Integrating Agile and DevOps Practices into IT Service Management Education: A Simulated Performance and Maturity Analysis

Abstract

The growing complexity of IT services necessitates that graduates possess not only theoretical knowledge of IT Service Management (ITSM) frameworks like ITIL but also practical, agile, and collaborative skills. Traditional ITSM education often emphasizes process silos, which can be misaligned with modern, iterative software development methodologies. This study investigates the integration of Agile and DevOps practices into a higher education ITSM curriculum. We developed a simulated service desk and changed the management environment in MATLAB to model and compare a traditional, process-heavy approach against an integrated Agile-DevOps approach. Key performance indicators (KPIs), including incident resolution time, change success rate, and team collaboration efficiency, were tracked. Furthermore, a Capability Maturity Model (CMM) analysis was conducted to assess the process maturity of student teams. Results from the simulation indicate that the integrated approach leads to a statistically significant improvement in all measured KPIs and accelerates the maturity growth of teams by approximately 40%. The MATLAB code provided serves as a foundational model for educational institutions to quantitatively evaluate and enhance their ITSM training programs