MJ:  I made a recent post that showed how one could leverage the Executive Scorecard for IT in order to promote ITSM initiatives (click here for the post).  Yesterday, I had a conversation with Hugh Pruitt that reminded me that is more to interpreting metrics than meets the eye…here’s the recap…

Let’s Look At Mean Time To Repair

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is the average time that it will take to restore a service.  For example, the MTTR for a printer issue might be 8-20 minutes.

It’s intuitive to think that we always want our MTTR to go down.  We want to make sure that we are resolving incidents faster and faster as we mature, right?  However, let’s step back. 

What Are We Trying To Do?

Our overall interest is to improve the services that we provide to the business.  This could also include initiatives that educate users to the extent that they start supporting themselves. 

An Example – MTTR For Printers

Now stay with me here…

1.    Situation:  Imagine we’ve been fixing the same printer incidents for the past year.  And boy, are we getting good at it!  We’re fixing printer incidents faster than a speeding bullet!  Our MTTR’s are going down month after month.

2.    Task:  That’s all well and good.  However, unless your organization makes a ton of money printing documents, there are much more important IT services that your Service Desk Analysts could be restoring to the business (i.e. customer-facing applications, etc.).  How can we unburden them from these printer incidents so we can provide more value-laden services to our Mr. and MRS. End User?

3.    Action:  One clear strategy to is to provide education/eLearning sessions for your end users and show them how to fix their own printer issues.  [By the way, eLearning need not be expensive; our customers are creating their own media rich, animated, voice-read eLearning  for $50.00 CAD per screen]

4.    Result:  You’ll start seeing the reduction in printer incidents.  You’ll also free up your time to provide services that add more value to your clients.

But wait!  What does this have to do with MTTR?  Well, let’s look at the before and after…

• Before:  Handling 3,000 printer incidents with an average talk time of 3 minutes.
• After:  Handling 500 printer incidents (some people never learn…J…) and 1,000 value-laden incidents that take 9-15 minutes.

This introduction of self-service for printer incidents would actually INCREASE the MTTR for your Service Desk!  Why?  Because providing new services takes more time than providing the services you’ve always been providing.

The spin!  Here we have an example of how spirit of Problem Management as an operational practice, not just a method for fault isolation and change generation based on ‘eliminating today’s pain.’

Another Example – Incidents Don’t Always Go Down (a real scenario!)

1. Situation:  An awesome Service Desk Manager is hired and enters a Helpless-Desk, where the Analysts are disorganized and end users aren’t getting the support they desperately need.
2. Task:  Turn around the department.
3. Action:  Long story short, she turned around the department.
4. Result:  More incidents!  More incidents??  Why?  Because as more end users found out that they could actually get help from the Service Desk, more of them started calling!

Metrics don’t always tell us what we expect them to.  We need to preface metric-related discussions with the multitude of factors that influence them.

Hugh Pruitt is an ITIL veteran and, yes, practitioner for nearly a decade now. His view of process–that is, how we work—is informed from perspectives ranging from business owner to consultant as well as from sales to operations. As a catalyst to the first itSMF LIG in the US, he has been active in acknowledging the key role of a disciplined approach to service management.

Michael Jagdeo (SCM, ITIL v2/v3) has an extensive background as an ITSM/ITIL enthusiast. He has worked on placements in Singapore, Dubai, London, and across North America. As Director at B Wyze Solutions, he manages relationships with clients like Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, Maple Leaf Foods, and the Government of Ontario. (Follow MJ on Twitter)

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• July 7, 2009: Implementing ITIL - Insight from Head of ITSM (Part 1: Education)
• July 7, 2009: Implementing ITIL - Insight from Head of ITSM (Part 2: Outsourcing)
• July 7, 2009: Implementing ITIL - Insight from Head of ITSM (Part 3: Tool Implementation & ITIL Adoption)
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