it's not enough, you need the wide view

For years, I have been following the development of ICT departments in different companies with different requirements and a different environment. I have experienced how they have tried to implement optimization projects, through external support or through internal force. The focus was not on the application of technologies, but rather on the organization, effectiveness and efficiency of the teams or the service to the customer (user) and his "satisfaction".

Surprisingly, the projects are celebrated as a success, although after only a few months afterwards it can be observed how the developed results are no longer applied in the desired style. I always consider the approaches to be good and correct and yet there is something that blocks this from developing further. The reasons can be manifold and so I ask myself how to tackle it, what to think about, what can work.

In recent years, not only have the demands on information technology and applied knowledge in the use of ICT increased, but the complexity of companies' ICT infrastructures has also increased, even though technologies such as virtualization have initially simplified things. The areas of responsibility in ICT organizations have grown steadily as a result of digitization and new technologies and are now an integral part of companies. The role of ICT should be understood as that of an enabler for digitization (Châlons & Dufft, 2016). In this context, enabler means that the ICT organization provides the company with the means and opportunity to implement digitization. As a result, the use of information and communication technologies is becoming increasingly important, so that informatics has increasingly become an essential element of corporate strategy. Informatics is used in this thesis as a holistic term for the automated processing of information by ICT. Informatics and ICT technology and their innovations thus exert a significant influence on business models (Urbach & Ahlemann, 2017). Due to the increased integration of informatics and ICT in the administration of companies and in manufacturing processes at production companies, the availability of ICT services has become a critical success factor. More and more personal data is being processed in business processes and companies, so data security and ICT infrastructures are becoming correspondingly more important. Driven by legal changes in data protection and the growing threat of attacks from external networks, this trend will continue in the coming years.

The majority of ICT organizations have not been able to keep up with this development, so that today's ICT departments often work inefficiently and are chronically overloaded. In the past, ICT organizations often followed the 'Plan-Build-Run' scheme, but this has reached its limits with today's requirements (Koch et al., 2016). The "plan-build-run" scheme means that comprehensive planning is created first, followed by implementation and then maintenance of what has been built. This classic planning method is very time-consuming and no longer allows the flexibility required today. In day-to-day operations, the consequences of this often lead to slow project implementation, a lack of innovation, regular discussions about responsibilities, excessive workloads and a high degree of manual activities, as well as incomplete information bases for long-term decisions.

With the objective of providing excellent ICT services based on optimally coordinated resources, the challenge for companies is to design IT internally in such a way that all tasks can be processed efficiently and all requirements can be responded to flexibly. Various challenges can arise for companies in relation to this challenge. For example, a lack of exchange about performance expectations and the necessary quality of ICT services can lead to solutions that are not in the desired cost-benefit ratio. As a result, expensive or high-risk ICT infrastructures may be built and operated. Inadequate monitoring of processes and ICT infrastructures means that optimization potential may not be identified. The manual collection of the necessary key figures for analyses requires cost-intensive resources.

Various models can be found in the literature to address the challenge of increasing efficiency in IT service management. The literature search on public search engines has shown that the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is one of the most cited maturity models. The CMM has been used approximately 13600 times for enhancements according to Becker at al. (2009). The Capability Maturity Model Integration for Services, which was further developed on the basis of the CMM, is shown to be particularly well suited based on case studies already conducted. The publication "Improving Processes with CMMI for Services" (Hertneck & Kneuper, 2012) lists corresponding case studies. One example covers an excerpt from IT service management and deals with IT support. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) supports the ICT organization to improve specifically in collaboration, quality, effectiveness and efficiency. Previous research has focused primarily on process improvement (Greb & Kneuper, 2010). However, the CMMI model is also applicable in the service sector, which Ralf Kneuper and Christian Hertneck demonstrate in their guide "Continuing to Improve Processes with CMMI for Services" (Hertneck & Kneuper, 2012) using practical examples. The case studies use companies with an extensive range of services, such as a support organization or naturopathic practice, to show how CMMI can be applied successfully. No study has yet been conducted on the practical application of the CMMI maturity model in IT service management for Swiss companies to increase the efficiency of IT service management using CMMI. In addition, a strong focus on processes can be observed, which suggests a limitation of the overall context. Focusing means that the CMMI model in the literature generally examines the process areas for service delivery and how these processes can be improved. In IT service management, which provides ICT services, there are other areas that are of significant importance to efficiency. For this reason, it is a limitation to take only the process view.

ICT organizations increasingly have to adapt to external influences such as market changes, changing business models, flexibility, technology advances, cost pressures and innovation needs. This pressure on ICT organizations is further intensified by digitization and the associated legal requirements. 

Accordingly, it can be assumed that not only one dimension should be considered, but various dimensions. This means that sustainable optimization requires a coordinated set of measures in the individual dimensions. But what are the dimensions to be considered? do these interrelationships exist at all? can there be a model for this?