1U C I S A I T I L C A S E S T U D Y S H E F F I E L D .docx

1U C I S A I T I L C A S E S T U D Y : S H E F F I E L D H
A L L A M U N I V E R S I T Y
UCISA ITIL Case Study on Sheffield Hallam
University
1. Introduction
Sheffield Hallam University is a teaching led institution,
supported by world class applied research, with
approximately 32,000 students, including overseas students and
5,000 staff. The University is recognised as a Centre
of Excellence for Teaching and Learning.
Information Systems and Technology is part of a Directorate,
which also includes the Library and a number of other
areas: the Nursery, Chaplaincy, Student Recruitment and the
Registry.
The structure of the University is divided into four Faculties
with a number of Schools.
2. Using ITIL
The version of ITIL being used is v2. This has been used since
2000 within the Head of IT Infrastructure’s team (the
Head of the team has a Service Management background). ITIL
started more broadly in 2004.
There has been a recent recommitment to ITIL, as other
alternatives were reviewed and ITIL was still considered the
most appropriate in the University environment. ITIL is also

supported by the Senior Management across IT.
There is a strong service ethos within the University, so ITIL is
the most appropriate service management framework
for IT within Sheffield Hallam.
The drivers for ITIL now are:
� This is the right thing to be doing – implementing service
management Best Practice
� Customer service is paramount – adding value to the student
experience
� Using an existing recognised framework (not re-inventing
the wheel)
� Fits with the University commitment to a service culture and
increases staff awareness of service
management
� Value for money
Historical reason for ITIL: poor availability – not an issue now,
with a highly resilient infrastructure.
3. The service life cycle – service strategy
Governance and strategic direction
There is a new governance structure in place – this was
established after a strategic review by the National Computing
Centre.
The governance structure is made up of a number of
committees. There is an overall group, which has a number of

senior staff as its members, including Pro Vice Chancellors and
Directors. There are then a number of portfolio strands,
including one for Infrastructure and a number for different
facets of the business. For example, there is one for
teaching and learning software, finance and HR. It is expected
that these portfolios will change according to the needs
of the University, but those like Infrastructure will remain in
place all the time.
There is also an Information Systems Management Board, which
was established approximately four years ago. This
includes senior staff from the then newly formed four Faculties.
This was set up to look at the strategy for running
services and procurement etc. There are a number of technical
committees that support this Management Board,
which are all currently still in place. There is a review taking
place to establish which of these technical committees
should stay in place.
Service portfolio management and project management
Service portfolio management is an emerging process driven by
the new governance structure and has already been
proven. For example, two similar products were put forward for
video based collaboration and a strategic decision,
through the Governance Committees and portfolio management,
established one product as the University strategic
direction.
A Project Office is in place for IT projects and there is a
separate Project Office looking at portfolio management. This is

because some of the portfolio management and related projects
are not IT driven, but are more related to the change
management of University business processes (for which there
is sometimes an IT element). The IT Project Office is for
specific IT projects only.
This is an emerging process as this has only been in place for
the last 6–9 months.
The University uses a PRINCE2 based methodology.
Communications
Internally within IT there is a monthly newsletter called Team
Brief.
Once or twice a year the Directorate produces a magazine about
successes, including those from the IT teams.
Communications with users (sometimes via corporate
communications) are predominantly via:
� Email
� Digital signage
� Specific intranet pages
� Notice boards
� Word of mouth (phone) cascade to federated support teams
and management
� Printed material from knowledge base distributed by service
desk and advisory teams

� Printed and video material from IT training unit
� Annual IT at SHU conference and exhibition (day event open
to any interested staff)
� Several different student and staff questionnaires each year
� Account meetings, formal and informal, with Student Union
and Faculty and Departmental staff
4. The service life cycle – service design
Service catalogue management
The University is moving towards an understanding of service
management and services in general. This has improved
through the work that has been undertaken on the service
catalogue.
A service catalogue is in place with a business catalogue view
and a technical catalogue view; it will continue to be
developed.
A service diagram has been produced, to show how university
services are supported by IT Services, so they become
meaningful for discussions with stakeholders. This diagram has
been shown to Senior Management, Pro Vice
Chancellors and Deans, and has been useful in discussion on
aspects of service management, for example IT service
continuity management. The business service name example
would be Student Portal. Most stakeholders recognised
95% of the services that have been documented from a
university business point of view. This diagram also shows
which IT services support each of these university business
services.

