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Strategy - Are Service Models Required?

A recent question came from an ITSM practitioner who asked “Just what is a Service Model anyway?” Within the context of service management, you will likely here reference to the “Service Model” in every lifecycle stage but none more so than in the Service Strategy lifecycle. A little background: Within the context of best practice, it is in the Service Strategy lifecycle stage that a proposal is submitted.  This proposal is a formal request for a new line of business or service and will be processed through the pipeline of the service portfolio to be defined, analyzed, approved and chartered.  This approval is the executive authorization and will result in the service being chartered.   The proposal will include a high level “Service Model” and be accompanied with a full-blown business case. Once a service is chartered it will generally move to the Project Management Organization (PMO) where the chartered project is initiated for design. Service Model: A Servi

Service through Knowledge Management

I believe that a service provider can improve by choosing to follow best practices from ITIL, Lean, Agile and more.  That said I also believe that Knowledge Management will be the glue that ties in all together. Knowledge is required to deliver maximum results.  Knowledge Management ensures the right knowledge to the right people at the right time.  Think about yours or your customers service provisioning model.  How much time, money and resources is spent because of the lack of knowledge at the right time?  How frequently do we need information or access to the information and it is NOT available?  Not only is information not available when we need it, but sometimes it is replicated in many ways in many different places so that there is no real way to determine the definitive source.  It is difficult to get management control over the outcomes of an organization when the knowledge is out of control.  Knowledge Management is required throughout the Service Lifecycle.  A few exampl

Service Test Models

Quality: The ability of a service or product to meet customer requirements and create value for that customer.  Perceived quality affects customer support more than any other element.  Products and services must attain a certain minimum level of quality.  No other components can make up for a significant shortfall on this one and the perceived loss of value this can create. In business today, “Time to Value” has increasingly become one of the most significant measures an organization reviews and reports on.  Today’s ever more progressively shorter time scales for this cannot be met without being able to incorporate such practices as continuous delivery (CD), continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD), which all are dependent on our ability to do continuous testing. As many of you have certainly experienced, this need for speed continues to be a clear and present danger in our ability to create a high trust culture where testing and learning from failure is allowed

Failing Forward

In the introduction of her book The ITSM Process Design Guide, Donna Knapp writes “In today’s competitive business climate it’s not enough to do things right; Information Technology (IT) organizations have to do the right things right.”  Well what happens when we don’t? Remember New Coke?  Not every decision we make, every new design or redesign we engage in goes according to plan.  What happens when we fail?  One of the most important and most deeply entrenched reasons why established companies struggle to grow is fear of failure. In fact in a 2015 Boston Consulting Group survey, 31% of the respondents identified a risk adverse culture as a key obstacle to innovation. (1)  ITSM processes for strategy, design, transition, operation and CSI are all based on efficiency and effectiveness.  It’s about being in control of our IT environments and that we must do everything we can to prevent failures.  Now this may go against many of our strongly held beliefs but Pixar’s president, Ed Ca

The Service Portfolio and Portfolio Management

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/business and ac

Deployments Failing? What about STRATEGY?

A lot of organizations today are focusing on improving their time to market and also looking at tactical ways to be able to deliver services without causing massive "All Hands on Deck" outages.  How can we deliver quality services faster at the least amount of cost? Varied methods such as Agile, Lean, Six Sigma and other service management process activities and methods have been attempted.  Why are we missing the mark?  Why does the business not see the type of returns that are touted?  Perhaps if there was more of a focus on the strategy, or at least as much time and effort as is put forth in the tactical and operation space, we would see better results.   Is it time to shift the focus? Having a clear strategy will help your organization to be able to link tactical plans and operational activities to outcomes that are critical to customers and to the business as a whole.  With clear strategic initiatives, governance and best practice principles, the service provid

