I have been hired as the new Director of Client Services, responsible for the Service Desk at UCLA. I report directly to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the IT Services department, and in my new role, the CIO has tasked me with assessing the Service Desk processes due to recent complaints about the service level being poor and inconsistent.

The CIO, a recent graduate of the Technology Management program at UCLA and very familiar with the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) as an assessment tool to help organizations develop a plan to improve processes, informally assesses the Service Desk team as operating at Level 1 - Initial, as described by CMM. His goal is for the team to improve to Level 4 - Managed - to enhance service and reduce complaints.

Level 5 Optimized Level 4 Managed Level 3 DRI Level 2 Repeatable P Initial * Continuous process improvement. Experimenting with new methods and technologies. Change processes when find something that works better. * Processes and results are measured quantitatively, and processes are evaluated with this data. * Processes are consistent and known across the whole organization * Processes are defined, documented, practiced, and people are trained in them. Groups across an organization may use different processes. * Anything at all. Ad-hoc and chaotic. Will have some successes, but will also have failures and badly missed deadlines