ITIL

What is Service Design?

Service Design covers the fundamentals of designing services and processes. It provides a holistic design approach to help an organization deliver better services. 

Designing a service to meet an organization’s strategic and customer needs requires coordination and collaboration.  Aim for high service maturity when designing services rather than the completion of an IT project. The higher the service maturity the higher customer and user satisfaction will be.

The five key aspects of Service Design are:

1-)   Designing the service solution

2-)   Management information systems and tools

3-)   Technology

4-)   Processes

5-)   Measurements and metrics

Approach all aspects with service oriented thinking and decision making.

Service Level Management

The service level management (SLM) process focuses on researching and understanding requirements. Areas include:

·         defining, negotiating, agreeing upon and documenting IT service targets

·         monitoring, measuring and reporting on how well the service provider delivered the agreed upon targets 

When targets are appropriate and met, then the business and IT have a better chance of becoming aligned. 

Agreed upon targets are often spelled out in service level agreements (SLAs). Monitoring, measuring and reporting on SLA's in this way provides close links to Continual Service Improvement (CSI). 

SLAs are agreements to provide specific services at a defined level of quality (warranty) for a specific price. SLAs typically need negotiation of agreements with other internal organizations (OLA's) or external suppliers (Underpinning Contracts). 

Negotiating SLAs to ensure service commitments are met, service level management works with the following warranty processes:

·         capacity management 

·         availability management 

·         security management

·         service continuity management

Service level management is accountable for monitoring conformance to the SLAs and take action if there is a breach of the SLA. This means working with the service desk, incident management, and problem management. 

Customer satisfaction is not determined only by SLA performance. Therefore service level management should meet with customers face-to-face on a regular basis. This helps to maintain a positive relationship address any concerns the customer may have.

Service Catalog Management

Service catalog management ensures that an accurate and up-to-date service catalog is available to all parties authorized to see it. All parts of IT Service Management, as well as customers and users, use the service catalog. Accuracy and availability are essential.

Service catalog management must work closely with service portfolio management as new services move from the pipeline into the catalog and older services are retired. It also helps define how services can be requested and what options are available (gold/silver levels, for instance). The service catalog should document all defined services. 

The service catalog generally comprises two views: 

a business service view that is visible to the customer 

a technical service view that is visible only to IT personnel. 

This enables the customer to choose services based on their business requirements. At the same IT personnel can use their view to determine what technical services they need to support a given business service. 

Capacity Management

ITIL capacity management is responsible for ensuring that adequate capacity is available at all times to meet the agreed needs of the business in a cost-effective manner. The capacity management process works closely with service level management to ensure that the business’ requirements for capacity and performance can be met. Capacity management also serves as a focal point for any capacity issues in IT Service Management. Capacity management supports the service desk and incident and problem management in the resolution of incidents and problems related to capacity.

Successful capacity management requires a thorough understanding of how business demand influences demand for services, and how service demand influences demand on components. This is reflected by the three subprocesses of capacity management: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management. It is required that capacity management develop a capacity plan, which addresses both current capacity and performance issues, as well as future requirements. The capacity plan should be used throughout IT Service Management for planning and budgeting purposes.

Capacity management is responsible for defining the metrics to be captured during service operation to measure performance and use of capacity. This includes monitoring tools, which can provide input to the event management process. Capacity management may be called upon to perform tactical demand management, which involves using techniques such as differential charging to change users’ behavior so that demand does not exceed supply. Other activities of Capacity management include sizing (working with developers to understand capacity requirements of new services) and modeling (building statistical representations of systems).

Capacity Management Definitions

Before implementing capacity management, it’s important everyone is on the same page. One way for an organization to accomplish this is to learn and own the definition. Capacity management introduces new ideas and terms that should be discussed before they are implemented, includingcomponent, capacity plan, capacity report, capacity management information system, and performance.

A component is the underlying structure behind a service. For example, it is the database behind the application or the server underneath the website. It is a component that must be purchased, built, maintained, and monitored. Improving performance often involves a replacement, upgrade, or load balancing of the individual component.

The capacity plan contains different scenarios for predicted business demand and offers costed options for delivering the service-level targets as specified. This plan allows service designers to make the best choices about how to provide quality service at an affordable price point.

The capacity report is a document that provides other IT management with data regarding service and resource usage and performance. This is used to help other managers make service-level decisions or decisions regarding individual components.

The capacity management information system (CMIS) is the virtual repository used to store capacity data. Dashboards are one way to store and report on capacity data.

Performance is how quickly a system responds to requests. For example, how quickly an application processes data and returns a new screen is one indicator of its performance. 

Availability Management

Availability Management ensures that infrastructure, tools, roles etc. are appropriate for the agreed targets. It also works with the design teams to ensure that availability is designed into services.

Part of the process is to identify vital business functions (VBFs) which IT services support. This will help clarify which approach to availability to take: 

·         prevention (making sure, as far as possible, that unavailability never happens) 

·         recovery (developing plans to restore service rapidly in the event of an outage).

