Case study
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dundee.pdf
1U C I S A I T I L C A S E S T U D Y : U N I V E R S I T Y O F D U N D E E
UCISA ITIL Case Study on the University of Dundee
1. Introduction
The University of Dundee is a research and educational institution, with approximately 18,000 students, including overseas students and approximately 3,500 staff.
The structure of the University is devolved into four Colleges, which are divided into a number of Schools. The Schools and Colleges do have their own IT technical specialists/staff.
A wide variety of IT services and technologies are centrally provided from Information and Computing Services (ICS).
2. Using ITIL
The current version of ITIL being used is v2, but v3 is being viewed as the future maturity option – an organic development. ITIL v2 has been used since 2005.
The original drivers for choosing ITIL were:
� To improve the management and delivery of IT services
� To improve the resilience and availability of services
� Focus on the requirements of the University and not the technology
� Replacing the existing Help Desk as it was inappropriate for the University and implement a Service Desk that supported our implementation of ITIL
� Implement service management Best Practice
� Using an existing recognised framework (not re-inventing the wheel)
� Introduction to IT Services of a service culture and increase staff awareness of, and expertise in, service management
3. The service life cycle – service strategy
Governance and strategic direction
A Governance Group for IT and Information Management has recently been established. The first meeting of this Group took place in July. This Group is chaired by the Secretary of the University with representation of all the Schools. Part of the remit of this Group is to agree the ICT and Information Management Strategy. This Group are looking at the overall alignment of projects with the strategy of the University.
The principles/framework of the information governance are “The Information Management Strategy and the current ICS technology strategy are explicitly aligned with the Strategic Framework. Both contain elements which require continuing support, consultation and decisions which should be taken in a broad University context, particularly when there will be increasing competition for the allocation of diminishing resources”.
Service portfolio management and project management
Projects are managed using PRINCE2 methodology. This methodology is also used to manage overarching programmes in line with managing successful programmes. A Programme Office is in place.
The Programme Office and the PRINCE2 methodology will ultimately become the underpinning, building planning and maturity into delivering the process of portfolio management. A portfolio is currently being developed.
Projects can come from any of three areas, External Development (The University), Internal Development (IT) or Service Development (ITIL etc).
There is a commitment to a reduction of the ICS effort and costs involved in running the business and, therefore, in increasing the level of investment in the capabilities of the University and IT and the value added to the business.
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Communications
Communications are considered paramount to the success of all aspects of ICS service delivery. There is a communications strategy in place.
Communications are via:
� Seminars
� Cascade briefings
� Net-admin group
� Website and intranet site
� Digital signage
� Newsletter
� Other communication options, such as Twitter and blogs are being considered
4. The service life cycle – service design
Service catalogue management
There is a service catalogue in place. There are currently 13 key services,which are then broken down in the supporting services. There is also information related to each of these, which document the required capabilities and skills.
Business relationship management/service level management
The role
There is a team of Liaison Officers – these are not dedicated roles, they are functions carried out by staff within ICS in addition to their main role. This role is currently being reviewed and revamped to align with a new University organisation structure.
The individuals from within ICS who have this liaison role were instructed that the interactions with the Schools had to be at a senior level, to ensure the right level of engagement, i.e. strategic and tactical interactions. The required level of engagement is understood in some Schools, but others are nominating less senior members of staff to engage with IT, which is causing issues with the discussions taking place and decision making.
The revamp of this role will ensure that the engagement is done at the senior management levels within the Schools, i.e. Head of School or School Secretary.
The process and documents
Service level agreements are in place in some areas of the University. Service level management, as a process, has been in place for three years and, in light of ICS’ increased understanding of and maturity in the management and delivery of its services, is currently undergoing a revamp in conjunction with the implementation of a new version of the service desk system.
All standard services have Service Level Statements in place. Outside these there are individual Service Level Agreements in place for those Schools or Colleges who require a higher level of service. These are agreed annually and funded separately. In essence, SLAs are only used for services at exception level.
All these services are measures internally within ICS.
The feedback on the services is generally very good, and has improved significantly over the last three years. This is demonstrated by the reduction in complaints, which is now three or four a year, and at the start of the ITIL implementation was three or four a month.
Costing of services is only really conducted where Schools or Colleges want an additional level of service beyond the standard service. There is also now costing for hosting services and a number of other ICS services including email.
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A Tribal report was conducted on the University of Dundee – this report primarily looking at cost and efficiency. The University IT functions (ICS and School units) came out in the middle of the range. However, an interesting aspect of the report showed that there are as many IT staff out in the Schools and Colleges as there are in the central IS and Computer Services Department and they had been measured together. When IS and Computer Services were measured alone they came out near the top of the efficiency range.
Measuring service
KPIs and metrics are in place and are constantly monitored and measured. These are predominantly based on IT metrics, for example availability, calls to the Support Desk, percentage first level fix, change management activity.
