ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

An IT Service Reporting Framework for Effective Implementation of ITIL

Continual Service Improvement Process Conforming to ISO/EC 20000

Mohammad Kajbaf, Negar Madani, Ali Suzanger Shirin Nasher, Mehrdad Kalantarian
ITSM department Computer Engineering Dept.
Infoamn IT Consulting Co. Iran University of Science and Technology
Tehran, Iran Tehran, Iran
{m.kajbaf, n.madani, a.suzangar}@infoamn.com {nasher, kalantarian}@vc.iust.ac.ir

Abstract—In this paper, an IT service reporting framework performance indicators (KPI) for different IT services and
has been presented to help organizations in implementing IT processes. Although ITIL describes policies and rules for
service improvement process in accordance with service reporting process in the CSI book [3], it does not
ISO/IEC 20000 PDCA-cycle and reporting requirements. It clearly define how the process must work.
defines six types of reports and includes guidelines for Organization that are implementing ITIL for the first
automation of these different types. Afterward, a process for time, face new challenges. One of them is taking the correct
reporting by focusing on defining report templates based on approach in defining performance indicators, and measuring
the organization requirements is provided. Proposed report KPIs and reporting them. For most organizations the
types, process flow, ARCI matrix, and, process integration
implementation of true common cross-organizational
points as a general IT service reporting framework, helps
organizations to organize their communication using reports.
management processes may be the most difficult aspect of
the ITSM project [7]. They need to know how to find which
Keywords-IT service management; continual service processes are working and which are not.
improvement; service reporting. Keel at al. [8] discuss some main challenges in adopting
ITSM. It suggests that successful implementation of ITSM
strategy relies on the quality of processes.
I. INTRODUCTION Keeping sight of return on investment (ROI) and balance,
of cost, time and quality is of a very high importance for
A. Service Improvement in Different ITSM Frameworks
companies [9]. Lahtela et al. [10] suggest an ITSM
Different ITSM frameworks and standards have measurement system to support improvement activities.
discussed service measurement and improvement. Lima et al. [11] propose a model to quantify IT service
ISO 20000 requires continual improvement of IT services quality, to enhance the “Check” phase of PDCA cycle.
via the PDCA cycle. It also defines requirements for service In Section II, description of the problem is provided.
reporting to measure, analyze and communicate observations Main aspects of the provided framework are defined in
to help improvement of organization activities [1]. Section III, and the process flow is presented in Section IV.
The continual service improvement (CSI) is one of the Section V lists terms and definitions, and Section VI
main aspects of ITIL v3; it includes a 7 step process for IT describes future works.
service improvement [2].
The CSI process includes 3 main activities: (1) defining II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM
metrics for measurement of activities and service Many problems would arise during implementation of IT
performance; (2) monitoring, measuring, reviewing and security and service management frameworks for customers,
reporting defined performance metrics; and, (3) taking especially if they are implementing a business process model
corrective actions to improve service performance [3]. for the first time. Employees do not know what they must do,
In MOF v4, the improvement concept is inherent in the and managers do not know what to expect from them. One of
MOF lifecycle, but there is no explicit process or service the main areas of ambiguity is the improvement process. By
management function (SMF) in charge. Two management investigating problems in implementing ITSM for customers,
reviews cover measuring performance of IT services and we established a reporting structure to decrease ambiguities.
processes, and taking corrective actions: the Policy and At the first sight, the structure seems like some extra
Control review and the Operational Health review [4]. work required from employees. At final steps of the project,
In COBIT, the Monitor and Evaluate domain covers all parties can relate their day-to-day activities to concepts
reviewing, monitoring and continual improvement of IT they were familiarized with during their ITIL/ISMS classes.
services. It includes defining performance indicators and For successful implementation, reports must be such that all
reporting them, acting upon deviations, third-party reviews, parties have a common understanding on them.
and, integrating IT reporting with business reporting [5]. The proposed service reporting framework is a tool for
B. Toward an ITSM Management Model organizations to clarify their internal communications and
simplify defining and monitoring KPIs and metrics, and thus
The ITIL® framework is a major source of good practice
the CSI process. The reporting process helps managers to
in IT service management (ITSM) used by organizations
define clearly what they expect in each activity.
worldwide [6]. ITIL defines many policies and key

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ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

