Service Management Key Concepts

• The pre-study material aims to increase your course outcome and success rate
• Pages 6-12 are particularly important to study before the course

Key concepts of service management

• Service management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value to the customers as services
• Value is the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something
• An organization is a person or group with functions, responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve objectives
• Co-creation means service delivery is characterized by active collaboration and value co-creation
• A customer defines service requirements and is responsible for the outcomes of service consumption
• A user uses services
• A sponsor authorizes budget for service consumption
• A service enables value co-creation by facilitating customer outcomes without them managing specific costs and risks
• A product is an organization's resources designed to offer value for a consumer
• A service offering describes one or more services to address a target consumer group's needs, which may include goods, access to resources, and service actions
• Service provisioning are activities performed by a service provider to provide services
• Service consumption are activities performed by a service consumer to consume services
• Service relationship management are joint activities performed by a service provider and consumer to ensure value co-creation based on agreed and available service offerings
• Output is the tangible or intangible delivery of an activity
• Outcome is a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs
• Costs is the amount of money spent on an activity or resource
• Risks are possible events that could cause harm, loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives
• Utility is the functionality of a product or service to meet a particular need, WHAT is delivered, WHAT the service or the product does
• Warranty is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements, HOW it is delivered, HOW WELL it is delivered

Key concepts of ITIL, the Four Dimensions of ITSM

• Resources/capabilities are configured into products or are used to make practices work
• The four dimensions of ITSM are:
• Organization & people
• Information & technology
• Partners & suppliers
• Value streams & processes
• Each dimension is affected by multiple factors, including political, economical, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors(PESTLE)

The SVS (Service Value System)

• The purpose of the Service Value System is to ensure continuous value co-creation with all stakeholders through the use and management of products and services
• Made up of guiding principles, governance, service value chain, practices, and continual improvement

The Service Value Chain

• The service value chain is an operating model that outlines the key activities required to respond to demand and facilitate value creation through the creation and management of products and services
• It encompasses plan, improve, engage, design and transition, obtain/build, and deliver and support

The ITIL Guiding Principles

• A guiding principle is a recommendation that guides an organization in all circumstances
• Focus on value: Everything the organization does should link back to value for itself, its customers, and other stakeholders, Understand the consumer before trying to understand value
• Start where you are: When engaged in any improvement initiative, do not start over without first considering what is already available to be leveraged
• Progress iteratively with feedback: Working in a time-boxed, iterative manner with feedback loops allows for Greater flexibility and greater learning, Faster responses to customer and business needs, The ability to discover and respond to failure earlier, An overall improvement in quality
• Collaborate and promote visibility: Initiatives benefit from better buy-in, more relevance and likelihood of long-term success when they involve the right people in the correct roles
• Think and work holistically: A holistic approach to service management requires an understanding of how all the parts of an organization work together in an integrated way, and end-to-end visibility of how demand is translated to outcomes
• Keep it simple and practical: Outcome-based thinking should be used to produce practical solutions that deliver valuable outcomes, Always use the minimum number of steps needed to accomplish an objective
• Optimize and automate: Automating frequent and repetitive tasks allows human resources to be used for more complex decision-making, while "Automation is the use of technology to perform a step or series of steps correctly and consistently with limited or no human interaction

15 ITIL practices

• Continual improvement: Align the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through ongoing identification of improvement opportunities
• Information security management: Protect the information needed by the organization to conduct its business, Includes managing risk to confidentiality, integrity and availability of information as well as authentication and non-repudiation
• Relationship management: Establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels
• Service level management: Set clear business-based targets for service performance, so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored and managed against these targets
• Supplier management: Ensure that the organization's suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately
• IT asset management: Plan and manage the full lifecycle of all IT assets
• Service configuration management: Ensure accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the CIs (configuration items) that support them, is available when and where needed
• Monitoring and event management: Systematically observe services and service components, and record and report selected changes of state identified as events
• Service desk: Capture demand for incident resolution and service requests, It should also be the entry point/SPOC for the service provider with all of its users
• Service request management: Support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner
• Incident management: Minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible
• Problem management: Reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors
• Change enablement: Maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing a change schedule
• Deployment management: Move new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other component to live environments
• Release management: Make new and changed services and features available for use

Continual Improvement (practice)

• Aligns the organization's practices and services with changing business needs through ongoing identification of improvement opportunities of services, service components, practices or any element involved in the efficient and effective management of products and services
• Techniques to use include: Lean, Multi-phase projects, Maturity assessments, DevOps, Balanced Scorecard, incremental/Agile improvements, Quick wins and SWOT analysis
• Everyone's responsibility includes:
• Leaders embedding continual improvement into the way people think and work
• A small continual improvement team leading efforts and advocate continual improvement practice across the organization
• Everyone in the organization participate in continual improvement
• Partners and suppliers have improvement in their contacts
• A register is used to register improvement suggestions
• Ideas are documented, assessed, prioritized, implemented if appropriate, and reviewed Continual improvement activities include: Encouraging continual improvement across the organization, Securing time and budget for continual improvement, Identifying, logging, assessing and prioritizing improvement opportunities, Making business cases for improvement actions, Planning, implementing, measuring and evaluating improvements and Coordinating improvement activities across the organization

Service level management (practice)

