Implementing it Service Management: A Case Study Focussing on Critical Success Factors

Queensland Health, a large Australian government agency, implemented a centralised IT service management model based on the ITIL framework. This paper presents an in-depth case study of the implementation. It sheds light on the challenges and breakthroughs, confirms a set of factors that contributed to the project's success and offers a learning opportunity for other organisations. The study indicates that the commitment of senior management is crucial to the project's success as is a project champion and the recognition of the need for an appropriate change management strategy to transform the organisational culture to a service-oriented focus. Maintaining close and forthright relationships with multiple vendors facilitates technology transfer to in-house staff while a benefits realisation plan is a valuable tool for tracking and communicating tangible and intangible project benefits to the project stakeholders. An effective project governance and execution process further contributes to the implementation success.

[1]  Mathias Sallé.  Service Management and IT Governance : Review , Comparative Analysis and their Impact on Utility Computing , .

[2]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[3]  Peter B. Seddon,et al.  Assessing and managing the benefits of enterprise systems: the business manager's perspective , 2002, Inf. Syst. J..

[4]  Lars Mathiassen,et al.  Collaborative Practice Research , 2000, Scand. J. Inf. Syst..

[5]  Mary Sumner,et al.  Risk factors in enterprise-wide/ERP projects , 2000, J. Inf. Technol..

[6]  W. Brenner,et al.  Evaluation of service-oriented IT management in practice , 2005, Proceedings of ICSSSM '05. 2005 International Conference on Services Systems and Services Management, 2005..

[7]  A. Boonstra.  Information systems and organizational change , 2002 .

[8]  Peter T. Köhler.  Planning to Implement Service Management , 2006 .

[9]  Jeffrey K. Pinto,et al.  Critical factors in successful project implementation , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[10]  Toni M. Somers,et al.  The impact of critical success factors across the stages of enterprise resource planning implementations , 2001, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[11]  Aileen Cater-Steel,et al.  Transforming IT service management - the ITIL impact , 2006 .

[12]  Thomas Kern,et al.  ERP critical success factors: an exploration of the contextual factors in public sector institutions , 2002, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[13]  Stijn Viaene,et al.  Managing Benefits from IS/IT Investments: An Empirical Investigation into Current Practice , 2007, 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07).

[14]  J. Rockart,et al.  A primer on critical success factors , 1981 .

[15]  Arkalgud Ramaprasad,et al.  A taxonomy of critical success factors , 1996 .

[16]  Aileen Cater-Steel,et al.  Preface [to Information technology governance and service management: frameworks and adaptations] , 2008 .

[17]  Peter Finch,et al.  Applying the Slevin-Pinto Project Implementation Profile to an Information Systems Project , 2003 .

[18]  Aileen Cater-Steel,et al.  IT Service Management Improvement - Actor Network Perspective , 2007, ECIS.

[19]  Jane M. Howell,et al.  Champions of change: Identifying, understanding, and supporting champions of technological innovations , 1990 .

[20]  Dr B. C. Potgieter.  Evidence that use of the ITIL framework is effective , 2004 .

[21]  Ogc.  Planning to Implement Service Management , 2002 .

[22]  M. Markus,et al.  The Enterprise System Experience— From Adoption to Success , 2000 .

[23]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  The Relationship Advantage: Information Technologies, Sourcing, and Management , 2002 .

[24]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  Critical Success Factors in International ERP Implementations: A Case Research Approach , 2007, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[25]  Henk Akkermans,et al.  Vicious and virtuous cycles in ERP implementation: a case study of interrelations between critical success factors , 2002, Eur. J. Inf. Syst..

[26]  Ben Light,et al.  Second-Wave Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: A Framework for Understanding Success and Failure in Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementation , 2003 .

[27]  Daniel Beimborn,et al.  The impact of process standardization on business process outsourcing success , 2008, Inf. Syst. Frontiers.

[28]  Carol V. Brown,et al.  Managing the Next Wave of Enterprise Systems: Leveraging Lessons from ERP , 2003, MIS Q. Executive.

[29]  Graeme Shanks,et al.  Critical Success Factors Revisited: A Model for ERP Project Implementation , 2003 .

[30]  Dieter Spath,et al.  Perspectives of IT-Service Quality Management: A Concept for Life Cycle Based Quality Management of IT-Services , 2009 .

[31]  Ben Light,et al.  A Critical Success Factors Model for ERP Implementation , 1999, IEEE Softw..

[32]  Varun Grover,et al.  The Effect of Service Quality and Partnership on the Outsourcing of Information Systems Functions , 1996, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[33]  Rui Vinhas da Silva,et al.  A Critical Success Factor model for CRM implementation , 2007 .

[34]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  Second-Wave Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: Implementing for Effectiveness , 2003 .

[35]  Princely Ifinedo,et al.  Interactions between Organizational Size, Culture, and Structure and Some it Factors in the Context of ERP Success Assessment: An Exploratory Investigation , 2007, J. Comput. Inf. Syst..

[36]  Aileen Cater-Steel,et al.  Implementation of IT infrastructure library (ITIL) in Australia: progress and success factors , 2005 .

[37]  Walter Brenner,et al.  European Conference on Information Systems ( ECIS ) 2005 Service Oriented IT Management : Benefit , Cost and Success Factors , 2017 .

[38]  Varun Grover,et al.  Special Section: Toward a Theory of Business Process Change Management , 1995, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[39]  Jon Iden,et al.  Implementing IT Service Management: Lessons Learned from a University IT Department , 2009 .

[40]  Aileen Cater-Steel,et al.  Improving ICT governance: a radical restructure using CobiT and ITIL , 2009 .

[41]  S. Grewal,et al.  ISSUES IN IT GOVERNANCE & IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT - A Study of their adoption in Australian Universities , 2006 .

[42]  Jae-Nam Lee,et al.  Understanding outsourcing partnership: a comparison of three theoretical perspectives , 2005, IEEE Trans. Engineering Management.