During the first phase, we

• discovered a lot of 'new facts' about the services.
• consolidated and improved the tool 
• enabled the user and supporter community to get used to the new concepts and tools
• extended the scope in terms of number of processes and scope of services supported
• collected measures to establish a baseline.

This now forms the foundation for a phase 2 which can be seen as the first major step of a continuous improvement process, which will allow us to optimize the use of resources and service levels. All in a transparent and controlled way.

Our inspiration is always industry best practice. The standard for service management is ISO20000 (which is aligned with ITIL V3). This standard provides a structure to assess the maturity of an operating service according a set of criteria. These criteria we use to help focus our attention where it 'matters most' so we can make sure CERN is will be running a lean, efficient and effective service organization. Relevant ISO20k chapters in the domain of service-operation:

• Planning (ISO calls this Capacity Management): a framework that assures integrated coordinated planning for capacity in case of changes of environment, strategy, technology, budget, etc….
• Continuity and Risk: focus on risk mitigation and business continuity.
• Quality measurements (ISO call this Service Level Management): focus on coherent comprehensive service quality targets and measuring how these targets are met.
• Reporting: focus on comprehensive operational and strategic reporting.
• Security: focus on risk mitigation and assessment of security.
• Financial Management: (ISO calls this budgeting and accounting) establishes a framework to assure that we accurately monitor and control financial aspects, which is essential in discussions on service quality.
• Incident and Request: a reactive process focused on efficient and effective incident resolution and request fulfillment.
• Problem Management: here the focus is on proactively reducing incident numbers by identification of common root causes. This results in turn in significant savings (preventive maintenance, ‘consolidation’, etc..).
• Relationship Management: here the focus is on assuring good communication between users, customers and service providers. This also covers communication between different functions having to work together to provide a service.
• Supplier Management: This addresses the issues with third parties that are involved in the service delivery. This includes communication between suppliers and CERN, integration between systems, measuring of service quality, contractual issues, billing, etc..
• Control which can be broken down in
  • Configuration management; this covers the aspect of ‘what do we have and are responsible for’; the “inventory” also essential for the CMMS (Maintenance Management System).
  • Change management; assuring that changes are carried out in a controlled way so that service quality and continuity is guaranteed. This also provides a means to explain why certain changes can’t be implemented immediately. 

We have a method to quickly assess the 'maturity' on each of the main criteria based on a short CERN specific questionaire (ca 5 questions for each of the domains above). This questionaire is generic enough for it to make sense and be relevant for all services in our scope (so not IT specific).

The result of such an assessment can be presented as follows:

Succeeding assessments can show the progress of a service, a group or a departments over time.

A common service management framework supporting common processes accross the board is a powerful and essential tool to prepare CERN for the future.