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Service Acceptance Criteria

I have often been asked what value does the Service Acceptance Criteria (SAC) provide?  Along with other criteria and elements, the Service Acceptance Criteria forms what is described in ITIL and the Service Design Package.  With so much importance on Design, Development and Deployment, the significance of the SAC increases as we look to optimize service value.  Do you want to increase value to your business and customers? First let’s understand what the SAC is.  Service Acceptance Criteria:   A set of criteria used to ensure that an IT Service meets its functionality and quality requirements and that the IT Service Provider is ready to operate the new IT Service when it has been deployed. This set of criteria is in the form of a formal agreement that an IT Service, Process, Plan or other deliverable is complete, accurate, reliable and meets the specified requirements.  In the past, this has sometimes been thought of and enacted on at the end of the value stream. High performi

Incident vs. Problem

You may have seen a similar blog from the Professor a few years back that talked about the distinction between the idea of an incident vs problem.  Everything from that article is still relevant.  As process and methods for development and deployment have matured so has the usage of Incident and Problem Management. This is one of the most often confused points in for Agile, LEAN and ITIL adaptations. The ITIL definition is the same. Incident: Any unplanned event that causes, or may cause, a disruption or interruption to service delivery or quality Problem: The cause of one or more incidents, events, alerts or situation­­­­­­­ Where and how we apply Incident and Problem Management is evolving. A decade ago, and still in some organizations, Incident and Problem Management are processes exclusive to Service Operation.   ITIL is so very relevant and today we find, with the onset of DevOps and cultural shifts, many organizations are adopting little or zero tolerance

Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM)

Service Asset & Configuration Management (SACM) is the one process that touches all of the other ITIL processes. SACM’s purpose is to deliver accurate and up-to-date data and information to every other process across the lifecycle.  The fascinating fact about SACM is that in many cases it depends on those other processes through their defined, documented and agreed to activities, to insure that the data and information about those assets is up to date, accurate and properly recorded through the Configuration Management System (CMS),  No organization can be truly efficient and effective without having a configuration management process to insure we understand how and where that infrastructure, application, tools, documentation and sometimes even people are being utilized in delivering business outcomes and creating value. SACM ensures that CIs (configuration items) are properly identified; baselined and that changes made to them are properly controlled and recorded.  This

The Purpose and Value of a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

I am often asked the purpose and value of a Business Impact Analysis (BIA).  The purpose of a BIA is to quantify the impact to the business (in dollars and cents) that the loss of a service would have.  It is a valuable source of input when trying to ascertain the business needs, impacts and risks that the organization may face in the delivery of services.  The BIA is an essential element of the overall business continuity process.  It identifies the most important services to the organization and therefore will help to define the overall strategy for risk reduction and disaster recovery.  At a more granular level this analysis enables the mapping of critical service applications and technology components to critical business processes.  It is an invaluable input for Continuity, Strategy, Availability, Design, and Capacity Management and can have a significant impact on the cost of designing, delivering and maintaining these services based on their criticality as defined by the busin

The Role of Process Practitioner

The role of the Process Practitioner is by far one of the most critical, and is sometimes overlooked in lieu of others such as Process Managers and Process Owners.  Don’t misunderstand, Managers and Owners are important and are key success factors, but the Process Practitioner role is where the rubber meets the road.  This is the role assigned to individuals who will be performing the work on a day to day basis.  ITIL has always emphasized the need for clearly defined roles for Process Owners and Process Managers. ITIL also speaks to the role of Service Owner, an individual who is accountable for and represents the end-to-end service.   Within each process, there may also be roles that are designed to carry out certain process activities … these are the “Practitioners”. Without this role and skill set everything else becomes a moot point. Successful service management dictates that specific individuals are assigned to specific roles with specific responsibilities for one or more p

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