Measures of the Strategic Scorecard: Operational Excellence Scorecard

The operational excellence scorecard provides the performance of IT from the viewpoint of IT management (process owners and service delivery managers) and the audit and regulatory bodies. The operational excellence perspective copes with the key questions of these stakeholders and provides answers to questions of maturity, productivity and reliability of IT processes . The issues that are of focus here, as displayed below, are development process performance, operational process performance, process maturity and enterprise architecture management.

Objective	Measures	Benchmarks
Development process performance	Function point measures of: Productivity Quality Delivery rate	To be determined
Operational process performance	Benchmark based measures of: Productivity Responsiveness Change management effectiveness Incident occurrence levels	Selected Compass benchmark studies
Process maturity	Assessed level of maturity and compliance in priority processes within: Planning and organization Acquisition and implementation Delivery and support Monitoring	To be defined
Enterprise architecture management	Major project architecture approval Product acquisition compliance to technology standards “State of the infrastructure” assessment	Not applicable

In relation to development process performance, function point based measures of productivity, quality, and delivery rate, such as number of faults per 100 installed, function points and delivery rate of function points per month, are defined. Benchmark data on industry performance will be gathered from a third party (e.g., Compass). In the operational process performance area, measures of productivity, responsiveness, change management effectiveness and incident occurrence level are benchmarked against selected Compass studies (e.g., on data centres, client server, etc.).

The process maturity is assessed using the COBIT (control objectives for IT and related technology) framework and maturity models. The group has identified 15 out the 34 priority processes that should have a maturity assessment in 2003 and the other processes will be measured later.

Enterprise architecture management deals with the IT responsibility to define an enterprise architecture which supports long term business strategy and objectives and to act as a steward on behalf of business executives to protect the integrity of that architecture. Major project architecture approval measures the compliance of net new systems as they are proposed, developed and implemented. Product acquisition compliance technology standards measure the adherence to detailed technology standards which are at the heart of minimizing technology diversity and maximizing inter-company technology synergies. The “State of the Infrastructure” assessment measures the degree to which IT has been able to maintain a robust and reliable infrastructure as required to deliver effectively to business needs. It does so by comparing each platform area against risk based criteria for potential impact to business continuity, security and/or compliance.