In my last IT service management (ITSM) blog, I offered up 10 metrics-related tips with an emphasis on getting service level agreement (SLA) measures and reporting right. Here’s the second part of my list of 20 performance reporting and metrics tips, starting with some tips on being SMARTer. With metrics that reflect goals that are:

• Specific
• Meaningful (or measurable)
• Agreed (or attainable or achievable)
• Realistic (or relevant)
• Timely.

What tips would you offer to people pulling together and sharing #ITSM performance measurements and metrics? Here's 10 from @Joe_the_IT_guy. Click To Tweet

11. Get specific

Make sure that your metrics are SMART, in other words specific, meaningful, agreed, realistic, and timely.

Let’s start with specific, it’s the guidance around making sure that we’ve clearly defined and understood what is being measured. Talk to your customers and support teams to clearly document the service definition. Agree what the service will look like day-to-day. Confirm which teams will be involved for support activities. Make sure users know where to go for help. Is it the IT service desk? Can they log tickets via a self-service portal? Is there a self-help offering or knowledge base?

Ensure this content is captured in the reporting requirements otherwise you might fail to deliver the right data which leads us on nicely to:

12. Make metrics meaningful

This is ensuring that the measurement or metric provides value to the customer. So when you’re agreeing on how service levels should be measured, things to consider could include:

• Availability – for example, service uptime
• Performance – for example, transaction or page loading times
• Knowledge levels – for example, the percentage of calls resolved at the first point of contact
• Speed – for example, the percentage of calls answered within X seconds.

The ITIL books have oodles of metrics, but here’s the thing – they won’t all be applicable to your organization’s situation.

So, don’t just copy what the book says. Every organization is different. For some, availability and uptime are key, for others it’s all about performance levels and response times.

The #ITIL books have oodles of metrics, but here’s the thing – they won’t all be applicable to your organization’s situation. So, don’t just copy what the book says. Every organization is different. #ITSM Click To Tweet

Instead, tailor your metrics and reporting approach to YOUR organization and YOUR stakeholders to truly deliver value.

13. Agree on what’s important

Make sure that the customer fully understands and agrees with you on the value of any given measure and how it is calculated.

It’s always worth having a service introduction period before sending reports to the customer to ensure that the targets set in the SLA can be reliably and regularly achieved.

Before anything is documented in an SLA or contract, check and check again that your support teams and your customers collectively agree on what good looks like and how to report on it accurately.

14. Be realistic

Ask questions such as: Are the chosen measurements and targets possible in the real world? And does meeting the SLA targets enable the business to achieve their goals and objectives?

Make sure that the targets set in the SLA are achievable, including double checking with the service or support teams responsible for meeting them.

It’s much better to delay agreeing on a report for a few days to check for accuracy than to agree on something you’re not 100% aligned on and then to consistently fail month on month.

15. Stay timely

Make sure that measurements are reported to the customer/stakeholder in an agreed window. The late delivery of reports does no one any favors.

Timeliness is also relevant to the metrics themselves. The target needs to include the timescale over which it should be tracked, measured, and reported. So, what are the reporting periods? Monthly? Quarterly? And how often should performance review meetings be held?

16. Focus on value where possible

A key differentiator of ITIL 4 from previous versions of the ITSM best practice framework is the service value system (SVS), service value chain, and a definition of service that includes “the co-creation of value.”

When looking at possible ITSM metrics, one way to look at value is to report on your overall Net Promoter Score (NPS). Your NPS is a measure of how likely your customers are to recommend you or to renew a contract. It works well when customers are external to the organization – where using NPS is an effective way to take a snapshot of how your customers are experiencing your service and can be built on to strengthen your SLAs. It can also be modified for use in internal support scenarios.

17. Include a scorecard in reporting packs

A scorecard is a great way to communicate the high-level performance of your team and its activities and achievements. It’s a visual exec summary if you will.

At a simple level, an effective scorecard will include a traffic light system to communicate the current performance status:

• Green – everything is as it should be
• Amber – at risk of breaching agreed service levels
• Red – targets missed.

The concept of a balanced scorecard can also be employed to ensure that your metrics portfolio looks past the more-common operational metrics (business process related) to include measures related to:

• Financial or value-based aspects
• Customer or employee experiences
• Improvement.

18. Automate as much as possible

It will save your organization time, your sanity (or is that just me?), and reduce the potential for human error. There will of course always be aspects of reporting that need to be done manually –  for instance, management commentary, updates on incidents that have failed SLAs, the actions to prevent recurrence off the back of a major incident. They’re the value add.

However, the bread and butter stuff? Total ticket volumes? Total that breached SLA? Service requests by fulfillment team? Automate away.

There are no medals to be won for messing around with pivot tables. So, automate what you can and save your effort for the insight that will drive improvements and engagement.

19. Give a great performance

We’re all used to availability and uptime being key, but if it takes five minutes to log into the system every morning, then you’re impressing no one.

When producing metrics for tier one services, include performance aspects as well as hard uptime and downtime data so you get a more accurate reflection of the end-to-end service and customer/employee experience.

When producing metrics for tier one services, include performance aspects as well as hard uptime and downtime data so you get a more accurate reflection of the end-to-end service and customer/employee experience. Click To Tweet

20. Get visual

Use visuals to make reports easier to understand. There is nothing more frustrating than being sat in a service review meeting faced with a wall of numbers and text that someone proceeds to read out word for word.

Also, I’m not going to lie, if I’m your customer and stuck in that situation I would not be at all happy and would be looking for ways to extricate myself from the meeting as soon as humanly possible. It’s not an ideal situation I think we can all agree.

So, put the spreadsheet down and consider using the following to represent your performance:

• Daily status reports to show the top ten issues over the last day – they’re easy to read, easy to pull together, and give you a head start on any emerging issues
• Trending reports for root cause analysis – because they help you to identify trends over time
• Aged ticket reports – so you can identify bottlenecks and silos
• Tickets by affected service – so you can highlight any pain points that are ripe for improvement.

Remember the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” – if you want your audience to be engaged, then using pictures, cartoons, and diagrams is a great way to make the material more relatable.

So that’s my 20 performance reporting and metrics tips. What tips would you offer to people pulling together and sharing ITSM performance measurements and metrics? Please let me know in the comments.