III. IT SERVICE REPORTING FRAMEWORK owners of related monitoring processes, and, the incident
Our proposed service reporting framework contains 2 manager, are included.
parts. First, a hierarchy of reports for different activities of In the case of normal events, summaries and number of
ITSM is defined. This hierarchy includes six types of reports different events are included in the report. In the case of
for different activities of operational, tactical, and strategic major events, descriptions of events, decisions made,
types. Then, a Service Reporting process is proposed for activities done, and the results gained, and some calculations
defining report templates according to the reporting on impacts and costs may be required. Normal reports on
requirements of the organization. This process could be events are scheduled mostly for small periods of time, from
implemented as a sub-process of ITIL continual service daily up to weekly. Reports on major events are not
improvement process. scheduled but reactive due to the nature of events.
4) Reporting on services
A. Report Types
This category is of a tactical level and is about service
There are different types of reports in an organization. status data. The included data are gathered and analyzed in
Some contain low level details of daily observations, while monitoring and service management activities. The reports
the others are based on high level analysis and contain include current and predicted service levels, statistical
conclusions required for decision makers. Considering all the analysis and trends, user complaints and customer
activities in the ITIL framework, and by investigating satisfaction measures, measurement of metrics defined in
different types of reports communicated internally in our SLAs, OLAs and contracts, and breaches in agreed levels, as
customer companies, six generic types of reports have been well as prediction of required resources and capacities
identified. Then, they were refined based on the level of against target levels.
activities, the material included in each report, required level Audiences include service managers and the portfolio,
of analysis on each and required competency for it. service level and CSI managers, as well as business or
1) Reporting routine tasks external customers about status SLA-signed services. The
This category of reports is of operational level, about scheduled periods are of a medium level, from weekly up to
happenings, successes and failures in on-going daily once in some months. For business and external customers,
activities of operation and monitoring type. Audiences reporting schedules are defined in agreements. Out-of-
include section managers or process owners, whom are schedule reports may be required due to proactive
accountable for the task. Low amount of analysis is required, monitoring or where service level breaches.
and, the report must include patterns, frequencies, time 5) Reports on review meetings
intervals, inconsistencies and extermums in observations. These reports are of a strategic or tactical level and are
They are often scheduled for small periods of time, from a produced after review meetings in different phases of IT
few times a day up to once in a few weeks. service management. They always contain summary of
2) Reporting assigned tasks discussions, ideas presented by different parties, and details
This category is of tactical level, about the progress of of decisions made, tasks assigned, and further
projects (for teams) or assigned tasks (for persons). These activities/meetings scheduled. Decisions must often be
reports are usually in design, development, deployment and reflected in other types of documents, such as policies, plans,
implementation activities. Audiences are project or function contracts, etc. Therefore, the report must include all required
managers, or the change advisory board (CAB) (in the case details discussed in the meeting. Report schedules depend on
of new or change services). They contain some basic meeting schedules.
analysis on the progress of the project/task, achievements, Audiences include all attendant parties, as well as, CSI
pitfalls, remained works, estimations, lessons learned, etc. manager, and other relevant IT managers. If decisions
They are always pre-scheduled based on the project/task include changes to the existing documents, IT services or the
steps or small periods of times from once in a few days up to infrastructure, the report must be provided to the change
once in a few months. manager as well.
Two types of reports discussed above were about measuring The meetings include, but are not restricted to, CAB and
activities in IT processes. The next two types, in contrast, are emergency CAB (eCAB) meetings, portfolio management
mostly about IT service measurement. meetings, service and technology designers meetings,
meetings between development teams, meetings with
3) Reporting on events suppliers and business or external customers, post
This type of report is of operational level and is about implementation reviews, non-conformances, etc.
low level data on events. The data are usually gathered in
6) Management reports
operation, monitoring and support activities and contain
summaries of different types of events in IT services, This category of reports is of strategic level and is about
specially security events, or details of a major/critical event. all high level aspects of IT services and ITSM framework.
Detailed data included in reports are defined in the Event Audiences are top IT and business management officers, the
Management process. CSI manager, and other parties as defined in the report
Audiences are operation and related service managers. In template. Management reports contain analytical data on the
the case of major events, managers of affected services, performance of IT services, trends, suggestions and

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ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

