Skip to main content

Managing Across the Lifecycle

Image
By
As the current IT organization has grown from a provider of technology to the Service Provider of choice we have had to incorporate the principles of service management to ensure that we deliver the outcomes required by our customers.  Given that, we have to ask ourselves a couple of strategic questions:
  • What outcomes are we trying to provide?
  • How do we as a service provider facilitate that?

Delivering an outcome based definition of services will allow the IT organization to move beyond just business / IT alignment to towards business / IT integration, which really should have been the goal from the beginning.  Supporting customer / business outcomes should be the ultimate focus of the IT organization thus creating value through the delivery of services.
A focus on business outcomes is both a critical and in most cases a cultural shift for IT service providers.  As customer’s preferences and perceptions change over time so does the value statement that a service provider needs to remain focused on for the customers.  Perceptions influence the value statement and perceptions can be influenced by:
  • Attributes of a service that are indications of value
  • Present or prior experiences with similar attributes
  • Relative capability of competitors and other peers
  • Customer’s self-image or position in the market

If we are to facilitate outcome, then how best do we organize ourselves?  There is no one answer to that question.  The best practices that we engage in must be tailored to the individual organization and situation.  If we are to successfully engage the ITIL Service Lifecycle roles and responsibilities must be well defined.  Ownership of processes and services must be well defined.  We need to define what skillsets are needed, both current and future.  Where will investments be made? The current size and culture of the organization must be taken into account.
  • A starting point for organizational design is Service Strategy where many of these questions can be addressed and answered at a high level.
  • Service Design will ensure that services and service management processes will be well defined and designed with clearly related roles and outcomes.
  • Service Transition will allow the appropriate controls to be put into place, yet not become overly bureaucratic so it doesn’t slow innovation and change.
  • Service Operations will enable effective and efficient use of resources to deliver services when and where they are needed.
  • And Continual Service Improvement, where meaningful metrics will be utilized to allow continual improvement to happen and greater value created and sustained.
To gain knowledge and certification in Managing Across the Lifecycle please click here:  http://www.itsmacademy.com/malc/ 

   



Labels:

Comments

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