ITIL Performance Benchmarking: Webinar Recap

# ITIL

Measuring What Matters

June 2, 2026 · Last updated on June 4, 2026

ITIL Performance Benchmarking: Measuring What Matters

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How do you know if your organization's digital technology capabilities are truly delivering value?

Many organizations invest significant time and effort in improving processes, defining roles, and adopting best practices. While these activities help establish consistency and maturity, they do not always answer a critical question:

Are we achieving the outcomes that matter?

This was the focus of our recent webinar on the new ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model (PBM), presented by Dmitry Isaychenko. The session explored how organizations can move beyond assessing capability maturity and begin measuring the real-world performance of their digital technology management practices.

From Maturity to Performance

Many IT professionals are already familiar with the ITIL Maturity Model, which helps organizations assess how effectively their service value system and practices are structured and managed.

Maturity assessments answer questions such as:

Are processes defined and documented?

Are responsibilities clear?

Are practices integrated and consistently applied?

These assessments help determine whether an organization is doing things right.

However, organizations also need to understand whether they are doing the right things and whether those efforts are producing meaningful business outcomes. This is where performance benchmarking comes in.

The ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model was developed to complement maturity assessments by providing a structured way to evaluate how effectively organizations use and manage digital technology.

Why Performance Benchmarking Matters

Rather than focusing on a large collection of operational metrics, the model identifies a small set of carefully selected measurements that are directly linked to business outcomes.

The goal is not simply to collect data.

Instead, the model helps organizations:

Understand how digital technology supports business objectives

Strengthen alignment between IT and business priorities

Improve resilience, agility, and operational effectiveness

Support strategic decision-making with consistent data

Identify opportunities for improvement

Perhaps most importantly, benchmarking helps organizations ask better questions.

Metrics rarely provide all the answers on their own, but they can highlight trends, reveal unexpected results, and prompt deeper investigation into the factors driving performance.

The Four Strategic Focus Areas

The ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model organizes performance measurement around four key business outcome areas:

Business Alignment and Integration

Measures how effectively digital technology supports business goals and delivers value.

Organizational Agility

Assesses an organization's ability to deliver solutions, projects, and changes efficiently and predictably.

Organizational Resilience

Focuses on stability, incident management, and the organization's ability to maintain reliable services.

Operational Excellence

Examines cost effectiveness, transparency, and the efficient management of digital resources.

Across these four areas, the model defines 12 key metrics that provide a balanced view of organizational performance.

More Than Just Metrics

Each metric within the model includes:

A clear definition

Standardized measurement guidance

Analysis recommendations

Links to relevant ITIL guidance and practices

This ensures that organizations can not only measure performance consistently but also understand what actions may help improve results.

For example, if an organization identifies a high incident rate, the model encourages investigation into areas such as:

Problem management effectiveness

Change management practices

Monitoring and observability

Infrastructure stability

User enablement and training

The objective is to connect measurement with meaningful improvement initiatives.

Building an Industry Benchmark

A key part of the initiative is the ongoing ITIL Performance Benchmarking Survey, which aims to establish industry-wide benchmarks across organizations and sectors.

Participants who contribute their data will help create a broader understanding of digital technology performance while also gaining access to benchmarking insights that can support their own improvement efforts.

The more organizations that participate, the stronger and more representative the benchmark becomes.

Early Findings: Does Maturity Influence Performance?

One of the most interesting discussions during the webinar focused on the relationship between maturity and performance.

Using data collected from the first 300 survey responses, the early analysis suggests a clear trend:

Organizations with higher maturity levels consistently demonstrate stronger performance outcomes.

The data also indicates that more mature organizations tend to achieve more predictable results, showing less variation in performance measures compared to less mature organizations.

This aligns with one of the core principles of maturity assessment: higher maturity increases the predictability of outcomes.

While further analysis is still underway, these early findings reinforce the value of examining maturity and performance together rather than in isolation.

Looking Ahead

The ITIL Performance Benchmarking Model represents an important step toward helping organizations understand not only how well their practices are managed, but also how effectively those practices contribute to business success.

By combining performance measurement with maturity assessment, organizations gain a more complete view of their current state and a stronger foundation for continuous improvement.

If you missed the live webinar, you can watch the recording to explore the model in more detail and learn how you can contribute to the industry benchmarking effort.

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