Establishing a Continual Service Improvement Model: A Case Study

Abstract

The Continual Service Improvement (CSI) section of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) version 3 provides IT companies with best practices for the improvement of services and service management processes. Unfortunately, many IT companies consider ITIL-based practices (including CSI) too abstract for their purposes. The research problem in this study is: which methods and practices are related to Continual Service Improvement in IT service management? The main contribution of this paper is an improved version of the CSI model that provides a more detailed and practical view of CSI activities: measurement, reporting and processing of the service development ideas. Our model is compatible with ISO/IEC 20000 standard requirements and ITIL v3 practices. The model emphasizes the importance of change management process in the management of development ideas. The CSI model was created in the cooperation with a Finnish IT service provider company and validated with three different service provider companies.