The Continual Service Improvement (CSI) process or 7 Step Improvement process explains how to measure and report on service improvement. There are close links between this process and the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle which should feed into the Service Improvement Plan or SIP.
It is extremely important to baseline in order to find out where we are now so that any improvements or deficiencies can be measured against the original marker.
The 7 steps include:
- What should you measure? - the 'vision' (strategic and/or operational) will feed into this step
- What can be measured? - what can IT and the business actively measure that will be of benefit to the organization
- Gather Data (measure) - so has the organization reached its goal based on the vision, mission, goals and objectives that have been previously set
- Process Data - determining the correct style and format to each business unit
- Analyze Data - trends, discrepancies and associated explanations are prepared for discussion with the business
- Present and use information - the business/stakeholders are informed as to whether the goals have been achieved or not
- Implement Corrective Action - document improvements, add to the Service Improvement Program (SIP), create a new baseline and start the 7 steps again.
There are links to other processes such as Knowledge Management, in particular when turning information into knowledge as part of the Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom lifecycle.