From a technical service catalogue perspective the Service
Definitions are also being reviewed and updated. This is the
detailed IT information on each of the technical services that
supports a now defined University business process and
has been written in technical language.
The Head of IT Infrastructure has been involved in the service
catalogue development workshops within the HE sector.
The service catalogue information from the workshops is
available to all and includes the diagram mentioned above.
The production of a service catalogue has also allowed work to
be taken forward on the costing of IT services.
Business relationship management/service level management
The role
A variety of individuals are doing some level of business
relationship management. This includes Service Managers,
who have direct responsibility for ownership and relationship
management for an individual service.
Out of trying to create these relationships the Information
Systems Management Board was created – this enabled
relationship management with a collective governing body.
However, this has had only limited success, mainly due to
the technical focus of its members. It has worked well to enable
a much greater degree of joining up of Faculty, central
IT support and procurement, but has been less effective at
building bridges into business and academic management

teams. This is being approached again through revised
governance structures and other initiatives.
There is recognition that the University is about providing
service to students – so there is a good service ethos and
there is an understanding that business relationship management
is an essential part of service provision.
Although a considerable amount of business relationship
management is taking place, this is still an emerging process
for which a cohesive strategy is needed and being developed.
The process and documents
There are no Service Level Agreements and the University will
not have SLAs for IT.
There will be service statements. This is more practical for
Sheffield Hallam, as they have recognised that it is unlikely
that anyone will sign an SLA. However, there is a requirement
for service statements based on funding that say “for
this level of funding this is what can be delivered”. These
statements will be designed to set stakeholder expectations
and will include availability times, costs, maintenance times
etc. This will give the University better information to
understand where the costs of services are, so they can
understand the impact of having to cut or increase service,
should they wish to do so.
Capacity management
There is a capacity plan that is produced annually. This reviews
every aspect of the servers, storage and network. There
is also an indication if the kit is still fit for purpose. This plan
is only done at the resource capacity planning level, and
is operationally based, but is very effective. There is also

underlying growth information, which is useful as part of the
planning process.
There is a need for more focus on the tactical planning of
capacity at service level rather than systems level, to provide
the service capacity planning information, with the hope that
the alignment of business service to key University
business and teaching processes will enable strategic IT
capacity planning to become closer, aligned with business
strategic planning and forecasting.
Availability management
Availability was the original driver for ITIL being established,
but with the investment in the infrastructure and in
service culture over a number of years, the original availability
issues no longer exist.
System availability was closely monitored but has ceased to be
of interest. However, there is recognition that
there needs to be some understanding of availability, as seen
from the University perspective, to ensure that all
requirements are being met and measured, and that there is not
excessive over provision.
Information security management
There is extensive security technology deployed. There are
policies in place – including virus protection etc., and
all these policies are monitored. There is also a recent policy,
which requires that all information taken off site is
encrypted, but compliance with this is difficult to manage.
There is recognition that information security management
needs to be addressed. Ownership needs to be
established and a strategic plan put in place.

