Introduction to Service Lifecycle

What is IT Service Management?

IT Service Management(ITSM) is a set of specialized organizational capabilities used by a Service Provider.
It consists of:

• processes,
• methods,
• functions,
• roles and activities

Benefits of ITSM

• Benefits to the customer/user
• Enhanced customer relationship with improved customer focus and service quality agreement
• Improved management of service quality and costing
• Better communication with well defined points of contact
• Better alignment of services with corporate objectives
• Better control of service provision facilitates response to change
• Better process structure support effective outsourcing of IT service elements

Challenges of ITSM

• Potential problems/mistakes
• Introduction of service framework requires long lead time and significant efforts
• May require change of organization culture
• Value of service may not be evident due to lack understanding of relevant processes
• Difficult to map the improvement of service provision with cost reduction

What is ITIL?

• ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library
• ITIL is a public framework that describes Best Practice in IT service management
• It provides a framework for
• the IT governance
• the ‘service wrap’
• focuses on the continual measurement
• improvement of the quality of IT service delivered

Benefits of ITIL

• Increased user and customer satisfaction with IT services
• Improved service availability, directly leading to increased business profits and revenue
• Financial savingsfrom reduced rework, lost time, improved resource management and usage
• Improved time to market for new products and services
• Improved decision making and optimized risk

Basic Concepts

• Value is the core of the service concept from the customer’s perspective
• It consists of two core component:
• Utility - fitness for purposes
• Warranty - fitness for use
• Services is to deliver values to customer by facilitating outcomes customers want without the ownership of specific costs and risks
• Eg printing services
• I want a copy of the lecture notes but I do not need to own a photocopy machine
• System is a group of interdependent components that operating together for a common purpose
• Eg Student feedback system
• Built from timetable system, student and staff data info system
• Purpose - to support module delivery
• Feedback and learning are two aspect in performance of system; they turn processes, functions and organization into dynamic system with learning capabilities
• Function is a subdivision of an organization that is specialized in a specified type of work, and is responsible for specific end result
• Eg sales department
• Process is a structured set of activities designed to accomplish a defined objective
• It results in a goal-oriented change, and utilize feedback for self-enhancing and self-corrective action
• Eg Module delivery (process) makes use the student feedback (process) to improve quality of teaching and learning

Inputs to service management



Service Lifecycle

• ITIL is now based on a core of five titles:
• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

Service Strategies
The phase of designing and developing service management aims to

• understand and translate business into IT strategy,
• recognizing and responding to business catalysts,
• selecting the best practices based on industry, regulatory environment, firm size, etc

Service Design
The phase to develop IT services including architecture, processes, policies and documents

• Aims to meet the current and future business needs
• IT service and architecture design models to consider, including outsourcing, in sourcing, co sourcing, etc.

Service Transition
The phase of developing and improving capabilities for the transition of new and modified services into production

• Topics include change and release management, service models, and checklists for taking designs into production (analogous to a software development lifecycle but for IT services)

Service Operation
The phase of achieving effectiveness and efficiency in producing and supporting services in the live environment

• day-to-day management issues
• how to react to failures
• how to develop and monitor metrics of quality
• how to manage the reactive elements & processes

Service Improvement
The phase of creating and maintaining the values for the customer by improving design, services and operations

Source: OGC