Availability management views availability from the user’s perspective, from end to end. This means identifying single points of failure and designing resilience into any infrastructure supporting the service. Availability management serves as a focal point for all issues in IT Service Management related to availability. 

Availability management handles specifying which metrics to use to measure availability. And, monitors availability to ensure that the SLA targets are met.

IT Service Continuity Management

IT service continuity management (ITSCM) focuses on supporting the overall continuity of the business. We define ITSCM as the process responsible for managing risks that could seriously impact IT services. 

Risks so serious they could threaten the very survival of the business.

This activity is often referred to as disaster recovery (DR). But, the use of the term ITSCM should show that there is a corresponding business continuity management (BCM) process. ITSCM supports the BCM process.

ITSCM must work closely with BCM to perform risk analysis and business impact analysis (BIA). This analysis determines how different types of disruptions impact the business. The business areas determined to suffer the greatest impact need the most focus from the service continuity teams.

ITSCM is responsible for development and deployment of the service continuity plan. This includes regular testing and training of all personnel associated with the plan. ITSCM also works with change management to ensure that continuity plans are updated as the operational model changes.

Information Security Management

The information security management (ISM) process focuses on aligning IT security with business security. Information security is an activity that happens as part of corporate governance. 

We use information security to protect data stores, databases, and metadata. It protects the interests of people who rely on this information, and it protects the systems that deliver the data.

Information security management works closely with service level management to ensure that the business’s needs for security are documented in service level agreements.

Information security measures include the following:

·         Preventive: Preventing security breaches. This is primarily accomplished via access controls.

·         Reductive: Minimizing the impact of potential security incidents using measures such as taking regular back-ups.

·         Detective: Ensuring instantaneous awareness of security breaches which do occur.

·         Repressive: Preventing further damage as the result of a breach such as by quarantining servers that are compromised.

·         Corrective: Repairing any damage done, such as by restoring from a backup

Supplier Management

Supplier management works with third parties, such as suppliers, to negotiate contracts for products or services.  Supplier management monitor conformance to the contract conditions and address any breaches. At renewal, supplier management will determine whether to renew, renegotiate, or end the contract.

The objectives of supplier management is to ensure alignment of contracts with the needs of the business. It is also responsible for ensuring suppliers are meeting their commitments. The supplier and contract management information system (SCMIS) holds supplier and contract details. 

Design Coordination

The central principles in design coordination are balance, prioritization and integration with project management. Balance and prioritization address the utility and warranty of a service, as well as the needs of the service throughout its lifecycle. 

Design coordination oversees all activity in the Service Design phase of the service lifecycle. Its aim is to ensure that a holistic, integrated approach is taken to the design of services. This is necessary because of the variety of disciplines involved in Service Design and the need to take a consistent approach.

Design coordination is accountable for the production of the service design package (SDP). The SDP is a comprehensive description of how a new or changed service is to be designed, built, tested, deployed, and operated. The SDP is the handoff from the Service Design phase to the Service Transition phase.

Design coordination handles managing resources needed by the Service Design phase of the lifecycle. This includes: 

·         planning to ensure that adequate resources are available 

·         scheduling access to resources among the many projects that may be in this phase at any one time

It is accountable for the performance and improvement of the Service Design phase of the lifecycle.

What is ITIL Service Strategy?

ITIL Service Strategy helps organizations understand the merits of using a market-driven approach. To succeed organizations must deliver and support services and products that their customers need. Service Strategy helps them to do this by encouraging a practice of service management for managing IT services. 

No organization acts in a vacuum. Customers always have alternatives. Even government and nonprofits where social services compete for tax dollars and contributions.

Competitive forces demand that an IT organization do its job better than the alternatives. What service strategy is about is positioning your organization as non-optional.

Service Strategy process areas include: 

·         service portfolio management 

·         financial management for IT services 

·         demand management 

·         business relationship management 

·         strategy management for IT services 

Service Portfolio Management

Service portfolio management (SPM) is a means by which you can dynamically and transparently govern resource investment. The goal of SPM is to maximize value to the business while managing risks and costs. We do this by ensuring that the content of the service portfolio is in line with the organization’s service management strategy.

In cooperation with the change management process it evaluates proposed services. As well as major changes to existing services. 

Service Portfolio Management is a cradle to grave process. 

It monitors services in the pipeline. First as they proceed through funding, then through design, development, testing, and deployment. Once operational it monitors to ensure we are achieving expected returns. And finally, when the service has reached the end of its useful life, it works with Service Transition processes to ensure an orderly retirement and preservation of essential records and assets. 

Financial Management for IT Service

Financial management for IT services ensures we track and associate IT investment and spending with the services provided. 

Why do we need to do this? We want to deliver the best quality service at the lowest possible cost. We want to create business value and increase the opportunity to take on extra projects that result in even greater value to the business.

