrealistic.
• Problems in performance only become evident when the process has already failed.

Common Obstacles

• Business changes quickly, and what should be measured changes as a result.
• Most measures are trailing indicators showing past performance.
• Measuring alone does not result in improved performance.
• There are thousands of operational metrics that could be measured, but what are the right ones for an overall dashboard?

Info-Tech's Approach

• Use Info-Tech’s IT Metrics Library to review typical KPIs for each of the process areas and select those that apply to your organization.
• Configure your IT Management Dashboard to record your selected KPIs and start to measure performance.
• Set up the cadence for review of the KPIs and develop action plans to improve low-performing indicators.

Info-Tech Insight

Mature your IT department by aligning your measures with your organizational goals. Acting early when your KPIs deviate from the goals leads to improved performance.

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations quickly choose holistic measures, review the results, and devise action plans.

• The sheer number of possible metrics can be overwhelming. Choose metrics from our IT Metrics Library or choose your own, but always ensure they are in alignment with your organizational goals.
• Ensure your dashboard is balanced across all 45 process areas that a modern CIO is responsible for.
• Finding leading indicators to allow your team to be proactive can be difficult if your team is focused on the day-to-day operational tasks.
• It can be time consuming to figure out what to do if an indicator is underperforming.

Build your dashboard quickly using the toolset in this research and move to improvement actions as soon as possible.

Productivity increased by 30%

Fire/smoke incidents decreased by 25% (high priority)

Average work request response time reduced by 64%

Savings of $1.6 million in the first year

(CFI, 2013)

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations:

• What should be measured can change over time as your organization matures and the business environment changes. Understanding what creates business value for your organization is critical.
• Organizations almost always focus on past result metrics. While this is important, it will not indicate when you need to adjust something until it has already failed.
• It’s not just about measuring. You also need to review the measures often and act on the biggest risks to your organization to drive performance.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the number of things you can measure. It can take some trial and error to find the measures that best indicate the health of the process.

The importance of frequent review

35% - Only 35% of governing bodies review data at each meeting. (Committee of University Chairs, 2008)

Common obstacles

Analysis paralysis

Poor data can lead to incorrect conclusions, limit analysis, and undermine confidence in the value of your dashboard.

Achieving perfect data is extremely time consuming and may not add much value. It can also be an excuse to avoid getting started with metrics and analytics.

Data quality is a struggle for many organizations. Consider how much uncertainty you can tolerate in your analysis and what would be required to improve your data quality to an acceptable level. Consider cost, technological resources, people resources, and time required.

Info-Tech Insight

Analytics are only as good as the data that informs it. Aim for just enough data quality to make informed decisions without getting into analysis paralysis.

Common obstacles

The problem of surrogation

Tying KPIs and metrics to performance often leads to undesired behavior. An example of this is the now infamous Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal, in which 3.5 million credit card and savings accounts were opened without customers’ consent when the company incented sales staff to meet cross-selling targets.

Although this is an extreme example, it’s an all-too-common phenomenon.

A focus on the speed of closure of tickets often leads to shortcuts and lower-quality solutions.

Tying customer value to the measures can align the team on understanding the objective rather than focusing on the measure itself, and the team will no longer be able to ignore the impact of their actions.

Surrogation is a phenomenon in which a measure of a behavior replaces the intent of the measure itself. People focus on achieving the measure instead of the behavior the measure was intended to drive.

Info-Tech’s thought model

Low-Maturity Metrics Program

Trailing indicators measure the outcomes of the activities of your organization. Hopefully, the initiatives and activities are aligned with the organizational goals.

High-Maturity Metrics Program

The core CIO objectives align with the organizational goals, and teams define leading indicators that show progress toward those goals. KPIs are reviewed often and adjustments are made to improve performance based on the leading indicators. The results are improved outcomes, greater transparency, and increased predictability.

Info-Tech’s approach

Adopt an iterative approach to develop the right KPIs for your dashboard

Periodically: As appropriate, review the effectiveness of the KPIs and adjust as needed.

Frequently: At least once per month, but the more frequent, the more agility your organization will have.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Quickly identify the KPIs that matter to your organization using the IT Metrics Library.
2. Build a presentable dashboard using the IT Management Dashboard available on the Info-Tech website.
3. When indicators show underperformance, quickly get them back on track using the suggested research in the IT Metrics Library.
4. If your organization’s needs are different, define your own custom metrics using the same format as the IT Metrics Library.
5. Use the action plan tool to keep track of progress

Info-Tech’s methodology for creating a holistic IT dashboard

Insight summary

Mature your IT department by aligning your measures with your organizational goals. Acting early when your KPIs deviate from the goals leads to improved performance.