prospects, costs, risks and values, performance and These tools are often used to provide required data to
achievements of IT processes and functions according to operators to compose event reports. Therefore, audience of
defined KPIs, demand and market analysis, new methods automated event reports is the operator/administrator in
and technologies, etc. Analysis on business achievements charge. In the case of major events, automated systems could
against strategies and objectives or new suggestions may be alert the incident resolver in charge, the service owner, or
required. event trigger an automated troubleshooting system.
In summary, this category of reports reflect all the other Automated performance measurement systems could be
types of reports to the top IT and business managers. All six used to gather and analyze service level data and help the
types of reports are presented in the table below. report owner in composing the service status reports. they
TABLE I. SUMMARY OF DIFFERENT REPORT TYPE SPECIFICATIONS can automatically measure service levels and identify SLA
breaches [15-16]. These systems could also alert service
Different Report Types manager and person in charge, when a critical service fails.
Report Type Types of Types of Included Analysis
Activities Audiences Material level
Reports on ITSM framework are hard to automate.
Routine operational, section happenings, low Different systems exist to gather and analyze data, draw
Tasks monitoring managers, summaries, charts and even analyze different aspects of a decision and
service owners inconsistencies, suggest a choice. However, decision making is one of a few
observations
Assigned development, project/section progress, medium
activities which still require a human in charge and cannot be
Tasks deployment managers achievements and fully automated.
pitfalls, learnings Table II demonstrates possibility of using automated
Events operational, section summaries, medium tools for each type of report.
monitoring, managers, descriptions,
support service owners actions done TABLE II. POSSIBILITY OF AUTOMATION IN EACH REPORTING TYPE
Service service service service status, high
Status management, managers, statistics, Possible Usual type of automation
Report Type
monitoring business customer automation level
customers satisfaction Routine tasks Medium Form-based automation programs
(against SLAs)
Review management, Top decisions on high Assigned Pre-defined templates
Low
Meetings planning, management, policies, plans, tasks
relationships, design and objectives, Automated event notification
Events High
development planning teams, strategies, systems
customers agreements, … Automated service level
Service status Medium
ITSM planning, Top IT/business measured KPIs, low, measurement
Framework strategy, service managers trends, costs and medium, Review Pre-defined templates
management benefits, high
Low
meetings
conclusions ITSM Pre-defined templates
Low
framework
B. Automation Level
Another factor which can be defined for reports is IV. IT SERVICE REPORTING PROCESS FLOW AND
possibility of using automation tools. Different automatic ACTIVITIES
tools for reporting network and security events and A detailed discussion of the processes and activities in
measuring service performance exist. Using these tools for the Report management process are provided in this section.
reporting, helps employees in measurement and reporting
and decreases human errors. They also ease scheduling of A. Service Reporting Policies
reports. Therefore, we suggest customers to use automated Service reporting policies must be clearly defined, and
reporting systems, as long as it helps IT personnel in doing communicated to all IT personnel.
their activities at best.  Each report and report template must have a unique
For routine tasks, automated tools are widely present identifier. Reports must contain reference to their
which provide data forms for employees to fill. These tools report template.
help employees to generate reports on schedules and usually  Report templates should define purpose, audience,
help to communicate them directly to audiences. person in charge, required metrics and data sources
A similar approach for reports on assigned tasks and of reports.
review meetings could be taken. However it could not cover  All report templates must be clearly defined, agreed
all aspects of these reports, because they include many upon by all parties, and recorded in the configuration
analytical data. Therefore, often templates are prepared and management database (CMDB). Also, all changes to
rules are defined to fill them. report templates are subject to change management
High levels of automation could be used in event policies.
reporting. Different tools for network and security events  All reports must be generated in time and contain
reporting exist. They automatically gather data and generate accurate data, according to their report template.
reports on their summaries, using different methods like
web-services or intelligent agents [12-14].

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ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

