If you are in a role related to IT service management or project management in your enterprise, gap analysis is a simple tool that will help you to identify the gap between where you are and where you want to be. The technique not only analyses the gap between your current and future state but also comes up with the tasks that need to be carried out in order to reach the desired state. A gap analysis should ideally be conducted during the initial stage of a project, while you are in the process of developing a business model.
For example: Imagine you have been newly appointed as the manager of a team that handles calls to answer customer queries. In the last few months, customer feedback has not been great, hence the company decided to revamp the whole process. You have been hired as a part of this restructuring process. Your key objective is to improve the team’s performance for which you have a few plans in mind. However, in order to choose the best one, you need to understand the process well in terms of what exactly is lagging and what should be the desired outcomes. With gap analysis, you will identify the existing lags in the system which are holding back the enterprise from attaining the desired outcomes. Based on the analysis, you can chalk out a plan to reach where you want to be.
ITIL Gap Analysis
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the best practice framework for IT service management, comprises a process called Continual Service Improvement (CSI). Gap analysis is prescribed in this stage.
ITIL 4 Foundation suggests that organizations make use of a gap analysis tool to compare the current state with the future. The main idea behind implementing the concept of gap analysis is to help organizations to understand their commitment to a project
Prior to conducting gap analysis, a few fundamental questions need to be addressed:
- Do you research the market effectively and use techniques to fulfill the demands in the market?
- Does your team interact enough with end-users to understand their expectations?
- Do you spend enough time with managers and teams in direct communication with end-users?
- Do you take customer feedback and improvise on your current techniques?
A ‘yes’ to all the above questions is required for the success of the gap analysis process.
How to Conduct Gap Analysis?
- The first step in gap analysis is to set the objectives so that you know where you want to be. First, identify the objectives that you need to achieve. This gives you the future state: where you want to be.
- With respect to each of the objectives that you have set, analyze the current situation, and try to address the following key questions:
a) Who will you need to communicate with in order to have the correct understanding of the present scenario?
b) Is the information you need present only in the memory of people or is it documented somewhere?
c) What is the best way to have access to the information you need? Have one-to-one conversations with those having knowledge about it. Reviewing documents? Conducting workshops? - Once you have an answer to these questions, analyze your present situation in the context of these questions.
- Once you know the present state and the desired future state, you can jot down the key actions to be performed using the ITIL service management principles. Review your current state properly before adopting ITIL principles. Identify the key areas where ITSM principles need to be implemented.
For example, the objective that has been set in your organization is to increase the number of end-users for an IT product. Currently, there are around 20, 000 users. The desired future state is to achieve the target of 50,000 users.
Your steps hereafter should be to form a team that will interact with end-users directly and understands their expectations from the product. The information should be documented and reviewed appropriately in order to identify the ITIL Service Strategy principles to be implemented within your processes. Document the number of end-users saying positive and negative things and those expecting a few other features from the product. Use ITIL best practices principles to achieve the desired results.
Few Tips to Conduct ITIL Gap Analysis
- Documentation of gap analysis should include all relevant details. If you do not provide a detailed report, the team will not know where to start and when to sign off on the project.
- While stating the gap between your present and future state, it is best to provide the information by using metrics where information can be quantified.
- The ITIL RACI model can be used here to define the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the project. The acronym stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed.
- Responsible: Person/Team responsible for getting a job done
- Accountable: Person/Team who takes ownership of the outcomes and their quality
- Consulted: Person/Team who is/are consulted to come up with strategies to achieve the target
- Informed: Person/Team who is/are kept up-to-date about progress, quality, etc.
Importance of ITIL Gap Analysis
The importance of gap analysis as part of ITIL adoption in an organization is:
- ITIL gap analysis helps in identifying the gaps in Service Strategy.
- Ignoring the gaps may result in resources being allocated poorly, misinterpretation of customer expectations, and failure to meet market demands, which in turn will lead to a loss of revenue and time.
- ITIL gap analysis helps you to get closer to your customers, study their behavior and expectations, and thereby analyze whether the current operations are capable of achieving customer expectations. If not, you will need to strategize on the actions that are required so that the products or services delivered are as per market demands.
By conducting an ITIL gap analysis, an organization now has a clear picture in terms of how much effort, time, money, and human resource will go into fixing the gap from the current state to the desired operational state of the organization in the future.
