Defining, measuring and monitoring IT service goals and strategies

Abstract

Background: Aligning IT to business goals is a top priority for CIOs. However, managers in the IT Service Industry face difficulties to define and monitor IT service goals and strategies aligned to business goals. Goal: We carried out a study to investigate how IT service managers define, measure and monitor IT service goals and strategies, and the difficulties they have faced in this context. Method: We interviewed five IT service managers from four service provider organizations and used coding procedures to analyze the collected data. Results: We obtained information about how organizations define, measure and evaluate IT service goals and strategies and, from the difficulties reported by the managers, we identified 19 pitfalls. Conclusions: By analyzing the relations among the pitfalls, we defined five hypotheses: (i) lack of awareness and transparency on the relationship between strategies and goals may harm the achievement of IT service goals and strategies, (ii) lack of proper support to execute measurement inhibits reevaluation and adjustment of strategies and indicators related to IT service goals, (iii) lack of motivation can jeopardize decision-making by IT service managers, (iv) conflicts between strategies may harm IT service goals achievement, and (v) lack of proper support to execute IT service management initiatives may harm IT service goals achievement.