Supplier management
There is a joint responsibility between IT Services and
Procurement to ensure that the right suppliers are in place. The
main role of Procurement is to ensure that the correct policies
and processes are followed. They also manage the legal
aspects of supplier management, including contract
management.
The ongoing review and relationship management of the IT
suppliers is done within IT teams. Selection of suppliers is
done jointly by Procurement and IT teams.
5. The service life cycle – service transition
Change management
There is a change management process in place, but this is
currently only for the Infrastructure and for the managed
desktop image. There is no change management on corporate
applications, support of which has only recently been
centralised in a newly formed university systems group.
There is no full time Change Manager, but this is an established
role, carried out by a member of the Infrastructure
Service Management Team, using the SHU implementation of
BMC Remedy System to manage and approve some
types of change, escalating others to the weekly change board or
higher to ISMB. A forward schedule of change is
produced to ensure that changes are not made during critical

times for the University.
There is a Change Advisory Board meeting every Monday (all
changes that are happening that week are reviewed) to
assess risk and ensure that there is a backout plan in place.
There is a plan to bring the applications teams under the change
management process.
There is an emergency change policy and procedure in place
based on impact/risk.
Release management
There is no formal release management, other than for the
annual release of the managed desktop build (to
around 8,000 desktops). However, the need for this is seen, as
there have been a number of issues from unplanned,
uncommunicated releases.
This is an emerging process. Releases that are managed via
projects are better because they are controlled by project
methodology – the synergies between these have been
recognised and will be leveraged moving forward.
Configuration management
There is currently a lot of configuration data and a lot of tools
that are managing configuration data for example: Cisco
Works, HP Openview, Altiris and I-tracks. There are also some
Configuration Management Database (CMDB) products
in use as well. There is data that has been populated into the
CMDB, but there are no relationships in place at the
moment. There is also no cradle to grave process – which means
that Configuration Items (CIs) go in at procurement
but are never removed when they are retired.

There is a Service Dashboard tool supplied by Interlink that
builds service views, based on configuration relationships
held in its own CMDB, using data linked to and from the
Remedy CMDB (which is the service management tool in
place). The Interlink tool supports the use of SNMP monitoring,
enabling real time monitoring at a service level both
by the dashboard interface and by standard period availability
report generation.
This is an emerging process, and will ultimately provide a
federated CMDB, to support configuration management.
6. The service life cycle – service operation
The Service Desk
There is a central Service Desk and a number of federated
faculty and departmental help desks. Following a recent
merger, the central Service Desk offers a combined Library and
IT single point of contact, with telephone aspects of the
Service Desk provided by a Telephone Advisory Service.
The future plans for the Service Desk are likely to include
closer integration of the federated desks.
Incident management
Incident management is a relatively new process. It was
originally call management, but with a recent move to Service
Desk, incident management is now being implemented. The
process is being developed, along with more defined
escalation procedures, but this is a new and evolving process. A
major incident management process was established
and refined early on as a response to the original infrastructure
availability issues.

Service request/request fulfilment
There is an understanding of service requests, but currently they
are not being managed separately from incidents at
the Service Desk – there will be an opportunity for this once the
Service Desk matures and the incident management
process has become embedded. Request fulfilment is normally
(but deliberately not in all cases) managed and
handled separately within the second and third line support and
delivery teams, in a manner tuned to the nature of
service requests received. Remedy workflow tools are tuned to
reflect differing routes and priorities.
Problem management
Problem management is not in place yet, but is being planned.
7. The service life cycle – continual service improvement
Continual improvement has been inherent in all ITIL activities
at Sheffield Hallam since 2000. In fact, everything that
has been achieved is a commitment to continual service
improvement.
The original drivers for ITIL were to improve availability –
which has been achieved. The continual improvement has
then taken service management forward to all the activities that
are being undertaken at the moment, to underpin
the commitment to providing service excellence.