Feedback is gathered as an ongoing activity via a number of mediums, including the intranet site and through feedback gathered through the incident management process. Other feedback is gathered through the service level management process as an ongoing activity.
Service Desk measures are in place.
Capacity management
A capacity management process is in place. Capacity management planning is done by Unit heads within IT, and is done very successfully at component level, and is an ongoing activity. Orion tools have been put in place to support this planning activity. Service review and capacity planning is also carried out across all services. This planning is done in discussion with all parts of the University, to ensure that the capacity requirements are understood, appropriately funded and provided to support the University activities.
Availability management
Considerable investment in the University Network was made to ensure that availability was improved to ensure the appropriate resilience for the University. This has been very successful and has provided full network resilience and greatly improved application resilience.
Availability metrics are in place, but tend to be IT based rather than university based. This is being reviewed.
There is a Data Storage Replacement Project currently taking place, which will also be looking at availability, continuity, capacity and security.
IT service continuity management
IT service continuity management is in place to support the overall University Business Continuity Plans and those of the individual Schools and Colleges. Virtualisation is currently being undertaken and will assist in many of the aspects of continuity management. Once the virtualisation project is completed, all other aspects of continuity will be reviewed.
Information security management
The information security management process is in place and there are policies and procedures in place for data security.
There is a strategy to support all aspects of data security. These are currently being reviewed and also the process is being matured to look at aspects of data security for archiving / archived data.
Supplier management
In the last year, the University of Dundee have implemented the Scottish Government Procurement system: this is called CAPs. This has had very positive effects on all aspects of procurement and behaviour around IT purchase, as the procedures have to be followed by all parts of the University. This has allowed for significant procurement control.
There is a joint responsibility between ICS and Procurement, to ensure that the appropriate purchase orders are raised and that the correct procedures are followed.
The main role of Procurement is to ensure that the correct policies and processes are followed, and they also manage the legal aspects of supplier management, including contract management for anything that is university wide. They also provide some supplier management.
The more operational day to day relationship management of the IT Suppliers is done within the IT organisation.
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5. The service life cycle – service transition
Change management
The role of Change Manager is in place and currently this is a part time role. There is also a role in each team for a change agent for low level operational changes and for developing standard changes.
There is significant understanding of the project/change overlap and how projects need to be logged as a change and discussed/monitored by the Change Advisory Board (CAB). Projects also appear on the Forward Schedule of Change.
A scheduled weekly CAB meeting is held to discuss and schedule changes and to look at the overall release schedule.
Emergency change is defined in a formal policy. A process is in place to implement an emergency change.
There is a Forward Schedule of change in place.
The change management process is currently manual, but will be automated after the upgrade of Touchpaper in September 2009 – it is hoped this work will be completed by the end of December 2009.
Release management
A release management process is in place, including communication and training. An example of this is the Standard Operating Environment – every year there are agreed point releases of the applications that sit on the desktop. This is coordinated with every School and College.
Configuration management
There is a Configuration Management Database (CMBD) in place, but this is not overly sophisticated. A plan is in place to release the new version of Touchpaper by the end of September 2009, and this will be the basis of a review and planning opportunity for the updating of the CMDB and taking the configuration management process forward. The work on configuration management will underpin the automation of the change process and will be developed alongside this process.
6. The service life cycle – service operation
The Service Desk
There is a Central Service Desk in place, which acts as a single point of contact. There are only three ways to interact with the Service Desk and these are: email, telephone or web.
There are seven staff on the Service Desk including the Service Desk Manager. The Service Desk has been merged with the administration function and the training function, which has allowed increased efficiency, as most of the activities could be carried out or support the first line support activities in dealing with service requests.
Incident management
There is an incident management process owner and a group – the Local Incident Management team, who support the process owner in all aspects of review and development.
The Local Incident Management team is made up from staff from the technical teams, which are the predominant users of incident management. Their remit is to ensure that the incident management process is correctly followed and reviewed and developed to fit the changing requirements. The incident management process is under review and the new version will be put in place along with the implementation of the new version of Touchpaper.
Service request/request fulfilment
Service requests are handled separately to incidents, although they are handled through a version of the incident management process. This will change with the implementation of the new version of Touchpaper and work has been done to define service request processes in support of this.
Access management
Access management is predominantly dealt with by the Service. There are also automated password resets in place.
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Problem management
A problem management process is in place and is coordinated by a nominated Problem Manager (this role is taken on by one of the Heads of Unit within ICS).
7. The service life cycle – continual service improvement
Continual service improvement has become a significant activity and there are a number of aspects of this that are already being carried out.
Monitoring and reporting are carried out regularly, but these are currently more IT based than customer based, for example, incident management reports. User satisfaction surveys are carried out on calls to the Service Desk. This will be extended, over the coming year, to include other mechanisms for gathering and analysing feedback.
