itSMFA Bulletin February 2017 itSMFA 2017 February Bulletin | Page 14

Luxembourg are planning joint collaboration of the TIPA
framework with the SMPA approach.
Increased workflow understanding
A significant benefit of using the SMPA approach is that
practitioners can gain a better understanding of the workflow
to assess ITSM process capabilities. The SMPA approach
helps an organisation avoid wasting scarce resources on
elaborate and complex assessment techniques. When
organisations evaluate new or existing ITSM processes, they
can use the SMPA approach to assess how well the
capabilities of their processes enable continual service
improvement (CSI) as demonstrated in Figure 1.
The SMPA approach was trialled at the Toowoomba Regional
Council with assessment of three processes: Problem
Management, Change Management and Configuration
Management. Mr. Paul Fendley (Toowoomba Regional
Council) reported that his team gained an “improved
understanding of current IT service delivery maturity and the
effectiveness of differing means of ongoing assessment to
measure improvements.” Increased workflow understanding
was acknowledged as a major benefit of the SMPA used at
Toowoomba Regional Council.
The use of evidence-based tools was a winner at CITEC.
Maria Canard (CITEC) reflected that “… CITEC completed
the online assessment to determine the capability of three
ITSM processes that had been selected: Service Level
Management, Configuration Management and Incident
Management. … I believe our involvement with the
(SMPA) consolidated our own feelings as to the maturity
of those processes.” SMPA approach allows managers to
measure process capability without fear or favour.
Decision Making Support
Senior IT management is faced with the challenge of
improving processes and struggles with decision-making
on process improvements. The SMPA approach generates
process capability scores in a transparent and efficient
manner so that processes can be improved. Figure 2
demonstrates how the software gathers the service
management process quality information and reports the
suggested process improvements.
Evidence-based tool to support decisions
on process improvement
The SMPA approach can measure the performance of CSI
activities on a regular and consistent basis. Organisations can
use the SMPA approach as an evidence-based tool to support
decisions on process improvements. The SMPA approach
provides assurance to top-management that a structured
method is followed to assess the capability of ITSM Figure 2 Structure of the Decision Support System for the SMPA
approach
processes.
14 itSMF Bulletin—February 2017