Skip to main content

Service Acceptance Criteria

Image
By

This blog was written in 2010. For the most up-to-date guidance, please read Service Acceptance Criteria published in 2017 and updated in 2025.

I have often been asked what value does the Service Acceptance Criteria (SAC) provide?

First let’s understand what the SAC is by definition.

Service Acceptance Criteria: A set of criteria used to ensure that an IT Service meets its functionality and quality requirements and that the IT Service Provider is ready to operate the new IT Service when it has been deployed. This set of criteria is in the form of a formal agreement that an IT Service, Process, Plan or other deliverable is complete, accurate, reliable and meets the specified requirements.

We must understand that all design activities are triggered by changes in business needs or service improvements. In order to design and deliver IT services that meet the changing needs of the customers and the business, we must ensure that the contents of the Service Acceptance Criteria are incorporated and the required achievements are planned into the initial design.

The Service Acceptance Criteria is the document that will ensure the Service Provider is ready to deliver the new service by answering the following criteria:
  • Has the go live date been agreed to with all parties?
  • Has the deployment project and schedule been agreed to and made public to all stakeholders?
  • Have all SLR/SLA’s been reviewed, revised and agreed to with all stakeholders?
  • Has the Service Catalogue/Portfolio been updated and all appropriate relationships established within the Configuration Management System?
  • Have all users been identified/approved and appropriate accounts created for them?
  • Can all SLR/SLA targets be monitored, measured, reported and reviewed?
  • Can performance and capacity targets be measured and incorporated into the Capacity Plan?
  • Have incident and problem categories and processes been reviewed and revised for the new service?
  • Has appropriate technical support documentation been provided and accepted by Incident, Problem and all IT support teams?
  • Have all users been trained and user documentation been supplied and accepted?
  • Have appropriate business managers signed off acceptance of the new service?
With this documented criteria in hand we can insure that the Service Provider will meet the agreed needs of the customer and the business. It will insure that availability, capacity, security and continuity can be assured and thereby deliver value to the business.




Labels:

Comments

Manuel said…
Who its responsible?
November 14, 2012 at 1:38 PM
Professor P. Ross S. Wise said…
The Service Design Manager or process owner for Design Coordination would be responsible.
March 28, 2013 at 8:21 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Four Service Characteristics

By
Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.”  Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is A Service Offering?

By
The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group.   As a service provider, we can’t stop there!   We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer.     Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include:     Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods.   Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you.   You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you.      ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Four Ps of Service Management

By
By Donna Knapp For years, people , process , and technology (PPT) was a widely recognized framework for balancing and integrating the components needed to achieve optimal performance and outcomes. In the ITIL v3 Service Design publication, this framework was expanded to the four Ps: people , processes , products , and partners . ITIL 4 has further expanded and evolved this framework to the four dimensions of service management. These four dimensions are collectively critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. The four dimensions of service management are: Organizations and people Information and technology Partners and suppliers Value streams and processes. These four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole service value system (SVS), including the entirety of the service value chain and all ITIL practices. Each ITIL practice is a set of organizational resources base...
Post a Comment
Read more