Service Delivery Metrics

Question

We have onshore project managers who are responsible for the following:

• SL Management
• Financial Management of Service
• Capacity Management
• Availability Management
• IT Service Continuity Management
• Overall Customer Satisfaction
• Service quality assurance

All based on systems-level tests that examine the behavior of service-oriented use cases across possible choreographies.

Since these items requires tasks for administration, monitoring and coordinating, we provided them a offshore pm assistants to do the daily monitoring, admin, and coordination. In order to have a metric, it should be owned by the associates which is not so I have a difficulty in coming up with a concrete measurement to understand mainly what is the value we are providing with the project managers. We do have a tool the organization uses to create the actions for tasks and the associates uses this to know the status of the task at hand.

This tool has a Start/ End date/ completed so we have the measurement of the success rate. However, I still want a concrete metrics that I am able to see that the associates are valuable to the project managers.

Does someone have a good idea to measure value like the one I've pointed out?

Aal Izz Well - D

Answer 1

Think very carefully about what you want measured and why.

I don't know your domain/context but my instinct tells me if you need to hire offshore support to measure activity, you're probably measuring the wrong activity.

Answer 2

This may not be what you were looking for because I had a bit of difficulty following the question. This is what I understood you meant. You have ongoing operational processes that have been projectized and the management is outsourced. You have a logging tool that shows when something is requested/started and when it's done. What you are missing is something to turn this into a metric.

If that's what you meant, then my answer is that you are missing a component. You need to set a service standard that the logged items can be measured against. For instance the service standard agreement might say X type of ticket will be acknowledged within 1 business hour with an estimate of the completion date. Each ticket will be completed within its estimated completion time. The gap between estimate and actual not to exceed 5%.

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

What I have understood from your question is, "Do we need project managers and project associate when there is a well established tool that serves the purpose?"

My answer is, yes, you need a Project Manager and Project Associates. The company has to decide how many Project Managers and Project Associates are required. If you believe that your projects are small and manageable with small numbers then you can go ahead.

Project Managers are required as they drive the projects through fully. A tool is then driven with human knowledge and common sense.

Without this human knowledge and the applicatio of common sense, no tool is great! There is one casual quote on tools; a fool with a tool is still a fool. So tools just enablee the workflow and kee track of what is being done. Project Managers decide how to use your tool efficiently and make decisions.

Next, coming to Project Associates. They are required to do the task follow-ups - low level, low complexity activities. Again, the size matters. To decide how many resources you need for these project management activities then you have to use some simulation methods. One of the best simulation methods is Monte Carlo Simulation. This helps you in understanding the right resource level and future needs. Predication modeling enables you to understand the current state and design your future state.