ITIL – General Motors Change Management Study

In 2008 James W. Flosdorf, Jr. published the study “A PROGRAM EVALUATION OF THE ITIL-BASED CHANGE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM AT GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION“.

The focus of this study was to determine which commonly implemented ITIL best practices in the Change, Release and Configuration Management disciplines were, by statistical measure, the best predictors of IT performance excellence. The ITPI researchers condensed their findings and categorized them into seven sets of related practices, comprising 30 different individual practices (ITPI, 2007). Of these 30 individual best practices, five were found to match the KPIs used in this evaluation of GM’s Change Management program. These five ITPI best 59 practice performance indicators were change success rate, emergency change rate, unauthorized change rate, release impact rate, and release rollback rate. The ITPI study defined these KPIs as follows:

• Change Success Rate – changes that met functional objectives and were completed during planned time
• Emergency Change Rate – changes are tracked, but do not get standard review before they are implemented
• Unauthorized Change Rate – percentage of changes that are unauthorized; changes made without being tracked by the standard change/release process
• Release Impact Rate – percentage of production releases that cause a service outage or incident
• Release Rollback Rate – percentage of production changes in the last 12 months that were rolled back

Part of the study compares GM’s performance to the ITPI study ranking of top-, medium-, and low-performing IT organizations for these five best practices. Top performers are defined by ITPI as the IT organizations performing in the top 20th percentile of all survey respondents (ITPI, 2007). It was found that GM performed better than the average of the top-performers in all of the best practice areas except for Emergency Change Rate (Urgent Changes), where GM (at 10.08%) had more urgent changes on average then the top-performers (at 7.10%) but less than the medium-performers (at 12.70%). Or put another way, GM was higher than the topperformer’s mean emergency change rate by 41.97%.
Table 11: Comparison of GM ChM Program Performance to ITPI Study KPIs
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ITPI Study Performance Ranking
IT Best Practice KPI                         General Motors          Top                     Medium               Low
Change Success Rate                        98.03%                          96.40%             92.50%                81.30%
Emergency Change Rate                 10.08%                            7.10%             12.70%               22.90%
Unauthorized Change Rate              0.05%                            0.70%               3.20%               11.40%
Release Impact Rate                            0.21%                            2.90%               5.60%               11.10%
Release Rollback Rate                         1.05%                            3.30%               3.80%                 8.50%
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ITPI–IT Process Institute; KPI-Key Performance Indicator
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IT Staffing Benchmark Metrics

In a presentation entitled “Staffing Strategies for the 21stCentury” by Katherine Spencer Lee, Executive Director at Robert Half Technology (September 18, 2008), the following IT staffing metrics were presented:

A Robert Half Technology* survey asked 1,400 CIOs to compare …
Actual versus ideal ratio of internal end-users to technical support employees at their company

• Mean response for Actual was 136:1
• Mean response for Ideal was 82:1

Technical Support Center staffs are 40 percent smaller, on average, than optimal.

Mobile vs Static staffing ratios:

• There is a baseline ratio around 90 customers per analyst.
• Technical and mobile user bases earn a lower ratio due to higher complexity (1:80-110)
• Fewer analysts required for non-technical and static users (1:120-160)

Organizational goals should help set staffing levels:

1. Compete at the cutting edge of innovation (25:1 to 50:1)
2. Compete on full service and overall value (60:1 t0 100:1)
3. Compete on thin cost margin and scalability (125:1 to 200:1)

A complete copy of the Robert Half presentation can be found here.

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Laundry list of metrics for ten ITIL support and delivery processes

A laundry list of sample metrics for IT processes was developed by Pink Elephant.  This document provides a detailed list of over one hundred metrics for the Service Desk and each of the ten ITIL support and delivery processes.  The list includes ITIL metrics for:

• Configuration Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Service Delivery Processes
• Capacity Management
• IT Service Continuity Management
• Financial Management
• Service Level Management
• Incident Management

Click here to download the complete “Laundry List of ITIL Metrics”.

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ITIL Hourly Bill Rates

Hotgigs.com reports ITIL Hourly Bill Rates

High: $150.00 per hour

Mid: $137.50 per hour

Low: $125.00 per hour

HotGigs Inc. delivers web-based solutions and services that help companies efficiently source and manage their contract workforce. Our Contract Workforce Solutions build upon the HotGigs Staffing Exchange, which facilitates the connection and interaction of hiring companies, staffing suppliers and independent consultants.

Source: http://www.hotgigs.com/rates/skill/ITIL-hourly-consultant-bill-rates/

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Help Desk Staffing Ratios by Size and Industry

An ongoing survey by Computer Economics is investigating the level of staffing organizations allocate to their help desks. To date, more than 300 companies of varying size, spanning a wide group of industry sectors, have participated in the ongoing study. The study investigates staffing in terms of the ratio between help desk employees and the total number of employees supported by the help desk.

The study has found that the median staffing ratio is 1.3% (in other words, 13 help desk support personnel are supporting 1,000 company employees, or one help desk headcount for every 76.9 company employees). At the 25th percentile, the ratio is 0.4% and at the 75th percentile, the ratio is 2.8%. As the help desk is usually an overhead function, these moderate ratios show that most organizations are applying their budgets prudently. A median ratio of 1.3% provides an acceptable level of support to the operating staff. The study results indicate that organizational size and industry sector will typically have an impact on the ratio of help desk personnel to total employees.

Source: AFCOM – http://www.afcom.com/The_Association/ResourceCenter/Data_Center_Management/Help_Desk_Staffing.asp

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ITIL – Staffing Ratios

ITIL Benchmarks

In a study or 125 companies in the United Kingdom,  researchers found that the “IT Heads in relation to the Number of Users” was a median of 6% for ITIL adopters and 5% for ITIL rejecters.

From the same study, training costs for ITIL adoption were on average £930 per IT head.

Source: “The ITIL Experience – Has it been worth it?”, Noel Bruton, Bruton Consultancy, Spring 2004. See: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:HIwsdVqpREAJ:www.aaromba.com/assets/pdf/whitepapers/The-ITIL-Experience.pdf+ITIL+Experience+-+Has+it+been+worth+it%3F&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

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