Services are measured, but the measures, other than cost, are
still really IT focused. This is an area which will continue
to be developed over time.
8. Service management software
BMC Remedy v7, Interlink Business Service Management suite
and Opnet Ace live are the applications currently being
used to support the ITIL processes.
Previous releases of Remedy have been in place since the mid
1990s, and it was chosen because it was the product
of the time and was one of the first Windows products. It
remains a leading contender, functionally rich and firmly
established in the top right corner of the Gartner magic
quadrant.
Remedy will continue to be used because of the time and
investment that has already been made.
All modules currently in use will continue to be used and
developed – and those that are currently not released into a
live support environment will be, as processes are established
requiring them, for example, service level management
and problem management.
There is a knowledge base in Remedy, but this is not being
used, as it was felt that this was not a user friendly option.
Confluence shareware tools were selected in preference to the
bundled Remedy functionality, and this is being used
for knowledge management to good effect, both in the Service
Desk and the majority of support teams.
The current number of users of Remedy is approximately 150.
The Interlink software suite enables integration of the data in

Remedy asset management and CMDB modules, with
SNMP based monitoring tools used in day to day Infrastructure
monitoring and a range of business friendly dashboard
and similar displays, to provide a business service focussed real
time service status dashboard, backed with a range of
availability reporting tools.
Opnet tools are used to capture network traffic flows between
campus networks and data centres and, by design,
enable traffic volume to be analysed by service and by customer
group. This is being used in our approach to service
costing/value.
Recommendations on purchasing a software tool
� Must be ITIL conformant
� Web based
� Easy to use user interface
� Understand what processes you are going to have in place to
ensure that the tool will support these – process
first
� Inventory and CMDB
9. ITIL development and qualifications
Everyone in Infrastructure holds an ITIL Foundation
Certificate. There are four members of staff who hold

Practitioners’
Certificates v2.
There are also six qualified ITIL v2 Service Managers and one
ITIL v3 Service Manager. Consideration is currently being
given to whether to upgrade the v2 Service Manager’s
Certificate, using the v3 Manager’s Bridge, to gain the ITIL v3
Expert Certificate.
The training has been carried out by a number of training
companies – HP, Remark and PinkRoccade. The reason for
this is that the training was following individual trainers with
exceptional skills – the ITIL evangelists, who have actual
practical experience of implementing ITIL – rather than an
arrangement with an individual training company.
There is some ITIL training also done through independent
trainers, via the Sheffield Hallam IT Foundry, which offers
training to the paying public. It is hoped that this will develop
over time.
10. ITIL conclusions and recommendations
Sheffield Hallam University would recommend ITIL as a
service management framework – based on:
� The fact that this is Best Practice and it is a framework that
can be adapted
� This is the right thing to be doing – implementing service
management
� Customer service is paramount – adding value to the student
experience
Tangible benefits that have been realised:

� Reliability of IT services – reduced downtime
� Understanding service delivery
� Change management – control of changes reducing impact
and monitoring, after changes to ensure service is
available
� The perception is now that the University have IT services
that work, and this is reflected in consistently good
feedback
� IT service continuity that kept all services fully up during
major city flooding
� Significant investment was required, but the ROI has been
demonstrated – but this needs to be re-articulated
as a measure of cost to value now that availability is taken for
granted
11. ITIL lessons learned
� Investment – there has to be some budget – ITIL training
(the common message) and the development of
process (backfill for resource).
� Requires significant investment of staff time – particularly
from the coalition of the willing.
� Bring the support teams under central management – this
leverages synergies and is more cost effective.
� ITIL is a journey not a destination.
� Requires commitment as the payback is not immediate and

may not be seen for a couple of years.
12. Significant areas of experience
� Service catalogue management
� Costing of IT services
� IT service continuity management
� Capacity and availability management
13. Contact information
Mark Lee – Head of IT Infrastructure
[email protected]
0114 2253817
Table of ITIL Processes and The Service Desk
The Sheffield Hallam University ITIL Process Maturity Matrix
Process name Implemented/
being improved
Partially
implemented/
emerging
Planned Not planned

Service strategy
Financial management for IT services
Service portfolio management
Demand management
Service design
Service level management
Capacity management
IT service continuity management
Supplier management
Service transition
Knowledge management
Change management
Release management
Deployment management
Service asset management

