THE SERVICE LIFECYCLE

SECTION 2: THE SERVICE LIFECYCLE

SERVICE STRATEGY

The objective of service strategy is to offer better services than the competition. You need to beat the opposition to survive.

GOVERNANCE

 The concept of governance is central to the sound operation and management of all healthy organisations. It covers the various policies, processes and structures established by senior management to ensure the smooth running and effective control of the organisation. The guidance provided through the ITIL disciplines offers a sound foundation for the development of effective governance, which is as important to the IT provider as to any other organisation

RISK

Risk is defined as a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or affect the ability to achieve objectives. Risk can also be defined as the uncertainty of outcome.

KEY PROCESSES The key processes in service strategy are:

• business relationship management

 • Financial management for IT services  

• service portfolio management

IT SERVICE PROVIDER TYPES

• Type I – Internal service provider: This is the in-house IT unit typically positioned within the business units they serve, although it is common for these smaller scale IT units to be consolidated into a corporate IT department that has to balance the interests, demands and priorities of the corporate organisation against those of individual business units.

• Type II – Shared services unit: This is where a range of functions, regarded as non-core to the business, are grouped together into a corporate shared service unit. The functions involved are typically IT, Finance and HR, sometimes with legal service, logistics and facilities management.

 • Type III – External service provider: This is a separate commercial entity from the businesses it services, and operates as a competitive business in the marketplace.

THE FOUR Ps OF STRATEGY Having considered the IT service provider’s strategic approach to the marketplace, the next part of the strategic equation is the IT service provider’s approach to service strategy. This may be analysed in terms of the four Ps:

• Strategy as a Perspective: This relates to vision, direction and the IT service provider’s philosophy for doing business with its customers.

• Strategy as a Position: This describes strategy in terms of the IT service provider’s general approach to its service offerings (e.g. high value or low cost, emphasis on utility or warranty).

• Strategy as a Plan: This describes strategy as a plan showing how the IT service provider will move from where it is today to where it wants to be.

• Strategy as a Pattern: This describes strategy as a consistent way of making decisions.

STRATEGIC ASSET Strategic assets are assets that provide the basis for core competence, distinctive performance, durable advantage, and qualifications to participate in business opportunities. IT organisations can use the guidance provided by ITIL to transform their service management capabilities into strategic assets.

DEVELOPING STRATEGY FOR SPECIFIC SERVICES In terms of the development of a strategy for a specific service offering, the key elements are concerned with a series of activities that involve:

• understanding the customer and the ways IT can deliver value to them;

• understanding the outcomes the customer wants from the service and how the service will deliver benefit; • defining critical success factors for the service;

• developing a specification based on the outcomes required by the customer, including the utility and warranty required;

• developing through demand management an understanding of the customer’s priorities in relation to patterns of business activity (PBAs).

SERVICE PACKAGE A service package is two or more services that have been combined to offer a solution to a specific type of customer need or to underpin specific business outcomes. A service package can consist of a combination of core services, enabling services and enhancing services. A service package provides a specific level of utility and warranty.

SERVICE OPTION A service option is a choice of utility and warranty offered to customers by a core service or service package. Service options are sometimes referred to as service level packages.

AUTOMATING SERVICE MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

Automating business processes delivers higher utility and warranty thereby generating better performance and value from service and customer assets.

• Monitoring and measuring to an extent not possible by other means, handling high levels of complexity and volume irrespective of time or location.

• Generating automated alerts helps us respond more rapidly to events, helping us maintain service availability.

• Discovery tools enable us to maintain an up-to-date configuration management system and identify and deal with a range of control related problems.

• Sophisticated modelling and simulation helps us design infrastructure and applications, and model complex options for service delivery.

 • Artificial intelligence is able to offer a range of capabilities from root cause analysis, through sophisticated alarm and control systems, to complex scheduling and resource management.

• Workflow management systems improve customer service and efficiency across a range of processes.

SERVICE DESIGN

THE FIVE MAJOR ASPECTS OF SERVICE DESIGN ITIL formally recognises five separate aspects of service design that together describe the scope of this part of the service lifecycle:

• The introduction of new or changed services through the accurate identification of business requirements and the agreed definition of service requirements.

