Implementing IT improvements is essential to stay adapted to the new needs and possibilities of the market. Despite this, these improvements cannot be made arbitrarily since this can generate impacts across the entire network. To prevent major problems from happening, IT improvement management exists, responsible for administering how these changes take place.
See below the importance of this management and how to carry it out correctly!
Diagnosing the improvement point
IT improvement management requires prior planning before being executed. Without this, management is poorly targeted and, ultimately, ineffective. Thus, diagnosing the improvement point is the first part of a PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Action) cycle.
At this moment, you must identify which point needs optimization based on its results. Information security, for example, can be the chosen point to receive important improvements regarding data availability and general governance.
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Estimating the improvement gain and prioritizing
Still as part of the planning, it is also necessary to estimate what the gains of each improvement identified as necessary will be. This is important because there are no resources to carry out all improvements at the same time, so it is necessary to prioritize which ones are most important.
To do this, it is necessary to take into consideration factors such as the investment required to carry out the improvement and what gains will be obtained with this action. Priority improvements are those that combine a greater need for implementation with greater gains.
Acting to carry out improvements
The ITIL library features a series of best practices for the IT sector in various categories. Thus, once what needs to be done is defined, it is possible to rely on this library to figure out how to do it.
The great advantage of using the ITIL library is that you will have access to established actions that offer, observing implementation needs, the expected results for management. Furthermore, the ITIL library can serve as a kind of manual capable of showing management how not to make mistakes when carrying out this improvement.
Analyzing the results
IT management does not end when an action is taken, as it is necessary to stay updated on the results caused by the action – this is called Post Implementation Review – PIR. Therefore, it is necessary to define metrics and monitor them once the improvement has been implemented.
Depending on the case, it may be necessary to act dynamically so that results can be obtained within expectations. One evaluation possibility consists of analyzing the return on investment (ROI) in order to identify whether the improvement brought the expected results or not.
This step, therefore, corresponds to the last two actions of a PDCA cycle, where results are monitored and subsequent actions are taken to generate increasingly more improvements.
IT improvement management is essential to ensure that the system operates not only better, but also with security, availability, and higher productivity. To achieve this, it is highly recommended to follow the best practices established by ITIL when establishing the identification and prioritization of improvements followed by effective action and results analysis.
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