Frequently Asked Questions to get you started with Continual Improvement Management (CIM)

[Manjeet Singh]

 Continual Improvement Management is a new App released in London. In this post I am addressing some FAQs about the CIM app, process, best practices and how you can get started.

What is Continual Improvement Management (CIM)?

Continual Service Improvement is a key process in ITIL and other improvement frameworks; but IT Organizations today do not have a solution that can easily manage the end-to-end process of Continual Service Improvement. 

We are solving this problem with the purpose-built ServiceNow Continual Improvement Management app. The CIM app makes it possible to drive new levels of service efficiency by automating the process of continually delivering service improvements across the enterprise. Take continual improvement from theory to reality with a structured framework that aligns people, process, and data in one place to achieve service excellence in any process.

Use the CIM app to receive improvement ideas from any application or employee. Use the context‑rich workbench to prioritize and rank initiatives. Service owners can configure KPIs and dashboards to measure effort, outcome, time‑to‑completion, and milestones in relation to overall business goals and show the outcome achieved.

How can I get the CIM app on my Instance?

In London, the CIM app is available as part of ITSM Professional SKU. 

• ITSM Pro SKU comes with following capabilities: Continual Improvement Management App, Performance Analytics Premium, Virtual Agent, Agent Intelligence.
• You can try out CIM in your non-prod instance any time before subscribing to premium SKU for your production Instance.
• If you are not an ITSM customer, reach out to your ServiceNow Account Rep for options.

 

What makes ServiceNow CIM different from other CSI offerings?

• Structured Approach – A light weight framework to manage continual improvement from identifying improvements to value realization.
• Proactive - Assess your process or service performance proactively and make improvements before people start complaining.
• Simplified Management – Continual Improvement Workbench provides simplified access for managers.
• Value Realization – dashboards provide visibility into the business outcomes achieved through Continual Improvement.

 

What are the benefits of using the CIM app?

• Easily find Improvement Opportunity: Data driven insights and integration with Performance Analytics, Survey & Assessments, Benchmarks, Post Incident Review, and the Coaching module to make it easy to find bottlenecks and Improvement Opportunities.
• Strategic Alignment: Align all improvement Initiatives with Company or BU Strategic goals.
• Set SMART Goal: Set KPI based measurable goals.
• Show outcomes achieved: Out of the Box Value Realization Dashboard to show outcomes achieved.
• Foster Improvement Culture: Help Engage more people for greater Impact.
• Help make IT run Lean: Remove process gaps and reduce productivity waste.
• Innovation: Drive business Innovation and competitive advantage by regular and frequent improvement.

 

I am already using Demand/Project (PPM), why do I need CIM?

The CIM app provides a lightweight, structured approach with metric based insights needed to run a successful Continual Improvement program. It brings data, KPI based goal setting & monitoring, continuous feedback capabilities, and business objective to one place so that you can make step-by-step improvement to getting better all the time.

CIM helps combine the power of the ServiceNow platform and many other applications, and makes it possible to easily capture improvement opportunities from various Service/Process/Teams, plan and implement all prioritized item in an efficient manner and show the value achieved through CIM program to the decision makers.

Continual Improvement is not like a typical project which always has a start and end date - CIM should be continual process. You collect improvement opportunities into an Improvement register. Improvement initiatives go through a plan, do, check, act (PDCA) like process flow. At the end of the continual improvement PDCA cycle, the implemented measures should be reinforced by standards that make the improvement permanent (avoid rollbacks). 

 

What are the benefits of using CIM and Demand/Project together?

As the CIM app has no hard dependency on ITBM apps,  it can be used independently. But to get the best of both worlds, we have provided out of the box integration points that will show up automatically when both the CIM app and ITBM app plugins are installed.

The OOTB integration makes it really easy to use capabilities from both sides together as and when required. For example, with one click you can convert a Demand Record into a Continual Improvement Register record. Similarly, you can convert a CIM task into a Story if your implementation team is working in an Agile framework.

Use Case	Benefits
Demand to CIM: Demand Manager would like to Implement a Demand using the CIM app instead of converting it to a full-fledge Project	CIM Provides a simple PDCA based framework that helps you in identifying and understanding the problem, comes up with list of tasks that need to be done, set SMART goals using KPI a based data driven approach and show the value achieved using out of the box report and Dashboards.
CIM to Demand: Improvement manager has one Improvement Initiative that required a Business Case and Approval Process	In scenarios, when an Improvement Initiative has a requirement of creating a detailed business case and approval then you can create a Demand record from CIM.
CIM to Project: An improvement initiative is big enough and has requirements of resource planning, budget and investment planning. In this scenario, the Improvement manager can create a Project from an Improvement Initiative	Provides a great better together use case where Continual Improvement related work can get done in the CIM app and Project related work can go to the Project module with visibility and accessibility from both sides.
CIM to Story: Leverage Agile and Story execution by converting CIM tasks to stories	This integration provides full flexibility and you can run your improvement in Agile model.

