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How Would You Benchmark an IT/IS Department?

Posted by Cliff on from the what-metrics-does-the-bar-measure dept.

ferretworks asks: "Our IS/IT department has been asked by our CEO to find a way to benchmark ourselves against IS/IT departments from other companies with similar technologies (none specific). This sounds like an innocent enough request, but diving into it has made me realize that this is, not necessarily undiscovered country, but a desolate one and rarely visited. So, my poll to the community is: In your Opinion, what is best way to benchmark an IS/IT department and what categories/sub categories would you base your judgment and ratings on?"

1 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Talk about internal benefits first by Mattcelt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is actually a HUGE industry.

    Forrester, Gartner, and IDG all offer advanced comparison data from industry surveys against which you can measure your own company. (Help desk costs per call, fully-loaded employee per hour, etc.)

    Then you implement some sort of metric to use in the comparison. ITIL, COBIT, ISO 17799, and a host of others are available as frameworks you can use, or you can design your own. So you start taking measurements, compile the metrics, and compare.

    [How much does a password reset cost? How much does it cost to terminate a sysadmin? How many staff hours are required to clean a virus infection on one machine? On all machines? &c, &c.]

    I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a Fortune 1000 company that doesn't use some form of this - it's how most companies compare themselves against the industry.

    Hope that helps.