QHID to a new service-oriented organisational structure and new
mode of operation in terms of both governance and IT service
delivery capabilities. To ensure that the longer term gains from
the Transformation Program will be less at risk, QH instigated
a number of initiatives, one of which calls for the development
of a sustainable organisational capability to undertake IT service
management more effectively using the ITIL framework. As
the ITIL framework was new to QH, established consultants
and vendors were engaged during the early stages of the ITIL
implementation project. QH senior management further assigned
the Manager of Continuous Improvement to the role of overseeing
the implementation process, promoting the benefits among QH
staff and liaising with the consultants and vendors.
The journey so far
As at the end of 2006, QHID had established the processes
for incident management, change management and configuration
management, and was on the verge of completing processes for
release management and problem management. At the same
time the existing eleven zonal help desks were consolidated
into a single corporate-wide service desk to enhance the ability
for QHID to resolve incidents at first point of contact. With the
accomplishment of the centralised service desk and all processes
within service support, QH reached a significant milestone
in its ITIL project. Attention was next turned to service level
management and other complementary processes. A mechanism
for the continuous improvement of the newly installed processes
was also instituted.
Senior management level staff were allocated process owner
roles to ensure that the project progress was sustained as they were
able to deal with “change resistors” and make quick decisions.
As part of project governance, a customer committee named
the “Operations Board” comprising senior customer representatives
from both corporate and clinical areas was established
to review the performance of QHID and provide a customer
perspective on any proposed initiatives and changes. Fujitsu
Australia was engaged to develop a process design methodology
handbook to provide guidance to the implementation team members.
At the start of the project in 2005 a process maturity assessment
was jointly conducted by Fujitsu Australia and QHID to
establish the existing state of QHID’s process chain, ascertain
the interfaces between the different processes and determine the
optimal implementation sequence. The results from the assessment,
as depicted in Figure 1, formed part of the project baseline
and helped to define the initial implementation priorities
as well as set targets to raise the maturity levels of the various
processes.
An important element in the process design methodology
developed by QHID is the benefit realisation plan. The purpose
of the plan is to identify and manage the realisation of the benefits
that are attached to each new process. These benefits, which
include both financial and non-financial measures, are recorded
in a benefit register and tracked by the project executive team
on a monthly basis. Each process is also associated with a set of
key performance indicators which are monitored and reported to
senior management.
To fast track project execution, QHID introduced the timebox
approach into the ITIL project. This technique is grounded in the
philosophy that dates are not flexible but deliverables are. QHID
had previously suffered from a “get agreement from everybody