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Have you ever considered that it would be interesting to measure the maturity of your IT Service Management (ITSM) processes? To be able to assess it yourself, without having to employ expensive consultants, and to be able to do it consistently year on year?
IT Service Management processes like Change Management, Incident Management, Request Fulfilment and Problem Management underpin IT support and delivery functions within 99% of organisations. You will also know that the twenty-six ‘Best Practice’ processes of the ITIL® Framework have for many years, been the world’s leading IT Service Management Framework underpinning that effort.
(Click here if you want to learn more about our ITIL problem management training course)
The TIPA® (Tudor IT Process Assessment) is an internationally-recognized framework for IT process assessment. It uses the principles of the ISO/IEC 15504-33000 standard to determine the maturity level of ITIL based processes within an organisation.
ITIL® guidelines are used in a vast number of IT organisations globally and sometimes documented (and hopefully followed) but do you know:
- How you measure if the investment in individuals and tools has given value to the organisation?
- How you measure the maturity of the IT processes developed, executed and maintained by your staff?
- How you get an objective description of the current state of your IT process landscape?
Note: other maturity assessments are available.
Why use TIPA®?
While there are plenty of costly proprietary maturity assessments offered by large consulting companies, they usually are often not compatible between vendors. They lack transparency in assessment method with improvement plans often locked into using the vendor’s consultants afterwards.
TIPA® is the result of over 10 years’ research by a team of international researchers working with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), who also worked on the development and review of both the ISO/IEC 15504 (Process Assessment) and the ISO/IEC 20000 (ITSM Quality Standard).
TIPA for ITIL® provides insight into your ITSM process landscape and brings knowledge of its strengths and weaknesses in terms of alignment with your business strategy. The analysis of the findings also identifies where and in which order improvement preferably should be made to obtain the strategic goals.
TIPA for ITIL® is an open, standards-based maturity assessment methodology specifically designed for ITIL (v3 and v2) processes. It is vendor neutral, and the results are immediately comparable to other TIPA assessments.
In addition to the ranking of processes, TIPA provides a SWOT analysis of your processes and a catalogue of improvement proposals that feeds directly into your Continual Service Improvement organisation now prioritised for implementation.
You can then use the result of the assessment as an input to ROI calculations on your ITSM efforts.
The TIPA Assessment methodology spans from a lite-touch assessment for internal corporate progress evaluation and status determination to the full-blown assessment for external benchmarking of the service provider organisation towards potential partners or against competitors.
TIPA for ITIL® is the only assessment methodology that provides the following:
- Made especially for ITIL® v2011, v3 and even v2.
- Based on the ISO/IEC 15504-33000 international standard for process assessment.
- A SWOT analysis and improvement proposals for your ITIL process landscape.
- Comparable results between evaluations and vendors.
A TIPA® Assessment is relevant to organisations that are serious about comparing internal process maturity with other players in the same industry. It also applies to those wishing to explore the tools and techniques of a framework that enable process improvement through goal-setting and improvement measurement
What are the business benefits of conducting a TIPA® maturity assessment?
- Knowing where you actually are compared to where you think you are
- More efficient and effective processes
- Better IT and Business alignment
- Providing input into you CSI program
What qualifications are available?
TIPA training is currently available at two levels. An introductory TIPA® assessor for ITIL®, and a more advanced TIPA® Lead Assessor.
The TIPA® assessor for ITIL® a 3-day course provides a great insight into the concepts and keys components of TIPA® and enables you to participate in assessment projects under the supervision of a TIPA® Lead Assessor.
This course will equip you with the ability to perform a process assessment based on the TIPA® for ITIL® method, under the leadership of a TIPA® Lead Assessor.
The course enables you to make use of the tools provided in the TIPA® toolbox, prepares you to conduct interviews, assess and rate processes, determine the current ITSM process maturity. It also enables you to write an assessment report and provide recommendations for process optimisation.
The TIPA® Lead Assessor this qualification is a 2-day course that equips you with the ability to lead a process assessment project using the TIPA® framework.
The course will enable you to collaborate with executive and top management to define the scope, select the appropriate level and plan for the project while defining the team structure.
You will be able to use the TIPA® tools to monitor progress throughout the assessment project lifecycle, ensuring quality and enabling you to present results and recommendations to all relevant stakeholders.
(While you are here, you might like to read this post about ITIL principles).
What’s the difference between TIPA®, CMM and COBIT and why should I use TIPA?
You’re now probably asking yourself "What’s the difference between TIPA, CMM and COBIT?" Well…
The TIPA® Assessment Method is similar to both COBIT 5 Process Assessment Model and CMMI-SVC in that it is a staged maturity model with “5+1” levels.
TIPA® is similar to COBIT 5 (and different from CMMI-SVC) in that it is based on the ISO/IEC 15504 standard (now following ISO/IEC 33000).
The most significant differences – and the most compelling reasons to use the TIPA method – are:
- TIPA for ITIL is constructed specifically for use with ITIL. There is no need for “translation” between processes treated in the COBIT 5 or CMMI-SVC models. This removes the discussions originating from things that “were lost in translation” between the process frameworks. How do you objectively assess an ITIL process that is partly covered by the COBIT/CMMI-SVC process you are using for assessment? And what does it mean if the ITIL process spans more than one COBIT/CMMI-SVC process?
- TIPA for ITIL produces a SWOT analysis and an improvement proposal catalogue, which can be fed directly into your CSI organisation.
- TIPA for ITIL works on a standardised and complete toolbox with templates and calculation models for the assessors. The toolbox contains management products to ensure the correct scoping and agreements between the stakeholders and the Assessor team.
- TIPA for ITIL is objective, repeatable and vendor independent. There is no vendor lock-in… You can compare between assessments, vendors and organisations.
As you see, there are plenty of differences between TIPA and CMMI-SVC. There are fewer differences between TIPA and COBIT 5. However, when you have chosen to use ITIL as a guideline for your IT Service Management-implementation, then the logical choice would be to utilise TIPA as the assessment method to ensure that your investment in ITSM is reflected in gradually more mature and capable processes. Exactly the same processes that the model assesses.
The most significant place where TIPA stands out from COBIT (except for the avoidance of “process translation”) is the integrated SWOT analysis and process improvement proposals that are part of the assessment result reporting.
So do we really need another process assessment model? Yes, most certainly. ITIL is the leading framework for IT Service Management (and you may skip the “IT”), and as such should have a standardised-based, solid, objective, repeatable and independent maturity assessment model specifically constructed for its processes. The TIPA Process Assessment Model fills the void.
The TIPA Process Assessment Model is as solid as the COBIT 5 Process Assessment Model – they are based on the same ISO/IEC standard. The TIPA toolbox is (in my view) somewhat more complete.
So in summary my advice would be to use the COBIT 5 PAM for assessing COBIT processes, CMMI-SVC for assessing CMMI-SVC processes, and use TIPA for ITIL to assess ITIL 2011, ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 processes.
I hope this helped you understand what TIPA is and the need for TIPA?
More information about TIPA®, and TIPA® training courses is available from your Account Manager at Purple Griffon, or click here to find out about the foundation for ITIL 4 training.
And before you go, you might also like to read this post asking the question: what is SIPOC?
