What it is

Developed by CEC Europe Ltd in conjunction with its international partners in the IT Service Management Alliance, this IT Service Management assessment service offers organisations a cost-effective benchmark that can form the basis of a controlled and measurable process improvement programme. 

The assessment is based on internationally recognised standards; CCTA’s IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the BSI PD0015:2000 self assessment code of practice. It is conducted by highly skilled, ISEB qualified CEC consultants, each injecting many years relevant experience into a rapid and comprehensive study.

Many organisations use the assessment service in preparation for eventual BS15000 conformance or formal accreditation.

Service Management processes

The areas covered by the assessment service are:

What is involved

The Base-One assessment is conducted within a formal framework and to a defined format. It is designed to give a snapshot of the organisation at a point in time. It is best concentrated into a short a timeframe, typically three to four weeks from start to finish. After a brief initiation workshop, CEC will conduct structured interviews with nominated individuals. 

Findings, views and recommendations are reviewed with the management team before publication so as to achieve agreement on the assessment and buy-in to the recommendations.

CEC maintain a database based upon the results of other assessments performed throughout the world and are able to offer comparison data with ‘industry standards’ against which an organisation can judge its current and future performance.

Initiation Workshop

The initiation workshop should be scheduled for three hours. The sponsor of the assessment and the top level Service Management team should attend.

It starts with a presentation from CEC, during which the fifteen disciplines covered in the study will be explained. It is helpful then for the Service Management team to summarise the status of each of these disciplines within the organisation and the individuals to be interviewed should be nominated. Timescales for the exercise should be agreed. It is also useful at this stage to identify any current or planned initiatives that may form part of the ongoing process of improvement. 

An individual within the organisation should be nominated to schedule interviews and meetings, to book meeting and conference rooms and to provide administrative support.
Interviews
Separate interviews will be held for each of the fifteen Service Management disciplines. The nominated interviewee will normally be the person responsible for management of that particular process. It may prove necessary to interview more than one individual to cover a process, for example in a distributed organisation. It is also likely that particular individuals will have management responsibility for more than one Base-One discipline.

Interviews are typically scheduled to last for one hour. Ideally, an hour should be allowed between them to allow for overrun and consolidation of notes. Notes taken during the interviews can be made available for inspection, on request. The interviewer may ask for copies of documents that are referred to during the interview.

Initial review

After completion of the interviews and initial assessment, the sponsor will be offered the opportunity to discuss the results of the study in advance of publication of the report. This review meeting is used to outline the findings, to discuss and agree scores and to consider the recommendations. It will take between one and two hours, depending on the level of discussion.

Presentation and Report

CEC will provide the Base-One report as both a formal presentation and as a written report. Attendance at the presentation can be determined by the sponsor, as can the distribution list for the report. 

The presentation should be scheduled to last two hours. Minor changes to the report and also to the scores can still be made at this stage. 

Following the presentation CEC Europe will issue the final version of the report.

Comparisons

CEC has now built a very valuable assessment database, containing the results from a significant number of past assignments – which offers industry comparisons across a range of key performance indicators. An example comparison charts is given below.

For a related article on CEC's Base One assessment service click here.

For more details visit the CEC Website.