Service Offerings and Agreements

When we think about what services we are going to offer we immediately think of the Service Catalog. We must also consider what agreements go along with the delivery of those services. What levels of utility and warranty are going to be expected over the life of our services? What about services that will be supplied by external service providers; who is going to manage those? Let’s take a look at which ITSM processes we will need to engage to ensure that we are able to strategize, design, deliver and maintain services that will meet our customers’ needs over the lifetime of the services.

In Service Offerings and Agreements (SOA), we look at Service Portfolio Management (SPM), Financial Management (FM), Demand Management (DM) and Business Relationship Management (BRM). These are all processes within the Strategy stage of the Lifecycle. We also explore Service Catalog Management (SCM), Service Level Management (SLM) and Supplier Management (SM) processes within the Design stage of the Service Lifecycle. We are going to examine how these processes are integrated to ensure that we are able to deliver the right services at the appropriate levels of performance and within the defined budgets. Now there are additional processes engaged but we will limit our discussions to the processes mentioned earlier.

Let’s start with the Service Portfolio. It describes a provider’s services in terms of business value and is utilized to ensure that a service provider has the right mix of services to balance the investment in IT with the ability to meet business outcomes. It’s divided into three parts, the pipeline which represents future investment, and where BRM introduces the Service Level Requirements (SLR) which are utilized in the creation of the definition of the service and are used later in the Service Catalog (2^nd part of the portfolio) to establish the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) defined by SLM. SPM along with other stakeholders will make the strategic decision on when it is time to retire older or underutilized services which is the final and 3^rd part of the Service Portfolio (Retired Services). Of course, Financial Management for IT Services is engaged throughout to provide us with accurate financial data for our decision making.

Increasingly important in today’s complex environments is Supplier Management. We find more and more of our services and supporting services are being supplied by external suppliers. The purpose of Supplier Management is to ensure that our suppliers are being appropriately managed so that we are receiving value for our money and that suppliers are delivering quality IT services to the business. These relationships must be managed and assure that contracts are defined to meet business needs and align and underpin targets established in our SLRs and SLAs in conjunction with SLM. It is critically important that a Supplier Policy and a Supplier/Contract Management Information System be established to guarantee the success of this process.

If you would like to take a deeper dive and have a more in-depth discussion about how these best practice processes can enhance you and your organization's success in delivering and managing IT services, come join one of our SOA classes. See you soon!

For more information on Service Offering and Agreements: http://www.itsmacademy.com/itil-soa/

The Four Ps of Service Design - It’s not all about Technology

People ask me why I think that many designs and projects often fail. The most common answer is from a lack of preparation and management. Many IT organizations just think about the technology (product) implementation and fail to understand the risks of not planning for the effective and efficient use of the four Ps: People, Process, Products (services, technology and tools) and Partners (suppliers, manufacturers and vendors). A holistic approach should be adopted for all Service Design aspects and areas to ensure consistency and integration within all activities and processes across the entire IT environment, providing end to end business-related functionality and quality. (SD 2.4.2) People: Have to have proper skills and possess the necessary competencies in order to get involved in the provision of IT services. The right skills, the right knowledge, the right level of experience must be kept current and aligned to the business needs. Products: These are the technology managem

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL4 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 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. Note: Goods may not always be provided for every Service Offe

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 the

Search