I have been instructing ITIL classes now for almost ten years and wow have things changed in our industry over those ten years.  Many new tools, concepts and practices have been introduced along the way.  Yet somehow, I still get excited about teaching ITIL Foundation even after presenting it a few hundred times.  The material has changed somewhat, my presentation techniques have gotten better and my jokes and stories still seem to be timeless, kind of like me (Lol). I guess part of what is amazing to me, is the fact that there are still many people out there in the world of ITSM that have not been formally introduced to ITIL best practices but yet participate in them.  So I take very seriously the responsibility to not only educate the learners, but hopefully to inspire and excite them to really want to utilize these practices in their everyday activities;  to see the value in these practices and not view them as just something else they must do. Give...

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 (...

Service Portfolio Management (SPM) is a process that is defined by ITIL best practices in the Service Strategy Lifecycle Stage.  The initiation of activities for Service Portfolio Management is often a result of changes to strategic plans or the identification of a service improvement plan and are triggered by a proposal that must have executive approval to proceed.   For existing services, Service Portfolio Management considers investments that have already been made along with new investments required.  The combined may result in the service being too expensive for what the business will achieve.  Investment decisions will need to be made.  There are many possible procedures and workflows to fulfill all the details of this process but overall the activities can be clearly understood with four high level process activities. Define – In this stage of the process SPM must document and understand existing and new services.  Every proposal for a new or ch...

The purpose of Portfolio Management, when applied to Provider investments (especially, IT investments), is a central mechanism to an overall Value Management approach by making investment allocation explicit against strategic choices such as how much to invest in potentially high value, but usually risky initiatives versus safe but low-value activities. The Service Portfolio represents the complete set of services that are managed by the service Provider.  It is used to manage the entire lifecycle of all services and is defined by three categories of services.  The service pipeline represents service that is under consideration (purposed) or those that are currently in development but are not yet ready for deployment or consumption by the business partners. The next category is the service catalog which represents all live services or services that are available for deployment to the business partners. The final category is retired services.  This represents the serv...

The Service Portfolio represents the complete set of services that is offered and managed by a service provider.  It corresponds to the entire lifecycle of all services and is made up of three sections.  The first, the Service Pipeline (proposed or in development) denotes the future stance the organization is going to take in meeting customer requirements and aligning to the future business strategy. Next is the Service Catalog (live or available for deployment) which is what the service provider is currently delivering and maintaining to meet the organizations current and near future goals and objectives.  Finally we have the Retired Services, which have been deemed no longer valuable enough to sustain their continued delivery, but may need to be continued to be supported for some defined time to meet some regulatory or legal requirement. The Service Portfolio is an integral tool in helping us define perspective and position. It is a tool for our customers/b...

The service portfolio is made up of three distinct elements.  These are the pipeline, catalogue, and retired services. The services themselves will move through thirteen unique statuses that help to define where the service is currently in its lifecycle. The portfolio represents the complete set of services that is currently being managed by the service provider and in turn represents the service provider’s commitments and investments across all of the customers and market spaces the provider is engaged in. It is a portrayal of all contractual commitments with current customers, new service developments for either current or new customers and any ongoing improvement plans initiated from CSI.  Additionally the portfolio can also contain any third party services that are currently being engaged by supplier management.  It can be presented as anything from a structured document to a database and is a tool that is utilized from service strategy to continual service improveme...

Service Portfolio Management is a process that ensures that an organization has the right mix of services to meet business and customer requirements.  Strategists can use the service portfolio to evaluate offerings that are under consideration for investment and also to determine which services should be retired!  A complete history of people, process, technology and information from concept to end of life could be tracked via the service portfolio.  This investment framework is a valuable asset to every service provider.  The Service Portfolio and the activities performed in service portfolio management process serve as an overall basis for making strategic decisions regarding service offerings.  Major changes (those requiring executive approval) will be processed through the service portfolio management pipeline.  It is here that a proposal is defined, analyzed, approved and chartered before moving into service design and more importantly before moving t...

The Fundamentals of Portfolio Management Originally Published June 14, 2011 IT must begin to align with drivers of business value other than just managing infrastructure and applications. In order for IT to organize its activities around business objectives, the organization must link to business processes and services, not just observe them. IT leadership must engage in a meaningful dialogue with line-of-business owners and communicate in terms of desired outcomes. We have to become a Business & Service oriented organization. The transition from managing infrastructure to managing services is a fundamental cultural shift for many organizations. Managing infrastructure requires a focus on component operational availability, while managing services centers on customers and business needs. In order for us to link service assets to business services we must first begin to develop a portfolio of services using the following work methods. Define: Begin by collecting informatio...