The workflow to facilitate the SMPA approach is shown in Figure 3 . Mr Paul Collins ( Assessment Portal Pty Ltd ) reported that their company “… benefitted from the credibility … achieved by allowing ( their ) software to be independently scrutinized during the project .” “ We also have a commercially viable assessment that can be made available to our client base . Additionally , we have been able to incorporate some of the learnings from the project across our other business assessments , including our new SFIA skills assessment .” Mr Collins said .
Figure 3 . Typical Workflow for an Assessment Facilitator using the Decision Support System
The SMPA approach can be used to conduct self-assessments specifically for small and mid-size organisations that do not have sufficient budget to conduct comprehensive process assessments . The SMPA tool also allows IT service organisations to self-assess the capability of their ITSM processes which can produce more successful audits . The SMPA approach can assist auditors to conduct formal assessments by providing a dataset of testimony evidence for assessments . Practitioners can use the assessment results from the SMPA approach to benchmark their firm or business unit against other firms or business units .
Process assessment automation will not completely upstage the need for trained professionals with organisations choosing to implement a hybrid of software automation and human insights for process assessments . Mr . Paul Fendley ( Toowoomba Regional Council ) states that “ Council … identified prioritized areas for improvement and will use a cost-effective combination of human assessed and automated / self-survey assessment to measure progress .” This hybrid assessment solution of automation and trained professionals was favoured at Toowoomba Regional Council and is likely the way of the future .
The SMPA project team at the Australian Information Industry Association ( AIIA ) event in July 2015 ( Left to Right ) Dr . Nick Tate ( ACS QLD Branch Chair ), Dr . Anup Shrestha , Mr . Paul Collins ( Assessment Portal Pty Ltd ), Professor Aileen Cater-Steel , Hon Leeanne Enoch ( Minister for Science and Innovation QLD )
For further details of the SMPA approach , contact Prof Aileen Cater-Steel ( email Aileen . Cater-Steel @ usq . edu . au ). Research articles on SMPA are available from USQ ’ s e-prints repository Click here
15 itSMF Bulletin — February 2017