• The service management systems and tools such as the service portfolio, ensuring mutual consistency with other services and appropriate tools support.

• The capability of technology architectures and management systems to operate and maintain new services. 33 IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT

• The capability of all processes, not just those in service design, to operate and maintain new and changed services.

• Designing in the appropriate measurement methods and metrics necessary for performance analysis of services, improved decision-making and continual improvement.

SERVICE DESIGN PACKAGE (Service design) document(s) defining all aspects of an IT service and their requirements through each stage of its lifecycle. A service design package is produced for each new IT service, major change or IT service retirement. 34 SERVICE DESIGN The key contents of the service design package include:

• the service definition, agreed business requirements and how and where the service will be used;

• the service design including the architectural design, functional requirements, SLRs/ SLAs (if available), service and operational management requirements including metrics and key performance indicators, supporting services and agreements;

• a service model showing the overall structure and dynamics of the service, showing how customer and service assets, service management functions and processes come together to deliver value;

• an assessment of organisational readiness and its implications; • a plan covering all stages of the service lifecycle;

• plans for service transition (covering build and assembly, test, release and deployment) and for operational service acceptance;

• acceptance criteria and the strategy and plan for user acceptance testing

SERVICE TRANSITION

The objectives are to:

• plan and manage the resources to introduce and activate a new or changed service to the live environment within the predicted cost, quality and time estimates;

• minimise any unpredicted impact on the production services, operations and support organisation;

• increase customer, user and service management staff satisfaction with the deployment of new or changed services, including communications, release documentation, training and knowledge transfer;

• increase correct use of the services and any underlying applications and technology solutions;

• provide clear and comprehensive plans that enable alignment between the business and service transition.

PROCESS OBJECTIVES AND VALUE Section 3 contains details on five of the processes in this phase. The remaining two processes and the activity ‘managing organisational and stakeholder change’ are described briefly below. Service validation and testing The objective of service validation and testing is to ensure that a new or changed service and its associated release process will meet the needs of the business at the agreed cost.

Change evaluation Evaluation is a generic process that considers whether the performance of something is acceptable, value for money, fit for purpose and whether implementation can proceed based on defined and agreed criteria. The objectives of change evaluation are:

• to evaluate the intended effects of a change and as much of the unintended effects as reasonably practical given capacity, resource and organisational constraints;

• to provide good quality outputs from the evaluation process so that change management can expedite an effective decision about whether a change is to be approved or not;

• to set stakeholder expectations correctly.

SERVICE OPERATION

The functions of service operation are:

• The service desk: This conducts a number of processes, in particular incident management and request fulfilment. The service desk is made up of a group of staff trained to deal with service events. Service desk staff will have access to the necessary tools to manage these events. The service desk ought to be the single point of contact for IT users within an organisation.

• Technical management: This is the function that provides the resources and ensures that knowledge of relevant technologies is kept up to date. Technical management covers all the teams or areas that support the delivery of technical knowledge and expertise. This includes teams such as networks, mainframe, middleware, desktop, server and database.

• Application management: This will manage applications through the totality of their lifecycle. This starts with the first business ‘idea’ and completes when the application is taken out of service. Application management is involved in the design, testing and continual improvement of applications and the services that the applications support.

• IT operations management: This is responsible for operating the organisation’s IT infrastructure and applications on a day-to-day basis.

CONTINUAL SERVICE IMPROVEMENT

Value to business CSI recognises that the value IT provides to the business can be realised and measured in different ways:

 • Improvements: Outcomes that are better when compared with the previous state.

• Benefits: The gains achieved through the implemented improvements.

• Return on investment (ROI): The difference between the realised benefit and the cost of achieving it.

• Value on investment (VOI): The extra value created by the improvement including non-monetary benefits and outcomes.

Implementing CSI means committing to continued investment in order to create and maintain service improvement plans (SIPs). The expected value from an investment is a critical component of any business case, and CSI stresses the need for periodic re-evaluation following the implementation of improvements by:

• checking that benefits/ROI/VOI are realised by specific improvements;

• identifying the best investments by estimating benefits from different initiatives;

• assessing the impact or current benefit of any proposed change of organisation structure or business strategy, or of regulatory or legislative change.