Service validation and service testing
Service operation
The Service Desk
Incident management
Request fulfillment
Problem management
Access management
Event management
Continual service improvement
The 7 Step Improvement Process
1
Subjective rather than objective assessment.
1U C I S A I T I L C A S E S T U D Y : U N I V E R S I T Y
O F D U N D E E
UCISA ITIL Case Study on the University of Dundee
1. Introduction

The University of Dundee is a research and educational
institution, with approximately 18,000 students, including
overseas students and approximately 3,500 staff.
The structure of the University is devolved into four Colleges,
which are divided into a number of Schools. The Schools
and Colleges do have their own IT technical specialists/staff.
A wide variety of IT services and technologies are centrally
provided from Information and Computing Services (ICS).
2. Using ITIL
The current version of ITIL being used is v2, but v3 is being
viewed as the future maturity option – an organic
development. ITIL v2 has been used since 2005.
The original drivers for choosing ITIL were:
� To improve the management and delivery of IT services
� To improve the resilience and availability of services
� Focus on the requirements of the University and not the
technology
� Replacing the existing Help Desk as it was inappropriate for
the University and implement a Service Desk that
supported our implementation of ITIL
� Implement service management Best Practice
� Using an existing recognised framework (not re-inventing
the wheel)
� Introduction to IT Services of a service culture and increase

staff awareness of, and expertise in, service
management
3. The service life cycle – service strategy
Governance and strategic direction
A Governance Group for IT and Information Management has
recently been established. The first meeting of this
Group took place in July. This Group is chaired by the
Secretary of the University with representation of all the
Schools.
Part of the remit of this Group is to agree the ICT and
Information Management Strategy. This Group are looking at
the
overall alignment of projects with the strategy of the
University.
The principles/framework of the information governance are
“The Information Management Strategy and the current
ICS technology strategy are explicitly aligned with the Strategic
Framework. Both contain elements which require
continuing support, consultation and decisions which should be
taken in a broad University context, particularly when
there will be increasing competition for the allocation of
diminishing resources”.
Service portfolio management and project management
Projects are managed using PRINCE2 methodology. This
methodology is also used to manage overarching
programmes in line with managing successful programmes. A
Programme Office is in place.
The Programme Office and the PRINCE2 methodology will
ultimately become the underpinning, building planning

and maturity into delivering the process of portfolio
management. A portfolio is currently being developed.
Projects can come from any of three areas, External
Development (The University), Internal Development (IT) or
Service
Development (ITIL etc).
There is a commitment to a reduction of the ICS effort and costs
involved in running the business and, therefore, in
increasing the level of investment in the capabilities of the
University and IT and the value added to the business.
O F D U N D E E
Communications
Communications are considered paramount to the success of all
aspects of ICS service delivery. There is a
communications strategy in place.
Communications are via:
� Seminars
� Cascade briefings
� Net-admin group
� Website and intranet site
� Email

� Digital signage
� Newsletter
� Other communication options, such as Twitter and blogs are
being considered
4. The service life cycle – service design
There is a service catalogue in place. There are currently 13 key
services,which are then broken down in the supporting
services. There is also information related to each of these,
which document the required capabilities and skills.
Business relationship management/service level management
The role
There is a team of Liaison Officers – these are not dedicated
roles, they are functions carried out by staff within ICS
in addition to their main role. This role is currently being
reviewed and revamped to align with a new University
organisation structure.
The individuals from within ICS who have this liaison role were
instructed that the interactions with the Schools had
to be at a senior level, to ensure the right level of engagement,
i.e. strategic and tactical interactions. The required level
of engagement is understood in some Schools, but others are
nominating less senior members of staff to engage with
IT, which is causing issues with the discussions taking place
and decision making.
The revamp of this role will ensure that the engagement is done

