The Key To IT Business Alignment Is In Operations

The predictability of results is a sign of maturity in any activity or process. Predictability is also what IT is trying to achieve but very often fails to deliver. One key element of a process' evolution toward maturity is the ability to measure the results of the process against expectations, identify weak points, and correct them. The metrics available to IT, however, are either measured at a global organization level or are not granular enough to characterize specific processes. Improving service delivery requires tracking issues to their root cause and improving the specific process that creates the problem. A top-down analysis of process dependencies associated with metrics that are measuring the outcome of each IT process would certainly provide a better set of IT management metrics than what exists today. Problems appearing in production, for example, could be then tracked to their real root cause, and real process improvement could take place.