Value to business. Service Operation fundamentals

Scope

Service Operation fundamentals

Specialization and coordination across the lifecycle

Specialization and coordination are necessary in the lifecycle approach. Feedback and control between the function s and processes within and across the elements of the lifecycle make this possible. The dominant pattern in the lifecycle is the sequential progress starting from SS through SD-ST-SO and back to SS through CSI. However, that is not the only pattern of action. Every element of the lifecycle provides points for feedback and control.

The combination of multiple perspectives allows greater flexibility and control across environment s and situations. The lifecycle approach mimics the reality of most organizations where effective management requires the use of multiple control perspective s. Those responsible for the design, development and improvement of processes for Service Management can adopt a process-based control perspective. Those responsible for managing agreement s, contract s and services may be better served by a lifecycle-based control perspective with distinct phases. Both these control perspectives benefit from system s thinking. Each control perspective can reveal patterns that may not be apparent from the other.

2.4.1 Purpose/goal/objective

The purpose of Service Operation is to coordinate and carry out the activities and processes required to deliver and manage services at agreed levels to business user s and customer s. Service Operation is also responsible for the ongoing management of the technology that is used to deliver and support services.

Well-designed and well-implemented processes will be of little value if the day-to-day operation of those processes is not properly conducted, controlled and managed. Nor will service improvements be possible if day-to-day activities to monitor performance, assess metric s and gather data are not systematically conducted during Service Operation.

Service Operation includes the execution of all ongoing activities required to deliver and support services. The scope of Service Operation includes:

• The services themselves. Any activity that forms part of a service is included in Service Operation, whether it is performed by the Service Provider, an external supplier or the user or customer of that service
• Service Management processes. The ongoing management and execution of many Service Management processes are performed in Service Operation, even though a number of ITIL processes (such as Change and Capacity Management) originate at the Service Design or Service Transition stage of the Service Lifecycle, they are in use continually in Service Operation. Some processes are not included specifically in Service Operation, such as Strategy Definition, the actual design process itself. These processes focus more on longer-term planning and improvement activities, which are outside the direct scope of Service Operation; however, Service Operation provides input and influences these regularly as part of the lifecycle of Service Management.
• Technology. All services require some form of technology to deliver them. Managing this technology is not a separate issue, but an integral part of the management of the services themselves. Therefore a large part of this publication is concerned with the management of the infrastructure used to deliver services.
• People. Regardless of what services, process es and technology are managed, they are all about people. It is people who drive the demand for the organization ’s services and products and it is people who decide how this will be done. Ultimately, it is people who manage the technology, processes and services. Failure to recognize this will result (and has resulted) in the failure of Service Management project s

Each stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle provides value to business. For example, service value is modelled in Service Strategy; the cost of the service is designed, predicted and validated in Service Design and Service Transition; and measures for optimization are identified in Continual Service Improvement. The operation of service is where these plan s, designs and optimizations are executed and measured. From a customer viewpoint, Service Operation is where actual value is seen.

There is a down side to this, though:

• Once a service has been designed and tested, it is expected to run within the budgetary and Return on Investment targets established earlier in the lifecycle. In reality, however, very few organizations plan effectively for the costs of ongoing management of services. It is very easy to quantify the costs of a project, but very difficult to quantify what the service will cost after three years of operation.
• It is difficult to obtain funding during the operational phase, to fix design flaws or unforeseen requirement s – since this was not part of the original value proposition. In many cases it is only after some time in operation that these problem s surface. Most organizations do not have a formal mechanism to review operational services for design and value. This is left to Incident and Problem Management to resolve – as if it is purely an operational issue.
• It is difficult to obtain additional funding for tools or actions (including training) aimed at improving the efficiency of Service Operation. This is partly because they are not directly linked to the function ality of a specific service and partly because there is an expectation from the customer that these costs should have been built into the cost of the service from the beginning. Unfortunately, the rate of technology change is very high. Shortly after a solution has been deployed that will efficiently manage a set of services, new technology becomes available that can do it faster, cheaper and more effectively.
• Once a service has been operational for some time, it becomes part of the baseline of what the business expects from the IT Service s. Attempts to optimize the service or to use new tools to manage it more effectively are seen as successful only if the service has been very problematic in the past. In other words, some services are taken for granted and any action to optimize them is perceived as ‘fixing services that are not broken’.

This publication suggests a number of processes, functions and measures which are aimed at addressing these areas.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-23