It's that time of year again – the US Open is under way in New York City, the end of summer looms, and Forrester Research's third annual joint survey with itSMF-USA to understand the state of ITSM is out in the field and calling for your participation!

Last year, the year-over-year data collected gave us some good and not-so-good news.

The good:

  • Compensation for ITSM professionals overwhelmingly increased.
  • ITIL's positive influence on the organization was compelling with over 70% of service management professionals agreeing the best practice framework improved productivity, and 65% finding it helps to deliver better service quality.

The not-so-good:

  • 25% of survey takers did not know whether their incident mean time to resolution (MTTR) had increased, decreased, or remained the same over the past year.
  • A whopping 31% of them did not know what percentage of incidents were the result of a change to infrastructure, applications, processes or tools!

As my colleague Glenn O'Donnell expands upon in The State And Direction Of IT Service Management: 2012 To 2013, ITSM professionals in this "don't know" group are the ones at the greatest risk, even more so than those who reported unfavorable results.

This is where I need your help. What I am most interested in finding out through this year's survey is whether or not:

  • The data gathered supports the self-assessed "optimized" maturity levels.  The cliched saying is right: you can't manage what you don't measure (or don't know, for that matter).  I'm curious to know how the "don't know" group is faring this year.
  • Strategic processes like service portfolio management and demand management are moving up higher on the maturity scale.  Along with strategy management, these three processes ranked the lowest on the maturity scale in 2012, highlighting the fact that ITSM pros excel at firefighting, yet lack in the strategy department.

I also predict that service catalog interest will increase this year, with more ITSM pros having realized or exceeded the anticipated benefits of their service catalog initiative. I say this because since I joined Forrester's I&O team last fall, I have participated in countless Analyst Inquiry calls with clients from all industries and companies of all sizes looking for advice throughout different stages of their service catalog implementations.

Will SaaS continue to surpass the classic licensing model for purchasing management and automation software?  And what will service desk vendor loyalty look like compared to the last two years?  Loyalty remained high in 2012, though a slight increase in ITSM pros still deciding whether or not to make a switch indicated there could be a rumbling in the vendor landscape.

All of these questions and more will be answered in October, but not without your help.  Let us know where your ITSM journey stands!  Help out yourself and your peers, and participate in our survey: CLICK ME!

Your reward is that all survey takers will receive a complimentary copy of the results!  I will be presenting the data hot off the press at this year's itSMF Fusion '13 event in Nashville, TN, October 20-23.  I hope to see you there!