The three major activities which take place within financial management for IT services are: 

·         Accounting 

·         Budgeting 

·         Charging 

(the “ABCs” of financial management).

Accounting involves applying cost accounting principles to IT spending. We do this to answer the question, “What does it cost to provide each service?” 

We use Budgeting to show the funding required to support the defined services at a given level of business activity. The budget assures that IT Service Management will have adequate funding to deliver promised services.

Charging is the process of assuring that IT Service Management will “capture” value. That is, that the consumers of services are aware of the cost of providing services to them. 

Demand Management

ITIL Demand Management helps a business understand and predict customer demand for services. Every business is subject to cyclical behavior. This means that demand for services can grow or shrink with the business cycle. In deciding whether to provide a service, IT Service Management must understand the patterns of business activity (PBAs) related to the service. While it is important to avoid having inadequate capacity, excess capacity is also a business risk, involving expense which typically cannot be recovered, since customers cannot be expected to pay for capacity they are not using.

PBAs are typically thought of in terms of transaction volumes. ITIL suggests other factors be considered as well, such as the source of the demand, special needs such as enhanced security, and tolerance for delay. The job of demand management is to identify appropriate PBAs and to associate them with user profiles (UPs). This becomes important input to the capacity management process in the Service Design lifecycle phase.

According to ITIL, the purpose of demand management is to understand, anticipate, and influence customer demand for services. As a process, it is part of the ITIL service strategy stage of the ITIL lifecycle. Service strategy determines which services to offer to prospective customers or markets. The decisions that are made in the service strategy stage affect the service catalog, the business processes, the service desk, the required capacity, and the financial requirements of the service provider.

As part of the service strategy stage, demand management rationalizes and optimizes the use of IT resources. It ensures that the amount of technical and human resources that has been budgeted matches the expected demand for the service. If the prediction is too low, the agreed-upon service levels may not be delivered. If the predictions are too high, resources will have been allocated to a service that will not be used (or paid for). Demand management bridges the gap between service design, capacity management, and business relationship management to ensure that the predictions are accurate.

Demand management is a process within ITIL that is more supportive of other processes than a self-contained process. Unlike incident management, for example, the activities inside demand management are not visible to the customer. When service demand is not properly balanced, it affects nearly every part of the ITIL lifecycle. 

Business Relationship Management

ITIL business relationship management works closely with service portfolio management and strategy management. It helps IT services to inform and implement the strategy and service selection. 

Participants in this process seek to form a relationship with customers to understand their needs for service. This involves:

·         ensuring that services provided are delivering the value expected by the customer 

·         understanding the customer’s environment well enough to identify opportunities for new services or new applications of existing services

·         being aware of changes in the customer’s business environment which may impact service needs

The most important key performance indicator (KPI) for business relationship management is customer satisfaction.

Strategy Management for IT Services

ITIL strategy management for IT services seeks to enable IT Service Management to become a strategic asset to the organization. It’s not enough to align IT with the business; IT should also integrate with the business. 

Any service provider, to be successful, must have a thorough understanding of the market space in which they operate. They must know what their strengths and weaknesses as a provider are, as well as what opportunities are available. Strategy management for IT services seeks to answer questions such as the following:

·         Who are our customers?

·         What business outcomes do they need?

·         How do the services we provide support those outcomes?

·         How can we position ourselves to be the only logical provider of these services?

·         What market spaces do we operate in?

·         Are there ways to expand our current service offerings into new markets?

·         Are there unmet needs in our current market spaces for which we can develop services?

What is Service Transition?

ITIL service transition helps plan and manage the change of state of a service in its lifecycle. Managing risk for new, changed and retired services protects the product environment. This helps the business deliver value to itself and its customers.

Curating service knowledge helps all stakeholders make informed, reliable decisions and support challenges with service delivery. Both managing service risk and curating service knowledge are integral to service transition.

During service transition, the following organizational elements need support:

·         Service Strategy

·         People

·         Process

·         Technology

·         Suppliers of the service

·         Organizational culture

·         Governance

·         Risk

No change is without risk. In fact, change can create extra risk. When transitioning services, focus on communication planning for awareness and compliance. One of the biggest challenges in service transition is changing people’s behavior to accommodate a new or different service. People have a psychological need to feel safe and comfortable with changes to them and around them.

What is Service Operation?

Service operation encompasses the day-to-day activities, processes, and infrastructure responsible for delivering value to the business through technology.

In Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Continual Service Improvement, we create value. But, no service is consumed and no business activity is experienced. Because users can access the service during Service Operation, we need high support levels to keep service consumption at high-levels. No customer wants to pay for a service that does not perform as needed or is not available for usage.

Consumerization and service experience is a key factor in Service Operation. The goal of Service Operation is to maintain day-to-day services to the point that there are no issues. When issues do occur Service Operation principles dictate response based on business priority. Service feedback from Service Operation throughout the ITIL service lifecycle enables continual service improvement.