Business of IT – Applications - D336

Key concepts of services and service management

Service, Service management , Customer, User, Sponsor, Utility, Warranty

Service:

A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.

Service management:

a set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.

Customer:

the role that defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcomes of service consumption.

User:

the role that uses services

Sponsor:

the role that authorizes budget for service consumption. Can also be used to describe an organization or individual that provides financial or other support for an initiative.

Utility:

the functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need. Utility can be summarized as 'what the service does' and can be used to determine whether a service is 'fit for purpose'. To have utility, a service must either support the performance of the consumer or remove constraints from the consumer. Many services do both.

Warranty:

assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements. Warranty can be summarized as 'how the service performs' and can be used to determine whether a service is 'fit for use'. Warranty often relates to service levels aligned with the needs of service consumers. This may be based on a formal agreement, or it may be a marketing message or brand image. Warranty typically addresses such areas as the availability of the service, its capacity, levels of security, and continuity. A service maybe said to provide acceptable assurance, or 'warranty', if all defined and agreed conditions are met.

Value

the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.

Output:

a tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity

Outcome:

a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs

Cost

: the amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.

Risk:

a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives .It can also be defined as uncertainty of outcome, and can be used in the context of measuring the probability of positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes.

Organization:

a person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives

Service offering:

offering: a formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

• Service relationship management:

joint activities performed by a service provider and a serviceconsumer to ensure continual value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings.

Service provision:

activities performed by an organization to provide services. It includes management of the provider's resources, configured to deliver the service; ensuring access to these resources for users; fulfillment of the agreed service actions; service level management; and continual improvement. It may also include the supply of goods.

Service consumption:

activities performed by an organization to consume services. It includes the management of the consumer's resources needed to use the service, service actions performed by users, and the receiving (acquiring) of goods (if required)

The ITIL guiding principles

Focus on value, Start where you are, Progress iteratively with feedback, Collaborate and promote visibility, Think and work holistically, Keep it simple and practical, Optimize and automate.

Focus on value:

everything that the organization does needs to map, directly or indirectly, to value for the stakeholders. The focus on value principle encompasses many perspectives, including the experience of customers and users

Start where you are:

do not start from scratch and build something new without considering what is already available to be leveraged. There is likely to be a great deal in the current services, processes, programmes , projects, and people that can be used to create the desired outcome. The current state should be investigated and observed directly to make sure it is fully understood.

Progress iteratively with feedback:

do not attempt to do everything at once. Even huge initiatives must be accomplished iteratively. By organizing work into smaller, manageable sections that can be executed and completed in a timely manner, it is easier to maintain a sharper focus on each effort. Using feedback before, throughout, and after each iteration will ensure that actions are focused and appropriate, even if circumstances change

Collaborate and promote visibility:

working together across boundaries produces results that have greater buy-in, more relevance to objectives, and increased likelihood of long-term success. Achieving objectives requires information, understanding, and trust. Work and consequences should be made visible, hidden agenda avoided, and information shared to the greatest degree possible.

Think and work

holistically: no service, or element used to provide a service, stands alone. The outcomes achieved by the service provider and service consumer will suffer unless the organization works on the service as a whole, not just on its parts. Results are delivered to internal and external customers through the effective and efficient management and dynamic integration of information, technology, organization, people, practices, partners, and agreements, which should all be coordinated to provide a defined value.

Keep it simple and practical:

if a process, service, action, or metric fails to provide value or produce a useful outcome, eliminate it. In a process or procedure, use the minimum number of steps necessary to accomplish the objective(s). Always use outcome-based thinking to produce practical solutions that deliver results

Optimize and automate:

resources of all types, particularly HR, should be used to their best effect. Eliminate anything that is truly wasteful and use technology to achieve whatever it is capable of. Human intervention should only happen where it really contributes value.

The four dimensions of service management:

Organizations and people, Information and technology, Partners and suppliers, Value streams and processes.

Organizations and people:

This dimension ensures that the way an organization is structured and managed, as well as its roles, responsibilities, and systems of authority and communication, is well defined and supports its overall strategy and operating model

Information and technology:

this dimension includes the information and knowledge used to deliver services, and the information and technologies used to manage all aspects of the service value system.

Partners and suppliers:

this dimension encompasses the relationships an organization has with other organizations that are involved in the design, development, deployment, delivery, support, and/or continual improvement of services. It also incorporates contracts and other agreements between the organization and its partners or suppliers.

Value streams and processes:

this dimension defines the activities, workflows, controls, and procedures needed to achieve the agreed objectives.

The ITIL Service Value System (SVS)

Opportunity, Demand, Value, Guiding principles, Governance, Service value chain, Practices, Continual improvement

Opportunity:

the possibility to add value for stakeholders or to improve the organization.

