NCC Members have free access to this Guideline on the NCC Membership website.

Today, more than ever, a business depends on its IT function to be responsive to its needs. In the past this usually centred on agility and responsiveness in providing new systems or changes to existing systems. Increasingly, service issues are playing a more important part in how IT is viewed by the rest of the organisation and crucially in how the organisation is viewed by its customers - indeed recent global research has highlighted that service improvement is (with cost cutting) a prime concern of CIOs.

Most, if not all, IT organisations have service-related issues at one time or another. For some they are transient or small-scale, for others they may be enduring and significantly impact on the overall business operations and, in the worst cases, impact both revenue and profit.

Outsourcing is a tempting option when service issues are prolonged, but often a better approach would be self-help, in the form of a Service Improvement Programme (SIP), to improve service and restore trust in the IT organisation.

These Guidelines consider the possible reasons that service issues arise and give advice, guidance and tips on implementing potential solutions.