All activities that are being carried out with process improvement and implementation are part of the overall commitment of ICS to continual service improvement.
8. Service management software
Touchpaper is the application currently being used to support the ITIL processes (note that Touchpaper has recently been taken over by Avocent and, as a result, the Service Desk system is now known as Landesk (which is actually an enhanced version of Touchpaper). This has been in place for approximately three years and was the basis for the original ITIL implementation.
It was chosen as part of an assessment and evaluation process, which led to two final products being shortlisted. Touchpaper was ultimately chosen as it was an ITIL conformant suite and was significantly more process based than the other product.
It took three months to implement.
The new version (known as Landesk 7.3), which is being implemented in September 2009, will be a significant step forward that resolves many of the current irritating issues.
There is a knowledge base that is currently being used – this is Right Answers (an American product). This is a hosted product – they also keep historic information. The knowledge base that was part of Touchpaper was not considered appropriate and was too limited for the requirements of the University.
The main parts of Touchpaper currently being used are Service Desk, Incident Management, Service Requests, Problem Management and Configuration Management. The new version will allow for the automation of the change management process and the development of the configuration management process.
It has been agreed that Touchpaper will become a strategic IT tool. Student Services have already had their processes mapped on to the system and will go live at the end of October 2009. This is a service based tool and consideration has been given to using it to handle Estates and Human Resource processes. Estate Services have decided not to use this product at the moment, but discussions are ongoing with Human Resources.
The current number of users of Touchpaper is approximately 200 in IT plus 70 from Support Services. A staff and student view will be rolled out with the new version in September 2009 to allow self tracking and viewing.
The best feature of Touchpaper has been the ITIL conformant processes and the fact that this is a business tool rather than an IT tool.
Recommendations on purchasing a software tool
� Look at the purchase from a process and business perspective rather than something that just supports the Service Desk
� A quality product – a suite not a product with endless add ons
� Easy to use/user interface
� Seamless flow between modules – i.e. relationship of incidents, problems and changes etc. – no reconfiguration to achieve this
� Continuous improvement is not overly complicated
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9. ITIL development and qualifications
ITIL overview training is carried out internally. Training beyond this initial level is carried out on site by an external company. The company that was originally used was Chameleon, but we have moved to QA as part of a strategic training investment. The training that is being carried out at Foundation Level now is v3.
A review of ITIL training has been carried out, and it has been agreed that all staff will go through Foundation v3, and consideration is being made for the conversion of the Manager’s Certificate in v2 to the ITIL Expert in v3.
The intermediate levels of ITIL are also being considered for those who are process owners to ensure that there are subject matter expert skills, for example change management.
Training has also been offered and taken up by some IT staff in the Schools and Colleges.
10. ITIL conclusions and recommendations
The University of Dundee would recommend ITIL as a service management framework based on:
� It does help focus on processes and provides a mechanism for evaluating and implementing process improvements, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of running the business activity and, therefore, reducing the resources and costs associated with this. Consequently resources are freed up to work on activities that develop capability and/or add value to the business
� It is Global Best Practice
� It is a framework that can be appropriately adapted in terms of both implementation and application
� It helps develop a more professional and business focused staff
11. ITIL lessons learned
� Communication and ITIL awareness sessions/overviews to bring the staff on board are key to the success of an ITIL implementation – these should be done at all levels of IT.
� Understand the organisational change issues that surround an ITIL implementation.
� At the start, poor change management was causing at least 40% of the incidents that were being experienced (good change management is paramount to the success) within six months of implementing change management the incidents causing impact had dropped to 4%.
� The staff are now running and developing the processes themselves, as part of their day to day roles, and senior management are only involved when it is necessary.
� Ensure that the Service Level Manager role is carried out at the right level from within IT, and with the right level within the University, with Senior Managers to ensure that the engagement is at a strategic and tactical level and is about development of services, not about technology.
� The processes will continue to evolve, particularly in the first three years. They must be reviewed regularly and realigned as lessons are learned and the process maturity increases.
12. Significant areas of experience
� All areas!
� Change management
� Documentation – to have a look: www.dundee.ac.uk/ics
13. Contact information
Tom Mortimer – Director of Computing Services
01382 384134
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Table of ITIL Processes and The Service Desk1
The University of Dundee ITIL Process Maturity Matrix
Process name Implemented/ being improved
Partially implemented/ emerging
Planned Not planned
Service strategy
Financial management for IT services
Service portfolio management
Demand management
Service design
Service catalogue management
Service level management
Capacity management
Availability management
IT service continuity management
Information security management
Supplier management
Service transition
Knowledge management
Change management
Release management
Deployment management
Service asset management
Configuration management
Service validation and service testing
Service operation
The Service Desk
Incident management
Request fulfillment
Problem management
Accessmanagement
Event management
Continual service improvement
The 7 Step Improvement Process
1 Subjective rather than objective assessment.