Demand:

the need or desire for products and services from internal and external customers.

Value:

the perceived benefits, usefulness and importance of something

Guiding principles:

recommendations that guide an organization in all circumstances, regardless of changes in its goals, strategies, type of work, or management structure

Governance:

the means by which an organization is directed and controlled

Service value chain:

a set of interconnected activities that an organization performs to deliver a valuable product or service to its consumers and to facilitate value realization

Practices:

sets of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective

Continual improvement:

a recurring organizational activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization's performance continually meets stakeholders' expectations. ITIL 4 supports continual improvement with the ITIL continual improvement model. Opportunity/Demand Value Guiding principles Continual improvement Governance Practices Service value chain

Service Value Chain

Plan, Improve, Engage, Design and transition, Obtain/build, Deliver and support

Plan:

the purpose of the plan value chain activity is to ensure a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and improvement direction for all four dimensions and all products and services across an organization

Improve:

the purpose of the improve value chain activity is to ensure continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management.

Engage:

the purpose of the engage value chain activity is to provide a good understanding of stakeholder needs, transparency, continual engagement, and good relationships with all stakeholders.

Design and transition:

The purpose of the design and transition value chain activity is to ensure products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs, and time to market

Obtain/build:

the purpose of the obtain/build value chain activity is to ensure that service components are available when and where they are needed, and that they meet agreed specifications

Deliver and support:

the purpose of the deliver and support value chain activity is to ensure that services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholder's expectations

Information security management

The purpose of this practice is to protect the information needed by the organization to conduct its business. This includes understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, as well as other aspects of information security such as authentication (ensuring someone is who they claim to be) and non-repudiation (ensuring that someone cannot deny that they took an action). Security objectives include

Relationship management

The purpose of this practice is to establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels. It includes the identification, analysis, monitoring, and continual improvement of relationships with and between stakeholders

Supplier management

The purpose of this practice is to ensure that the organization's suppliers and their performances are managed appropriately to support the seamless provision of quality products and services. This includes creating closer, more collaborative relationships with key suppliers to uncover and realize new value and reduce the risk of failure

Sourcing:

the activity of planning and obtaining resources from a particular source type, which could be internal or external, centralized or distributed, and open or proprietary.

T asset management

The purpose of this practice is to plan and manage the full life cycle of all IT assets, to help the organization maximize value; control costs; manage risks; support decision-making about purchase, re-use, and retirement of assets; and meet regulatory and contractual requirements. Key terms include:

Monitoring and event management

This practice focuses on continuously monitoring services, identifying significant changes, and responding to potential issues to ensure availability and stability. Monitoring provides real-time insights into system status, while events highlight changes that may require action. These events can be informational, warnings, or exceptions. Any state change that affects a service or configuration item is considered an event. Event management ensures these changes are recorded, assessed, and addressed appropriately ,minimizing disruptions and maintaining seamless service operations.

Release management

The purpose of this practice is to make new and changed services and features available for use.

Serviceconfigurationmanagement

The purpose of this practice is to ensure that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the Configuration Items (CIs) that support them, is available when and where it is needed. This includes information on how CIs are configured and the relationships between them.

Configuration Item (CI):

any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.

Deployment management

The purpose of this practice is to move new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other component to live environments. It may also be involved in deploying components to other environments for testing or staging.

Continual improvement

The purpose of this practice is to align the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing improvement of products, services, and practices, or any element involved in the management of products and services. Key terms include

he continual improvement model:

a structured approach to implementing improvements. Use of the model increases the likelihood that ITSM initiatives will be successful, puts a strong focus on customer value, and ensures that improvement efforts can be linked back to the organization's vision. The model supports an iterative approach to improvement, dividing work into manageable pieces with separate goals that can be achieved incrementally

Continual Improvement Register (CIR):

database or structured document to track and manage improvement ideas from identification through to final action.

Change enablement

The purpose of this practice is to maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule. Key terms include

Change:

the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.

Request for Change (RFC):

a description of a proposed change used to initiate change enablement

Change authority:

a person or group responsible for authorizing a change

Standard change:

a low-risk, pre-authorized change that is well understood and fully documented, and which can be implemented without needing additional authorization

Normal change

: a change that must be scheduled, assessed, and authorized following a process

Emergency change:

a change that must be introduced as soon as possible

Change schedule:

a calendar that shows planned and historical changes

Change model:

a repeatable approach to the management of a particular type of change

Post-Implementation Review (PIR):

a review after the implementation of a change, to evaluatesuccess and identify opportunities for improvement.

Incident management

The purpose of this practice is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. Key terms include

Incident:

an unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service.

Major incident:

an incident with significant business impact, requiring an immediate coordinated resolution