Managing Across the Lifecycle

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

Perspective

About two years ago I wrote a blog on the four “Ps” of Service Strategy.  Today we going to expand on Perspective, the 1 st of the four “Ps” of Service Strategy.   Perspective is the vision and direction for the services you will provide, and is realized through conversations with your stakeholders.  A well-defined vision and mission statement allows a common goal to be pursued by both the business and IT. This enhances the organizations ability to focus on the customer perspective and the business outcomes that the customer desires, and to implement a continual service improvement approach so that you are regularly enhancing and differentiating the services you provide. In this way the business stays relevant to the changing business environment. The perspective describes what the organization is, what it does, who it does it for, how it works and enables this to be communicated easily to both internal and external stakeholders.  It defines the overall direction for the organiza

Utility and Warranty

If you are in the position of providing IT services to customers then you know the importance of the statement: Utility plus Warranty equals Value (U+W=V).  So when we talk about value, we must consider who determines that value and what are the components that go into making up the agreements that will define how value gets created and delivered.  The value of a service is normally defined as “the level of service that meets customer expectations” and is often measured by how much the customer is willing to pay for the service. An industry trend today that may have been excluded in the past is the ability of the service provider to be able to define and document the costs involved in providing that service beyond its core value. Services being intangible and unlike products do not have much inherent value.  This value does not get realized until the service is actually utilized and enables someone to create the desired business outcome, which means that the provider of the servic

Service Portfolio

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 improvement. The

The Status of a Service

During the lifecycle of a service, it will progress through thirteen different statuses as it moves from the portfolio into the service catalogue and finally into a retired state.   We are going to look at four of the statuses, that are undertaken within the service portfolio that help to bring a service from an idea, suggestion request or plan to one that has been commissioned and authorized to meet a set of defined objectives. They are define, analyze, approve and charter. The process for initiating a service can come from any number of sources and take a number of different formats.  For simplicity we will just refer to these as requests. These requests can come in the form of a strategic plan, an enhancement from BRM, an opportunity for improvement from CSI or as a suggestion from some other service management process.  Define: Here we define the desired business outcomes, opportunities, utility and warranty requirements.  A definition of the service itself and any anticip

The Different Types of Service

In the Strategy stage of the Service Lifecycle there are several questions an IT service provider must ask in order to determine the services they should be delivering, whom they should be delivering them to and is value creation and capture possible.  They are:  What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? Who depends on our services? How do they use our services Why are they valuable to them?  Given the answer to those questions, the service provider can then determine the types of services to be delivered, resources needed and what risks and constraints need to be identified and managed.   There are three types of services the provider will have to consider, supporting services, internal customer facing and external customer facing services.  Services whether internal or external are further broken down as core, enabling or enhancing.   Here we will be looking at supporting, internal and external facing services. Supporting Services:   A serv

Service Strategy and the Service Portfolio

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 to project management.  

Documented Policy

Governance : Ensures that policies and strategy are actually implemented and insures that the required processes and procedures are followed.   This includes the defining of roles and responsibilities, measuring and reporting and taking any actions to resolve any issues identified. Policy : Formally documented management expectations and intentions.   Policies are used to direct decisions and ensure consistent and appropriate development and implementation of processes, standards, roles, activities, IT infrastructures and anything that will give guidance on the management of your organization.   The objective of policies and procedures is to document an organization’s policy for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill that policy.  Policies and procedures answer the “what” and “how” questions for individuals within an organization.   Written documentation will allow for consistent treatment across the organization.   Policies and Procedures also help to create an in

Are You Ready for Some Football?

