Business process modelling to improve incident management process

Business process management (BPM) is an approach focused on the continuous improvement of business processes, providing for this a collection of best practices. These best practices enable the redesign of business processes to meet the desired performance. IT service management (ITSM) defines the management of IT operations as a service. There are several ITSM frameworks available, consisting in best practices that propose standardizing these pro- cesses for the respective operations. By adopting these frameworks, organisations can align IT with their business objectives. Therefore, the objective of this research is to understand how BPM can be used to improve of ITSM processes. An exploratory case study in a multinational company based in Lisbon, Portugal, is conducted for the improvement of the time performance of an inci- dent management process. Data were gained through documentation, archival records, interviews and focus groups with a team involved in IT support service. So far, the as-is process was elicited, and respective incongruences clarified. During the next months the authors intend to identify the main problems and simulate the appropriate BPM heuristics to understand the impact in the busi- ness organisation.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

A Verification-Based Conflict Resolution Strategy for Knowledge Management Systems

Knowledge Management Systems may store knowledge in many diverse forms such as people, intellectual assets, documents, databases, directories, and expert systems. When knowledge is integrated from a wide variety of sources, it is inevitable that conflicts between knowledge will occur. Many knowledge sources inherently constrain the stored knowledge for criteria such as consistency or referential integrity, removing opportunities for inaccuracies and potentially increasing accuracy. This paper presents a conflict resolution strategy for knowledge stored in diverse sources that uses the rigor of the verification of each knowledge source as an indicator of its potential accuracy

Software-mediated process assessment in IT service management

Continual service improvement is a crucial aspect of IT service management as it enables organisations to enhance the relevance and responsiveness of their IT services providing outcomes in productivity and competitiveness. This paper describes a research project that is aimed at developing an international standards-based software-mediated process assessment tool to facilitate continual service improvement in IT service management. The project will also evaluate the effectiveness of the tool by implementing it in two large Australian public sector organisations and validating the results against traditional process assessment methods. The significance of the research is that the tool will enable organisations to selfassess and improve their current IT service processes as well as transitioning international standards to industry

Extending the IT service quality measurement framework through a systematic literature review

Continuous improvement of service quality results in enhanced customer satisfaction, increased efficiency and maximisation of business value of the service within the company. Decision-making on the course of service quality improvement is based on the current status of the measurable service quality attributes. The aim of the paper is to describe the IT service quality attributes that could be measured to improve IT service quality. We report on a systematic literature review of IT service quality measurement. The review was based on 134 relevant journal articles related to IT service quality management. Of these, 91 articles were selected for analysis. We propose a detailed and comprehensive quality measurement framework for IT services using the results of the systematic literature review to extend previous work. The framework presents six common issue areas with their associated measurement categories, measures, and indicators. IT service providers can choose the measures to satisfy their specific information needs from the proposed IT service quality measurement framework. We conclude that IT service quality improvement efforts could benefit from considering the internal IT service quality attributes from the viewpoint of the value the provided IT service could bring to both the customer and the provider

Towards transparent and efficient process assessments for IT service management

IT service organisations recognise the value of conducting regular process assessments for continual service improvement. However lack of transparency and substantial costs deter industry adoption. We propose that the use of the international standard for process assessment ISO/IEC 15504 offers a transparent approach to address this challenge. Moreover, efficiency can be realized by a Decision Support System (DSS) tool to automate data collection and process capability calculations. This paper details a Design Science Research project to develop a software-mediated process assessment (SMPA) approach based on ISO/IEC 15504, ISO/IEC 20000 and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®). We discuss the architecture of the SMPA approach and the role of ISO/IEC 15504 in the approach. This work contributes to practice as it may help IT managers to self-assess their processes using a standard model. The SMPA approach can also support assessors who perform formal assessments