Always budget for Continual Improvement

Continual Improvement is an essential practice across all businesses.

Speak to any CEO or business leader, and they will agree that without a constant embedded practice and culture of continual improvement, then the business is at a heightened level of risk.

If continual improvement is such a core principal of business, why is it that not many IT organisations have embedded the culture and practice of Continual Improvement of IT Services?

Often, the answer is nearly always because of a lack of time and budget (aka investment) and more often than not, it's not that businesses 'cant afford it', but that it just gets overlooked when budgets are created.

Is Continual Service Improvement (CSI) not deemed ‘hip’ enough; not ‘sexy’ enough; not ‘cool’ enough to warrant the energy, resources and effort?

Is it too broad having a budget line for 'improvements' when we dont yet really understand what the improvements might be, or the ROI they will create?

The arguments for CSI are solid and every standard, framework, best practice and principal has CSI running through it, in one form or another. But in many instances, the arguments are not strong enough to warrant CSI being created as a budget line item.

Perhaps and alternatively, if CSI is originally planned for investment, is it that CSI is considered a soft target, so any budgetary allowance is taken by another project that might be deemed a higher priority?

The questions therefore becomes; what investment do we have for CSI, and is it ring-fenced so that nothing (and we mean nothing) can take that investment away?

It is our opinion that CSI should be baked into all areas of business, especially technology and IT Services. As modern businesses become more and more interwoven with technology that enables, drives and delivers almost every business capability, then surely CSI must become a budget standard?

Of course, there's investments and investments, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a large investment. For instance, simply having a regular meeting to look at Service Desk data and Customer Satisfaction feedback with a sole focus on 'how can we improve', will always identify quick wins around ITSM tooling tweaks, automation and so on.

In fact, the Japanese even have a word for this - 'Kaizen' - 'an approach to creating continuous improvement based on the idea that small, ongoing positive changes can reap significant improvements'

Of course from time to time, large investments might be needed also, and this of course has to be balanced around budget constraints and the overall strategy (if there is one!), but it doesn’t always need many thousands of pounds allocated to buy shiny things.

Always remember, more often than not, CSI can mean cost savings also.. so this is not exactly money down the drain.

So please please dont overlook budgetting for CSI, and even when the big bucks arent available, 'Kaizen' can reap huge benefits also!