Serio IT Service Desk & Helpdesk Blog

This is a follow-up post continuing the introduction to ITIL V3 (George Ritchie is currently away). This week I’m going to talk about Service Operation in ITIL V3.

Quite simply, Service Operation is all about delivering the services to your customers and managing the infrastructure, applications and technologies that support these services.

This can be a real balancing act – and there are a number of conflicting goals that need to be considered. Getting a balance between these conflicting priorities is paramount to successful Service Operation. These conflicting goals are:

• The internal IT view vs. the external business view
• Stability vs. responsiveness
• Service quality vs. Service costs
• Reactive vs. Proactive Management

The key is to maintain an even balance in each of these conflicts, excessive focus on either side of the scale will result in degradation of service.

The key processes in the Service Operation Phase are:

• Event Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Request Fulfilment
• Access Management

These should all be familiar to you, however previously ITIL dealt with Request Fulfilment, Access Management and Event Management within the Incident Management Process. V3 has cleared up this rather grey area and detailed these processes separately (something I think most people will welcome). I’ll discuss each of these briefly below.

Event Management – “An event is a change of state that has significance for the management of a configuration item or IT service.”

An Event tells us that something is not functioning the way it should and causes the logging of an incident. Event management is reliant on monitoring, but it is NOT the same thing as monitoring. Event management lets us know when something has gone wrong, monitoring records information even when there are no problems.

Incident Management – “An incident is an unplanned interruption to an IT service, or a reduction in the quality of an IT service. Failure of a configuration item that has not yet impacted service is also an incident.”

There is a lot of information already in the blog on Incident Management so I won’t elaborate on this. Use the search function to find related articles.

Request Fulfilment – “A service request is a request from a user for information or advice, or for a standard change, or for access to an IT service.”

Service requests were a real grey area in ITIL® V2, and many organisations were unsure of whether many of their service requests should be handled as minor changes or as Incidents. ITIL® V3 has attempted to clarify this for us. The purpose of the Service Request process is to allow customers to request and receive standard services. All requests must be logged and there should be a mechanism for approval in the process.

(And as an aside, the next release of Serio is almost certainly going to reflect this change in ITIL with a direct and clear way of handling Service Requests).

Access Management – This is the process of allowing authorised customers to access services, while preventing access by unauthorised users.

Problem Management – “A problem is a cause of one or more incidents. The cause is not usually known at the time a problem record is created, and the problem management process is responsible for further investigation.”

Again, this is a well established ITIL® process. For more information, search the blog or see our Problem Management White Paper

• The Second Phase – Service Design
• The Third Phase – Service Transition

This is a follow-up to last week’s ITIL V3 post on the subject of Service Design.

Service Transition simply involves taking all the good work you did in the Service Design Phase and transferring this to a new or changed service which is available to your customers.

ITIL® defines the scope of Service Transition as follows

“a service transition includes the management and coordination of the processes, systems and functions required for the building, testing and deployment of a ‘release’ into production, and establish the service specified in the customer and stakeholder requirements.”

The processes involved in the Service Transition phase are:

• Change Management
• Service Asset and Configuration Management
• Release and deployment Management
• Service Validation and Testing
• Evaluation
• Knowledge Management

Again many of these processes will be familiar to you from V2, but let’s have a quick review….

Change Management – this should be a very familiar one for most of you. Change management exists to allow us to handle changes in a repeatable manner and ensure that the risk to the business is minimised. Change Management should address all service changes – described by ITIL® as:

“A Service Change is the addition, modification or removal of an authorised, planned or supported service or service component and its associated documentation.”

Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM) – this process has the goal of identifying, controlling and accounting for service assets and configuration items.

Activities involved in SACM are

• Management and planning
• Configuration identification
• Configuration Management
• Status accounting and protection
• verification and audits

Release and Deployment Management – This process is involved with the building, testing and deployment of the services specified during the Service Design phase and the early life support of these services.

Service Validation and Testing – This process is aimed at ensuring that the new or changed service actually does provide what it is supposed to and that it is “fit for purpose”.

Evaluation – This is a generic process, it aims to verify that performance is acceptable. This process provides valuable input to the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) process.