Continual Improvement practitioners use the CIM app for doing Service/Process review and identifying opportunities to get better all the time. If the work requires Demand management, Cost Management, Budget planning or Project level work break down structure planning then ServiceNow PPM (project and portfolio) has all the solutions.

 

What are the other out of the box integration areas in ITSM?

See the picture below for OOTB Integration. The integration points (UI Action/Related List) will show up automatically when related plugins are activated. 

Here are few examples of how different personas/teams can use OOTB integrations.

• IT Manager concerned with missed SLA growth trend submits an improvement request.
• IT manager compares KPI performance with Benchmarks, refers to Recommendations and submit an improvement request.
• HR Manager looking at  Voice of employee Survey,  scores are low, goes ahead and submit an improvement request.
• Team doing Major Incident Post Review-submits an improvement request.
• Manager doing Coaching Assessment for the team, submits an improvement request for process improvement or training needs.

 

What are some best practices to get started?

1. Who should use the CIM? The CIM app provides three user roles:

• Improvement Requester: Typically assigned to IT staff, service/process owners, Managers, Management Staff, Analyst, anybody who has data-based insights on how the service/process are working.
• Improvement Manager: This person is the owner of the improvement program and helps foster the continual Improvement Culture in the organization.
• Improvement Coordinators: Typically assigned to process/service owners. Improvement managers assign coordinators on Improvement initiatives based on the improvement area and subject matter expertise required to ensure successful delivery of improvement outcomes. 

2. What Qualifies for Continual Improvement?

• Continual Improvement is a step-by-step process to increase the effectiveness and/or efficiency of an organization to fulfil its goals/objectives
• An initiative that has long term impact on improving a Service/Process/Function.
• An improvement request needs to go through the PDCA cycle.
• At the end of CI PDCA cycle, the implemented measures should be reinforced by standards that make the improvement permanent (avoid rollbacks).

3. I Installed the CIM app, how can I populate the Improvement register?

Here are some ideas:

• Review customer feedback and complaints. Carry out more assessments, ask customers to suggest improvement opportunities.
• Look at process KPIs and any internal process assessments in PA and platform reports.
• Compare with Benchmarks baseline and look for system suggested Benchmarks recommendations.
• Review service reports for trends and issues that need to be addressed.
• Ask your process manager. Process Manager/Owner usually have great insight into what is not working well.
• Review problem/change management trend reports
• Review Risk registers/GRC Audit test failures to see if there are any improvement opportunities there
• Ask IT staff, development and project management staff for improvement suggestions. Provide CI requestor roles so that they can submit the improvement request to the CI register with one click.
• Regular IT service management reviews, to identify what’s going well and what’s not.

4. How Should I decide if something is Incident vs Problem vs Continual Improvement request?

• An issue or idea qualifies for a CIM record if it will contribute to an improved service or a process.
• One good question to ask yourself before submitting an Improvement record is “Does this need to go through a PDCA process and will it have long term impact on Improving Service/Process/Function?”
• When in doubt, talk to your Improvement Manager to get training & consensus on what qualifies for an Improvement Initiative.

5. We do not have a formal approval team for CIM, so can I disable the approval state in the process?

• By default, Approval is mandatory. But you can disable the approval process using a system property if you do not have a formal approval process in place. You will need the admin role for modifying this property.

 6. What things can I start improving using CIM?

• Services: What users actually use: the reason they want IT. For example, Email Service
• Processes: The methods by which IT delivers service.
• Products: Run Improvement Initiatives to enhance product experience and quality.
• Enterprise Functions: ServiceNow’s unique CIM approach can be used to manage and drive improvements in any enterprise functions like IT, Customer Service, Product Success.
• Individual Improvements: Provide continuous feedback loop and identify coaching opportunities.

 

Where can I learn More?

• Product Docs: ServiceNow Product Docs
• Blog: Continual Improvement: How do fit organizations drive service excellence?
• Blog: The Top 5 Reasons Why Continual Service Improvement (CSI) Initiatives Fail