Process Assessment as a Means to Improve Quality in IT Services

The main objective of this chapter is to present how a formal and standard process assessment - thanks to its repeatable approach and its comparable results - can be an invaluable contribution for improving the IT services in a continual way. This chapter introduces ISO/IEC 15504, the international standard for process assessment. As a generic process assessment framework, ISO/IEC 15504 can be used for determining the capability of processes of any domain. The authors of this chapter have applied this framework in the field of IT Service Management. Their works (described below) have enabled to develop the TIPA® methodology, based on ITIL® version 2. The chapter then discusses the impact that assessments can have on the quality of the assessed processes and, as a consequence, on the services supported by these processes. The chapter finishes by presenting an example of the results and the lessons learnt as perceived by adopters of TIPA.