at the senior management levels within the Schools,
i.e. Head of School or School Secretary.
The process and documents
Service level agreements are in place in some areas of the
University. Service level management, as a process, has
been in place for three years and, in light of ICS’ increased
understanding of and maturity in the management and
delivery of its services, is currently undergoing a revamp in
conjunction with the implementation of a new version of
the service desk system.
All standard services have Service Level Statements in place.
Outside these there are individual Service Level
Agreements in place for those Schools or Colleges who require
a higher level of service. These are agreed annually and
funded separately. In essence, SLAs are only used for services
at exception level.
All these services are measures internally within ICS.
The feedback on the services is generally very good, and has
improved significantly over the last three years. This
is demonstrated by the reduction in complaints, which is now
three or four a year, and at the start of the ITIL
implementation was three or four a month.
Costing of services is only really conducted where Schools or
Colleges want an additional level of service beyond the
standard service. There is also now costing for hosting services
and a number of other ICS services including email.

O F D U N D E E
A Tribal report was conducted on the University of Dundee –
this report primarily looking at cost and efficiency. The
University IT functions (ICS and School units) came out in the
middle of the range. However, an interesting aspect
of the report showed that there are as many IT staff out in the
Schools and Colleges as there are in the central IS
and Computer Services Department and they had been measured
together. When IS and Computer Services were
measured alone they came out near the top of the efficiency
range.
Measuring service
KPIs and metrics are in place and are constantly monitored and
measured. These are predominantly based on IT
metrics, for example availability, calls to the Support Desk,
percentage first level fix, change management activity.
Feedback is gathered as an ongoing activity via a number of
mediums, including the intranet site and through
feedback gathered through the incident management process.
Other feedback is gathered through the service level
management process as an ongoing activity.
Service Desk measures are in place.
Capacity management
A capacity management process is in place. Capacity
management planning is done by Unit heads within IT, and is
done very successfully at component level, and is an ongoing
activity. Orion tools have been put in place to support
this planning activity. Service review and capacity planning is
also carried out across all services. This planning is done

in discussion with all parts of the University, to ensure that the
capacity requirements are understood, appropriately
funded and provided to support the University activities.
Considerable investment in the University Network was made to
ensure that availability was improved to ensure the
appropriate resilience for the University. This has been very
successful and has provided full network resilience and
greatly improved application resilience.
Availability metrics are in place, but tend to be IT based rather
than university based. This is being reviewed.
There is a Data Storage Replacement Project currently taking
place, which will also be looking at availability, continuity,
capacity and security.
IT service continuity management is in place to support the
overall University Business Continuity Plans and those
of the individual Schools and Colleges. Virtualisation is
currently being undertaken and will assist in many of the
aspects of continuity management. Once the virtualisation
project is completed, all other aspects of continuity will be
reviewed.
The information security management process is in place and
there are policies and procedures in place for data
security.
There is a strategy to support all aspects of data security. These

are currently being reviewed and also the process is
being matured to look at aspects of data security for archiving /
archived data.
Supplier management
In the last year, the University of Dundee have implemented the
Scottish Government Procurement system: this is
called CAPs. This has had very positive effects on all aspects of
procurement and behaviour around IT purchase, as the
procedures have to be followed by all parts of the University.
This has allowed for significant procurement control.
There is a joint responsibility between ICS and Procurement, to
ensure that the appropriate purchase orders are raised
and that the correct procedures are followed.
The main role of Procurement is to ensure that the correct
policies and processes are followed, and they also manage
the legal aspects of supplier management, including contract
management for anything that is university wide. They
also provide some supplier management.
The more operational day to day relationship management of the
IT Suppliers is done within the IT organisation.
O F D U N D E E
5. The service life cycle – service transition
Change management
The role of Change Manager is in place and currently this is a

