Measuring IT Service Management Capability: Scale Development and Empirical Validation

This paper conceptualizes IT service management (ITSM) capability, a key competence of today’s IT provider organizations, and presents a survey instrument to facilitate the measurement of an ITSM capability for research and practice. Based on the review of four existing ITSM maturity models (CMMISVC, COBIT 4.1, SPICE, ITIL v3), we first develop a multi-attributive scale to assess maturity on an ITSM process level. We then use this scale in a survey with 205 ITSM key informants who assessed IT provider organizations along a set of 26 established ITSM processes. Our exploratory factor analysis and measurement model assessment results support the validity of an operationalization of ITSM capability as a second-order construct formed by ITSM processes that span three dimensions: service planning, service transition, and service operation. The practical utility of our survey instrument and avenues for future research on ITSM capability are outlined.