Knowledge Management – Knowledge management is important to every phase of the lifecycle, but it is of particular importance in the Service Transition Phase. A successful transition from Design to Deployment depends greatly on the quality of information available to users and the Service Desk.

• The Second Phase – Service Design
• The Fourth Phase – Service Operation

This is a follow-up to last week’s Service Strategy post.

ITIL® tells us that the key objective of the Service Design Phase is “the design of new or modified services for introduction into a production environment”.

There are seven processes which are key to the Service Design Phase

• Service Catalogue Management
• Service Level Management
• Capacity Management
• Availability Management
• IT Service Continuity Management
• Information Security Management
• Supplier Management

Most of these processes will be familiar friends from ITIL® V2 but I will give you a quick reminder on what these entail

Service Catalogue Management – the development and maintenance of a Service Catalogue that provides accurate and current detail of all your services and etails the business process which they support. It will also show services that are in development. The Service Catalog is the portion of the Service Portfolio which is presented to customers.

Service Level Management – this is the bridge between the customer and the IT Department. This process defines the levels of service which must be delivered to the customer and takes responsibility for ensuring that the agreed levels are reached and that customers are happy.

Capacity Management – ensures that capacity corresponds to current and future needs of the customer – recorded in a capacity plan.

Availability Management – ensures that availability levels correspond to the levels agreed with the customer in their SLA. This process involves both proactive and reactive activities.

IT Service Continuity Management – Ensures that required IT facilities can be restored within the agreed time, it focuses on occurrences that can be considered “disasters”.

Information Security Management – ensures that the information security policy satisfies the organisation’s overall security policy. This must be a continual process.

Supplier Management – Monitors the performance of suppliers to ensure that a consistent quality of service is received at an acceptable price.

In addition to these processes, there are three activities associated with the Service Design Phase:
1. Development of requirements
2. Data and information management
3. Application Management

Service Design must include the “4 P’s” of design to be effective:

People: the people, skills and competences involved in the provision of IT services
Products: the technology and management systems used in the delivery of IT services
Processes: the processes, roles and activities involved in the provision of IT services
Partners: the vendors, manufacturers and suppliers used to assist and support IT service provision

• The Third Phase – Service Transition
• The Fourth Phase – Service Operation
• Service Strategy – The Hub around which The ITIL® V3 Lifecycle revolves

This is a follow-up post to ITIL V3 – what does it deliver?

This key phase looks at the design, development and implementation of service management as a strategic resource.  Service Strategy is critical to all the processes involved in the Service Lifecycle.

If your organisation has already adopted ITIL® processes for its Service Management, then the Service Strategy Phase can help you improve the synchronisation between your IT and Business strategies.  This part of the V3 lifecycle can be used as a guideline for developing an overview of your capabilities. 

Service Strategy urges you to think about “Why” rather than “How”…the “Why” is far more important to your customer’s business than the “How”.

The aim of Service Strategy is to identify your competition and then compete with them by making your business stand apart and by delivering superior performance.

ITIL® names the following building blocks of well-performing service providers:

Market Focus – know where and how to compete
Distinguishing capabilities – create distinctive and profitable assets that the business appreciates
Performance anatomy – organisational standpoints that are measurable and feasible, such as viewing services as a strategic asset in which constant improvement is necessary.

The Service Strategy phase of ITIL® V3 can help your organisation to do business in a strategic manner. It encourages you to ask the questions that will help you stand apart from the competition. You should emerge from this phase with a clear vision of where you want to be and what milestones you need to reach to achieve that vision.

There are three processes involved in this phase of the lifecycle.

Financial Management
Demand Management
Service Portfolio Management

Financial management is critical to ensure that the correct financing is available for delivery and purchase of services.

The goal of Demand Management is to predict and, if possible, regulate demand.  Poorly managed demand is a risk on two fronts.  Excess capacity results in cost that cannot be recovered.  Insufficient capacity impacts the quality of service and limits its growth.

Service Portfolio Management (SPM) starts with the Service Catalogue. The process is dynamic and ongoing and comprises the following stages

Define
Analyze
Approve
Charter

 I’ll follow this up later with more about ITIL V3.

• ITIL V3 – Now that the dust has settled, what does it deliver?
• Now ITIL® V3 is here, what does this mean for our qualifications?
• The Second Phase – Service Design