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Extending the IT service quality measurement framework through a systematic literature review

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Journal of Service Science Research

Abstract

Continuous improvement of service quality results in enhanced customer satisfaction, increased efficiency and maximisation of business value of the service within the company. Decision-making on the course of service quality improvement is based on the current status of the measurable service quality attributes. The aim of the paper is to describe the IT service quality attributes that could be measured to improve IT service quality. We report on a systematic literature review of IT service quality measurement. The review was based on 134 relevant journal articles related to IT service quality management. Of these, 91 articles were selected for analysis. We propose a detailed and comprehensive quality measurement framework for IT services using the results of the systematic literature review to extend previous work. The framework presents six common issue areas with their associated measurement categories, measures, and indicators. IT service providers can choose the measures to satisfy their specific information needs from the proposed IT service quality measurement framework. We conclude that IT service quality improvement efforts could benefit from considering the internal IT service quality attributes from the viewpoint of the value the provided IT service could bring to both the customer and the provider.

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Correspondence to Marion Lepmets.

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Dr. Marion Lepmets is Postdoctoral Fellow of National Research Fund of Luxembourg at Public Research Centre Henri Tudor. Her current research is focusing on evaluating process improvement impact on IT Service quality. She has conducted research in process improvement and process assessment from 2000, graduated from Tampere University of Technology, Finland with Dr. of Technology in 2007 and has been teaching process engineering courses at both Tallinn University of Technology and Tartu University in Estonia. She is involved in software engineering standards’ development at International Standardization Organization subcommittee 7 (software and systems) as Luxembourg’s delegate, actively participating in process assessment and IT service quality related standards development.

Aileen Cater-Steel is Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Business and Law, and Associate Professor in Information Systems at the University of Southern Queensland. She is the lead Chief Investigator in two Australian Research Council Linkage Grants in the area of IT Service Management. She is responsible for the Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian IT Service Management Forum and USQ. Aileen has presented at many international conferences and has published three edited books: Women in Engineering, Science and Technology; IT Governance and Service Management; and Information Systems Research. Her work has been published in many international journals including the Communications of the ACM, Information and Software Technology, International Journal of IT Standards and Standardization Research. Her research interests include IT Service Management, IT Governance, e-learning, and research supervision. She was awarded the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems (ACPHIS) medal for her PhD thesis and received a citation from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for the course she developed for IT Service Management. She is a founding member of the awarding winning GO WEST project supporting female USQ students and professionals in the discipline areas of Engineering, Science and Technology. Aileen is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society and has certificates in ITIL, ISO/IEC20000, ISO/IEC15504 and CobiT. Prior to her academic career, Aileen held senior IT positions in the public and private sectors.

Francis Gacenga is a PhD candidate developing a performance measurement framework for IT service management. Francis has presented at international conferences and published articles in academic and industry journals. His paper was awarded best paper at GITMA 2011. He has worked internationally in information systems development, support, training and management as a systems administrator and computer programmer at the local and state government level and as a lecturer and tutor at the tertiary level. In 2002 the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS) UK awarded Francis a gold medal. His current research interests include IT service management, IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the balanced scorecard (BSC), service science, performance measurement, content analysis, design science, assistive technologies and smart living. Francis has served as a reviewer in a number of international information systems journals and conferences. He has certificates in ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000 and research commercialisation. He is a certified professional member of the Australian Computer Society (MACS) and is the 2012 Deputy Chair of the ACS Toowoomba Chapter.

Dr. Eric Ras is R&D Manager at the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor where he is recruiting and supervising researchers and PhD students as well as Postdoctoral Fellows in the fields of service science and innovation in general, and knowledge engineering in particular. He has been teaching empirical software engineering at the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, and the University of Applied Sciences in Mannheim, Germany, since 2008. In addition to working on topics related to IT service quality, he works on the design of human-computer interactions in the application field of semantic-based knowledge technologies.

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Lepmets, M., Cater-Steel, A., Gacenga, F. et al. Extending the IT service quality measurement framework through a systematic literature review. J Serv Sci Res 4, 7–47 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12927-012-0001-6

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