part time role. There is also a role in each team for a
change agent for low level operational changes and for
developing standard changes.
There is significant understanding of the project/change overlap
and how projects need to be logged as a change and
discussed/monitored by the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
Projects also appear on the Forward Schedule of Change.
A scheduled weekly CAB meeting is held to discuss and
schedule changes and to look at the overall release schedule.
Emergency change is defined in a formal policy. A process is in
place to implement an emergency change.
There is a Forward Schedule of change in place.
The change management process is currently manual, but will
be automated after the upgrade of Touchpaper in
September 2009 – it is hoped this work will be completed by the
end of December 2009.
Release management
A release management process is in place, including
communication and training. An example of this is the Standard
Operating Environment – every year there are agreed point
releases of the applications that sit on the desktop. This is
coordinated with every School and College.
There is a Configuration Management Database (CMBD) in
place, but this is not overly sophisticated. A plan is in
place to release the new version of Touchpaper by the end of
September 2009, and this will be the basis of a review

and planning opportunity for the updating of the CMDB and
taking the configuration management process forward.
The work on configuration management will underpin the
automation of the change process and will be developed
alongside this process.
6. The service life cycle – service operation
The Service Desk
There is a Central Service Desk in place, which acts as a single
point of contact. There are only three ways to interact
with the Service Desk and these are: email, telephone or web.
There are seven staff on the Service Desk including the Service
Desk Manager. The Service Desk has been merged with
the administration function and the training function, which has
allowed increased efficiency, as most of the activities
could be carried out or support the first line support activities in
dealing with service requests.
Incident management
There is an incident management process owner and a group –
the Local Incident Management team, who support
the process owner in all aspects of review and development.
The Local Incident Management team is made up from staff
from the technical teams, which are the predominant
users of incident management. Their remit is to ensure that the
incident management process is correctly followed
and reviewed and developed to fit the changing requirements.
The incident management process is under review and
the new version will be put in place along with the
implementation of the new version of Touchpaper.

Service request/request fulfilment
Service requests are handled separately to incidents, although
they are handled through a version of the incident
management process. This will change with the implementation
of the new version of Touchpaper and work has been
done to define service request processes in support of this.
Access management
Access management is predominantly dealt with by the Service.
There are also automated password resets in place.
O F D U N D E E
Problem management
A problem management process is in place and is coordinated
by a nominated Problem Manager (this role is taken on
by one of the Heads of Unit within ICS).
7. The service life cycle – continual service improvement
Continual service improvement has become a significant
activity and there are a number of aspects of this that are
already being carried out.
Monitoring and reporting are carried out regularly, but these are
currently more IT based than customer based, for
example, incident management reports. User satisfaction
surveys are carried out on calls to the Service Desk. This will
be extended, over the coming year, to include other mechanisms
for gathering and analysing feedback.

All activities that are being carried out with process
improvement and implementation are part of the overall
commitment of ICS to continual service improvement.
8. Service management software
Touchpaper is the application currently being used to support
the ITIL processes (note that Touchpaper has recently
been taken over by Avocent and, as a result, the Service Desk
system is now known as Landesk (which is actually
an enhanced version of Touchpaper). This has been in place for
approximately three years and was the basis for the
original ITIL implementation.
It was chosen as part of an assessment and evaluation process,
which led to two final products being shortlisted.
Touchpaper was ultimately chosen as it was an ITIL conformant
suite and was significantly more process based than
the other product.
It took three months to implement.
The new version (known as Landesk 7.3), which is being
implemented in September 2009, will be a significant step
forward that resolves many of the current irritating issues.
There is a knowledge base that is currently being used – this is
Right Answers (an American product). This is a hosted
product – they also keep historic information. The knowledge
base that was part of Touchpaper was not considered
appropriate and was too limited for the requirements of the
University.
The main parts of Touchpaper currently being used are Service
Desk, Incident Management, Service Requests,