• Sets clear business-based targets for service performance, so that the service can be properly assessed, monitored and managed against these targets
• SLA (service level agreement): A documented agreement between a service provider and a customer to identify the service and the expected level of service
• Service level: One or more metrics that define expected or achieved service quality
• Successful service level agreements: Are related to a defined service, should relate to defined outcomes (e.g. airplanes leave on time) and not simply operational metrics (e.g. 99.9% system availability), should reflect an 'agreement' between the service provider and the service consumer and must be simple and easy to understand and use for all parties
• Service level management information sources: Customer engagement, Customer feedback, Operational metrics and Business metrics

Service desk (practice)

• Captures demand for incident resolution and service requests
• Should also be the entry point/SPOC for the service provider with all of its users
• The service desk captures and funnels demand:
• Acknowledge user demand and respond to notify the user that their incident or request "is being managed"
• Classify incidents and requests by categorizing and prioritizing
• Own tickets, ensuring that no issues get “lost” between teams, people or systems
• Acting to Resolve incidents and service requests to ensure high user satisfaction
• Channels include Telephone, Service portals and mobile applications, Live chat and chatbots, Email, Text and social media messaging, Public and corporate discussion forums, Walk-in and onsite support
• The service desk can be centralized or virtual:
• Virtual: Employees from different locations use technology to collaborate
• Centralized: The service desk team is working from one single location
• The service desk often needs customer service skills more than technical, including: Empathy, Emotional intelligence, Excellent customer service skills, Understanding business priority, Effective communication and Incident analysis and resolution
• The service desk uses a wide range of tools and technologies, e.g.: Intelligent telephony systems, Workforce management/resource planning systems, Call recording and quality control, Dashboard and monitoring tools, Workflow systems, Knowledge bases, Remote access tools and Configuration management systems

Service request management (practice)

• Supports the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner
• Service request: A request from a user or user's authorized representative that initiates a service action that has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery
• Service requests are a normal part of service delivery, not a failure or degradation of service, which are handled as incidents
• Examples: Order a PC, request access to an application and ask for assistance
• Requests often initiate standard changes
• Recommendations: Standardize and automate as much as possible, Constantly apply continual improvement to service request management, Use policies to limit the amount of approvals necessary to fulfil a request, Set clear expectations (e.g. delivery times) and Separate service requests from other requests, e.g. “incidents” or “requests for change" and direct these other requests to the appropriate practice
• Service requests can have simple or complex workflows, but all workflows should be well-defined, well-known and proven
• Some service requests can be fulfilled via self-service, e.g. access to a printer, downloading software etc

Incident management (practice)

• Minimizes the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible
• Incidents should be logged, prioritized, categorized and meet agreed target resolution times
• Use an incident management tool to log and manage incidents:
• Incident: An unplanned interruption to a service, or reduction in the quality of a service
• Link incidents to knowledge elements, e.g. changes, problems, known errors, configuration items and other knowledge
• Provide incident matching to other incidents, problems or known errors
• Recommendations: Design incident management practice to react differently to different incident types, e.g. major incidents or security incidents that require special handling, Prioritize incident according to business impact and Agree classification and timescales with customers and Swarming can help teams collaborate and learn from participants in the incident resolution

Problem management (practice)

• Reduces the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors
• Problem: The (potential) cause of one or more incidents
• Note: Problems require investigation and analysis to identify causes, develop workarounds and recommend permanent solutions to reduce the number and impact of incidents
• Known error: A problem that has been analyzed, but not yet resolved
• Note: Known errors are documented and made available to other practices, e.g. service desk
• Workaround: A solution that reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident or problem for which a full resolution is not yet available
• Note: Workarounds are documented and made available to other practices, e.g. service desk
• Problem identification includes: Trend analysis, Identifying recurring incidents, Identifying if major incidents may reoccur, Working with suppliers and partners and Working with testers, software developers, project teams etc
• Problem control includes: Prioritizing and managing problems based on risk and Problem analysis from perspective of all four dimensions
• Error control includes: Identifying permanent solutions, Submitting change requests justified by costs, risks and benefits from solving the problem and Re-assessing known errors and improving workarounds

Change enablement (practice)

• Maximizes the number of successful IT changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing a change schedule
• Ensures a balance between the beneficial effect of change and the adverse effects of change
• Decentralize change approval to different change authorities so that each change authority is responsible for its own types/models of changes
• Change: The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services
• Standard change: Low-risk, Pre-authorized,Implement without further authorization, e.g. Install an application on an end-user PC
• Normal change: Needs to be risk assessed, authorized and scheduled via a defined process, Authorization based on change type: low-risk changes will often have decentral authorization, e.g. Update feature in an application; higher risk changes will often require more central assessment and authorization, e.g. Change operation system on servers
• Emergency change: Expedited assessment and authorization – need to be implemented as soon as possible, Some steps might be left out (e.g. testing) if urgent enough, May be separate change authority, e.g. Implement vital security patch
• Change authority: The person or group who authorizes a change
• Change schedule: Is used to help plan changes, assist in communication, avoid conflicts and assign resources

Definitions of other key terms

• IT asset: Any financially valuable component that can contribute to delivery of an IT product or service, related to the IT asset management practice
• Event: Any change of state that has significance for the management of a configuration item (CI) or IT service, related to the Monitoring and event management practice
• CI (configuration item): Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service, related to the Service configuration management practice