We have probably all heard the Lord Kelvin quote, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it”. So why not place more emphasis on measuring performance of our IT infrastructure? ITIL gives us key performance indicators, KPIs, as guidance, but I wonder what percentage of university IT departments track where they perform relative to defined indicators. My guess is that nearly all departments do some, but few departments are doing this on a large scale department wide. But why not? Especially since this feedback would foster improvement efforts.

Deming's process improvement model, the "PDCA" cycle, consists of four steps:

• Plan
• Do
• Check
• Act

I think organizations progress from a "Do" cycle (with no planning), to a "Plan-Do" cycle (with no check), to a "Plan-Do-Check-Act" cycle. Personally I have created project plans for process improvement that did not include any post-implementation check-ups--and without these check-ups it's easier for the improvement to "roll back" if it wasn't implemented fully.