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Showing posts from May, 2015

Service Transition: Release Unit vs Release Package

A “Release Unit” describes the portion of a service or IT infrastructure that is normally released as a single entity according to the organizations release policy. The Release Unit can be thought of as a collection of infrastructure items that when packaged together could perform a useful function. The unit may vary depending on the type or item of service asset or service component.  The actual components to be released on a specific occasion may include one or more release units, or may include only part of a release unit.  Release Units should contain information about the service, its utilities and warranties and release documentation.  These components can be grouped together into a Release Package for a specific release.  In general the aim is to decide the most appropriate release unit level for each service asset or component. A “Release Package” is a set of configuration items that will be built, tested and deployed together as a single release.  Each release will take th

Continual Service Improvement (CSI) - Thoughts on Measuring, Value and Risk

The best practice approach and the Seven-step Improvement Process for Continual Service Improvement (CSI) begin with identifying the vision, mission, goals and objectives of the business.  In order to measure with appropriate targets these outcomes and objectives must be quantified. If you cannot measure it you cannot improve it.  First and foremost in order to perform ongoing CSI for a service we must identify the service.  That is just common sense right?  Yet how many discussions take place in Sales, in Development, and in Operations about whether something is or is not a service.  Collectively everyone in the lifecycle has a mission to meet the outcomes of the service or services that are being provided.  Measuring and Reporting For CSI to be successful we measure and monitor and report upon a service end-to-end.   When measuring and reporting IT managers will generally report availability in terms of percent with such things as 99% availability on a server or other c

The Importance of Demand Management

I was recently asked to comment on the importance of Demand Management for IT Services as it relates to the IT Business organization. Demand Management Demand Management is tied to the “Customer” or consumer demand. It is more about the market and what is the demand from that level. Strategic Example Strategic Demand Management might be a business strategy for how to influence user behavior. The telecom industry a few years back offered “Free nights and weekends”. This was a “Strategy” to manage the “Demand” until the provider could get all of the infrastructure laid down to support the demand for service. Tactical Example Within the activities of “Demand Management “ are those that are defined to monitor, manage, and report upon the patterns of business activities (PBA) and the activities of the varied user profiles (UP’s) . Demand Management would provide the UP’s and PBA’s and work very closely with Capacity management (managing workload at the component level to meet

What is the difference between Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner?

I was recently asked to clarify the roles of the Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner and wanted to share this with you. Roles and Responsibilities: Process Owner – this individual is “Accountable” for the process. They are the goto person and represent this process across the entire organization. They will ensure that the process is clearly defined, designed and documented. They will ensure that the process has a set of Policies for governance. Example: The process owner for Incident management will ensure that all of the activities to Identify, Record, Categorize, Investigate, … all the way to closing the incident are defined and documented with clearly defined roles, responsibilities, handoffs, and deliverables.  An example of a policy in could be… “All Incidents must be logged”. Policies are rules that govern the process. Process Owner ensures that all Process activities, (what to do), Procedures (details on how to perform the activity) and th