Don’t just measure things because you can. Change what you measure as your organization becomes more mature.

Select what matters to your organization

Measure things that will resolve pain points or drive you toward your goals.

Look for indicators that show the health of the practice, not just the results.

Review KPIs often

Ease of use will determine the success of your metrics program, so keep it simple to create and review the indicators.

Take action to improve performance

If indicators are showing suboptimal performance, develop an action plan to drive the indicator in the right direction.

Act early and often.

Measure what your customers value

Ensure you understand what’s valued and measure whether the value is being produced. Let front-line managers focus on tactical measures and understand how they are linked to value.

Look for predictive measures

Determine what action will lead to the desired result and measure if the action is being performed. It’s better to predict outcomes than react to them.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

IT Metrics Library

Customize the KPIs for your organization using the IT Metrics Library

IT Metrics Library Action Plan

Keep track of the actions that are generated from your KPI review

Key deliverable:

IT Management Dashboard and Scorecard

The IT Overall Scorecard gives a holistic view of the performance of each IT function

Blueprint benefits

IT Benefits

• An IT dashboard can help IT departments understand how well they are performing against key indicators.
• It can allow IT teams to demonstrate to their business partners the areas they are focusing on.
• Regular review and action planning based on the results will lead to improved performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.
• Create alignment of IT teams by focusing on common areas of performance.

Business Benefits

• Ensure alignment and transparency between the business and IT.
• Understand the value that IT brings to the operation and strategic initiatives of your organization.
• Understand the contribution of the IT team to achieving business outcomes.
• Focus IT on the areas that are important to you by requesting new measures as business needs change.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Utilize the existing IT Metrics Library and IT Dashboard tools to quickly kick off your KPI program

• Developing the metrics your organization should track can be very time consuming. Save approximately 120 hours of effort by choosing from the IT Metrics Library.
• The need for a simple method to display your KPIs means either developing your own tool or buying one off the shelf. Use the IT Management Dashboard to quickly get your KPI program up and running. Using these tools will save approximately 480 hours.
• The true value of this initiative comes from using the KPIs to drive performance.

Keeping track of the number of actions identified and completed is a low overhead measure. Tracking time or money saved is higher overhead but also higher value.

Executive Brief Case Study

Using data-driven decision making to drive stability and increase value

Industry: Government Services

Source: Info-Tech analyst experience

Challenge

A newly formed application support team with service desk responsibilities was becoming burned out due to the sheer volume of work landing on their desks. The team was very reactive and was providing poor service due to multiple conflicting priorities.

To make matters worse, there was a plan to add a major new application to the team’s portfolio.

Solution

The team began to measure the types of work they were busy doing and then assessed the value of each type of work.

The team then problem solved how they could reduce or eliminate their low-value workload.

This led to tracking how many problems were being resolved and improved capabilities to problem solve effectively.

Results

Upon initial data collection, the team was performing 100% reactive workload. Eighteen months later slightly more than 80% of workload was proactive high-value activities.

The team not only was able to absorb the additional workload of the new application but also identified efficiencies in their interactions with other teams that led to a 100% success rate in the change process and a 92% decrease in resource needs for major incidents.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostic and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1 - Choose the KPIs

Call #1: Scope dashboard and reporting needs.

Call #2: Learn how to use the IT Metrics Library to select your metrics.

Phase 2 – Build the Dashboard

Call #3: Set up the dashboard.

Call #4: Capture data and produce the report.

Phase 3 – Create the Action Plan

Call #5: Review the data and use the metrics library to determine actions.

Call #6: Improve the KPIs you measure.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is between 5 and 8 calls over the course of 2 to 3 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Phase 1

Choose the KPIs

Phase 1

1.1 Review Available KPIs

1.2 Select KPIs for Your Org.

1.3 Identify Data Sources and Owners

Phase 2

2.1 Understand the IT Management Dashboard

2.2 Build and Review the KPIs

Phase 3

3.1 Prioritize Low-Performing Indicators

3.2 Review Suggested Actions

3.3 Develop the Action Plan

This phase will walk you through the following activities:

Reviewing and selecting the KPIs suggested in the IT Metrics Library.

Identifying the data source for the selected KPI and the owner responsible for data collection.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Process area owners
• Metrics program owners and administrators