Problem Management and Configuration Management. The new
version will allow for the automation of the change
management process and the development of the configuration
management process.
It has been agreed that Touchpaper will become a strategic IT
tool. Student Services have already had their processes
mapped on to the system and will go live at the end of October
2009. This is a service based tool and consideration has
been given to using it to handle Estates and Human Resource
processes. Estate Services have decided not to use this
product at the moment, but discussions are ongoing with Human
Resources.
The current number of users of Touchpaper is approximately
200 in IT plus 70 from Support Services. A staff and
student view will be rolled out with the new version in
September 2009 to allow self tracking and viewing.
The best feature of Touchpaper has been the ITIL conformant
processes and the fact that this is a business tool rather
than an IT tool.
Recommendations on purchasing a software tool
� Look at the purchase from a process and business
perspective rather than something that just supports the
Service Desk
� A quality product – a suite not a product with endless add
ons
� Easy to use/user interface
� Seamless flow between modules – i.e. relationship of
incidents, problems and changes etc. – no

reconfiguration to achieve this
� Continuous improvement is not overly complicated
O F D U N D E E
9. ITIL development and qualifications
ITIL overview training is carried out internally. Training
beyond this initial level is carried out on site by an external
company. The company that was originally used was
Chameleon, but we have moved to QA as part of a strategic
training investment. The training that is being carried out at
Foundation Level now is v3.
A review of ITIL training has been carried out, and it has been
agreed that all staff will go through Foundation v3, and
consideration is being made for the conversion of the Manager’s
Certificate in v2 to the ITIL Expert in v3.
The intermediate levels of ITIL are also being considered for
those who are process owners to ensure that there are
subject matter expert skills, for example change management.
Training has also been offered and taken up by some IT staff in
the Schools and Colleges.
10. ITIL conclusions and recommendations
The University of Dundee would recommend ITIL as a service
management framework based on:
� It does help focus on processes and provides a mechanism

for evaluating and implementing process
improvements, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of
running the business activity and, therefore,
reducing the resources and costs associated with this.
Consequently resources are freed up to work on
activities that develop capability and/or add value to the
business
� It is Global Best Practice
� It is a framework that can be appropriately adapted in terms
of both implementation and application
� It helps develop a more professional and business focused
staff
11. ITIL lessons learned
� Communication and ITIL awareness sessions/overviews to
bring the staff on board are key to the success of an
ITIL implementation – these should be done at all levels of IT.
� Understand the organisational change issues that surround an
ITIL implementation.
� At the start, poor change management was causing at least
40% of the incidents that were being experienced
(good change management is paramount to the success) within
six months of implementing change
management the incidents causing impact had dropped to 4%.
� The staff are now running and developing the processes
themselves, as part of their day to day roles, and
senior management are only involved when it is necessary.
� Ensure that the Service Level Manager role is carried out at

the right level from within IT, and with the right
level within the University, with Senior Managers to ensure that
the engagement is at a strategic and tactical
level and is about development of services, not about
technology.
� The processes will continue to evolve, particularly in the
first three years. They must be reviewed regularly and
realigned as lessons are learned and the process maturity
increases.
12. Significant areas of experience
� All areas!
� Change management
� Documentation – to have a look: www.dundee.ac.uk/ics
13. Contact information
Tom Mortimer – Director of Computing Services
[email protected]
01382 384134
O F D U N D E E
Table of ITIL Processes and The Service Desk1
The University of Dundee ITIL Process Maturity Matrix
Process name Implemented/

being improved
Partially
implemented/
emerging
Planned Not planned
Service strategy
Financial management for IT services
Service portfolio management
Demand management
Service design
Service level management
Capacity management
Supplier management
Service transition
Knowledge management

Change management
Release management
Deployment management
Service asset management
Service validation and service testing
Service operation
The Service Desk
Incident management
Request fulfillment
Problem management
Accessmanagement
Event management
Continual service improvement
The 7 Step Improvement Process
1
Subjective rather than objective assessment.

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