B. Process flow activities 8) Specify audience:

Depending on the target audience, the reports are
1) Define goals and objectives:
classified in three main categories:
Several reports are prepared and distributed throughout The business category: including the customers, the
the organizations. However, only the reports prepared based internal providers such as the business managers and the
on specific goals and objectives add value to the business external providers such as the stakeholders.
and lead to better performance, therefore “what the reports The senior IT management category: such as the CSI
are going to present” and “what they are going to be used manager and the business/IT analyst.
for” should be clearly determined in the report template. The internal IT category: including the middle and low-
This is mainly achieved by reviewing the portfolio and level management and IT staff such as the service owner,
the business policies, rules, goals and objective that refer to service manager, service level manager, process owner,
reporting requirements and alignment of business and IT. process manager and etc.
There are three major aspects in reporting:
9) Report scheduling:
a) Reactive reports: reports on what has occurred
In order to schedule a report factors determined in the
b) Proactive reports: reports on near breaches previous steps should be taken into consideration, including
c) Forward reports: reports on scheduled activities the goals and objectives, the report type, the related
schedules and the audience.
2) Determine scope:
10) Select communication methods & tools:
The scope of a report is the section that the report refers
to. A report could be prepared for a process, service, activity, Whenever the report is generated by the responsible
section, a specific department or the complete IT person, the report should be communicated to the target
organization. audiences. The communication may be through the
following methods:
3) Select report types:  Paper-based hard copies,
Depending on the goal and scope of the report, one or  Online soft copies,
multiple report types are selected. The following steps  Web-enabled dynamic HTML,
should be taken for each of the selected report types.  Real-time portal/dashboard
4) Review prior identified requirements: 11) Determine access levels
The prior identified requirements are extracted from the It is obvious that the reports prepared for the higher level
reporting requirements identified in the business and the staff should not be accessed by the lower level. However,
designing processes such as service level management, depending on the organizations rules and policies, some
availability management, capacity management, information personnel are authorized to access certain reports while their
security and service continuity management. These identified parallel colleagues should not be authorized to access those
requirements are categorized and documented, and will be reports.
addressed in the report.
12) Review and approve:
5) Define the measures and metrics
Before finalizing the report template, all fields discussed
Each identified requirement is studied in order to above should be checked and approved. After refining the
determine the measures and metrics which present that report template, if necessary, it should be approved by higher
requirement. These measures and metrics are included in the authorities such as business, senior or IT management. After
report. approval, the report template must be communicated to the
6) Specify data sources corresponding parties.
The value of a report highly depends on the owner and The CSI manager or his/her representatives are
credibility of the evidence that supports its statements and responsible for monitoring of reports to be generated based
content. Therefore the personnel assigned to prepare the on the related report template and to be communicated
report, the sources, evidence and basics of calculation should according to the reporting policies.
be included thoroughly in each report. Figure 1 demonstrates the complete service reporting
process flow.
7) Review related schedules:
Schedules that refer to major activities or activities which
produce or alter a considerable amount of information have a
significant impact on report schedules; therefore they should
be carefully reviewed and taken into account. These
schedules mainly include data gathering schedules,
processing schedules, analyzing schedules, management
meetings, review meetings, purchase schedules, etc.

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ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

TABLE III. SUMMARY OF DIFFERENT REPORT TYPE SPECIFICATIONS

Portfolio
manager

Security
Report

Report
CIO
CSI
Reporting process activities

A. Plan
1 Define goals and objectives A/R C C C
2 Determine scope A C R C
3 Select report type A C R C
4 Review prior identified requirements A C R C C
B. Design
5 Define the measures and metrics A C R I
6 Specify data sources A C R C
7 Review related schedules A C R C
8 Specify audience A R C
9 Report scheduling A R I
C. Communication
10 Select communication methods A C R C
11 Determine access levels A C R C C
12 Review and approve A/R I C I
A= Accountable,
Legend R= Responsible,
C = Consulted,
I = Informed.

D. Reporting Process Integration Points with other ITIL

processes
Here, all documents which are communicated within the
proposed service reporting process are listed.
Table IV presents all documents and information from
different ITIL processes which are required in the service
reporting process.
TABLE IV. SERVICE REPORTING PROCESS INPUTS
Inputs to reporting process
-Business and IT rules, policies, goals and objectives
Portfolio -Business report requirements
-Business and IT meetings and schedules
-Demand management requirements for a report
Demand
-Demand management meetings and schedules
Financial -Evaluation of reporting costs
Figure 1. Service Reporting Process Flow -Service level agreements for the reporting process
SLM
-SLM requirements for a report
Availability -Level of availability of each report
C. Reporting process ARCI matrix
Continuity -The continuity required for providing a report
The CSI process owner is the person accountable for
Security -The security levels required for each report
service reporting process. IT manager and report owner must
cooperate to define right metrics according to business Supplier -Required reports for each supplier
requirements. The information security manager should Catalog -Services available in the organization
ensure data flow is in accordance with security policies.
Table III summarizes role of different stakeholders in Configuration -CI’s available in the organization
service reporting process as an ARCI chart. Release -Progress of preparing the report template
Change -Request for a new report template
Knowledge -The accuracy of information received

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ICDS 2011 : The Fifth International Conference on Digital Society

Event
-Event schedules VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
-Events related to inadequate reporting
Measurement and reporting is a key requirement of
Incident -Incidents related to inadequate reporting
service improvement, which in turn is required for value
Problem -Problems related to inadequate reporting creation and success in a competitive market. The proposed
Request
-The customer report requirements
reporting framework helps organizations to define reports in
fulfillment a way that eases service improvements.
Access -The access levels for each report Many of the proposed concepts could be used for
CSI -The collected, processed and analyzed data external reports, which are reports on service levels to
clients. Further works can be done to classify and clarify
Table V lists all information generated in the service external reports. More works are required to identify
reporting process. different types of reports required in different IT process and
TABLE V. SERVICE REPORTING PROCESS OUTPUTS types of metrics and measures which can be defined for each
of them.
Outputs of reporting process
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