It’s that time of year where the kids are heading back to school, the seasons are about to change and YESSS it’s time for the NFL to begin its new season!    The other night I was watching the HBO series NFL Hard Knocks about the Cincinnati Bengals training camp and it dawned on me how much a football organization is similar to an ITSM organization and how they incorporate ITIL best practices in their methodology.   I know you are saying, what the?????? But hear me out and let me show you a few comparisons. Strategic Plan :   Win the Super Bowl and become the world champions.   Well defined, well communicated.   Everyone in the organization understands what the fans ( customers ) want. Strategy defines the perspective, position, plans and patterns that the organization will need to execute to meet its business objectives.   This began at the end of the previous season ( CSI ) as the coaching staff reviewed statistics ( CSF & KPI ) to identify improvement opportunities for the ne

The Best of Service Strategy, Part 5

ITIL 2011:  Business Relationship Management Originally Published on August 16, 2011 With the recent publication of the ITIL 2011 edition, several items within the best practice set have undergone a transformation. One of the goals of the 2011 edition is to bring even more consistency and standardization to the best practices by formally recognizing and organizing several ideas and activities that the 2007 edition had not previously structured as full, formal processes.  While always referenced in the 2007 edition (and ISO/IEC 20000), Business Relationship Management is now an official ITIL process The newly structured Business Relationship Management process now formalizes the activities and links between the customer or user and the service provider through a central contact point embodied in the Business Relationship Manager role. The ITIL 2011 edition states that the purposes of Business Relationship Management are twofold: To establish and maintain a business relatio

The Best of Service Strategy, Part 4

Cycles Originally Published December 4, 2012 As we move into the waning of the year in the northern hemisphere and the waxing of the year in the southern hemisphere, it becomes time to reflect on the meaning and understanding of the idea of cycles. The yearly cycle of seasons was long ago recognized by early mankind as playing a significant role in culture and society. Planting, growth, maturity and harvesting each set the day to day activities of peoples around the globe throughout a given year. This is no less true when it comes to the lifecycle of services and the lifecycle of Service Management. Both play a significant part in the culture and functioning of an organization. A cycle is defined as “any complete round or series of occurrences that repeats or is repeated.” This definition holds true for service management and IT services. When it comes to providing value through IT services and governing, controlling and managing those services, we do not exist in a “once and

The Best of Service Strategy, Part 2

Service Strategy's Four P's Originally Published on July 10, 2012 Whenever I am introducing ITIL and ITSM to a new group of students I always make sure that the concept of Strategy as a process is always discussed.   The reaction that I usually get from most is: “Strategy isn’t something the business does?”   I begin our discussion with a simple definition.   Service Strategy comprises the processes of: strategy management for IT services, service portfolio management, financial management for IT services, demand management and business relationship management.   In the world of ITSM, Service Strategy is the stage of the lifecycle were we align our IT strategy the with business strategy and define our perspective, position, plans and patterns that we as a service provider will have to execute in order to meet an organizations business outcomes.     These four elements must be present and help guide us in defining and documenting our overall IT strategy.     

The Best of Service Strategy, Part 1

I've been hearing a lot lately about "going back to the basics" of ITIL and IT Service Management.  So for the first half of 2013, I'm going to package and republish the best of my blogs for each lifecycle stage.  As always, I welcome your comments and questions!   ~~ ITSM Professor Utility and Warranty Equals Value Originally published October, 2012 When a service provider is developing a service for a customer or group of customers the underlying goal is to ensure that the service has value for the customers by meeting a set of defined requirements.    The value is often defined by what the customer is willing to pay for this service rather than what it actually cost the service provider to produce the service or any other essential feature of the service itself. Services themselves do not actually have intrinsic value.   That value is created by the outcome enabled by employing the service and therefore the value of the service is not determined by the provid

Strategies for Managing IT Services

When I teach ITIL foundation classes and we start talking about aligning IT strategy with business strategy, I usually see some puzzled looks on the faces of my students.   So I thought I would give some basics on what we are trying to establish here. The purpose of strategy management for IT services is to create a process for defining and maintaining an organization's perspective, position, plans and patterns related to its services and the management of those services.    The purpose of a service strategy is to communicate how a service provider will enable an organization to achieve the desired business outcomes and establish the criteria and mechanisms to decide which services will be delivered, to whom they will be delivered to and to establish the most effective and efficient way to manage these services. The objectives of strategy management for IT services are: Analyze the internal and external environments in which we (the service provider) exist and to identify