turnkey_itil v3 foundation_pdf version

Copyright 2009 Turnkey Business Solutions Ltd. All Rights ReservedCopyright 2009 Turnkey Business Solutions Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Turnkey Business Solutions Limited…redefining solutions to business challenges

IT Service Management

ITIL v3 Foundation Course

Copyright 2009 Turnkey Business Solutions Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Course Introduction


Ground Rules

• Take turns in asking questions or making contributions

• Share information and experience

• No question is irrelevant

• Departure before end of training should be avoided

…Also

• All mobile phones on ‘silent’ – phone calls must be taken outside the class (only urgent/emergency calls)

… although we’re here to learn;

lets also have some fun along the way


Welcome!

Please introduce yourself:

� Full Name

� The unit you work in

� Something interesting about you

� Your expectations of this training


Agenda

Time Activity

9.00am – 11.00am� Welcome and Course Introduction

� Module 01: Overview of ITIL and IT Service Management

11.00am – 11.30am Breakfast

11.30am – 12.30pm � Module 02: Service Management as a practice

12.30pm – 1.30pm � Module 03: Service Lifecycle

1.30pm – 2.30pm Lunch Break

2.30pm – 5.00pm � Module 04: Service Strategy

Day One

Time Activity

8.30am – 10.30am � Module 05: Service Design


11.00am – 12.00noon � Module 05: Service Design (cont’d)

12.00noon – 1.30pm � Module 06: Service Transition


2.30pm – 3.00pm � Module 06: Service Transition (cont’d)

3.00pm – 5.00pm � Module 07: Service Operation

Day Two


Agenda (cont’d)

Time Activity

8.30am – 10.30am � Module 07: Service Operation (cont’d)


11.00am – 12.00noon � Module 08: Continual Service Improvement

� Module 09: Technology and Architecture

12.00noon – 1.30pm � Revision, Q&A


2.30pm – 4.00pm � Mock Exam

4.00pm – 5.00pm � Discussions and Networking

Day Three


Pre-Course Assessment

• Assessment Type: Multiple choice, 20 questions

• Duration: 30 minutes

• Pass Score: 18 (90%)

• Delivery: Paper based


Course Description


Course Objectives

• Participants in this course will gain practical skills in the following areas:

– ITIL and IT Service Management (Comprehension)

– Service Management as a practice (comprehension)

– Service Lifecycle (Comprehension)

– Key Principles and Models (Awareness)

– Generic Concepts (Awareness)

– Selected Processes (Awareness)

– Selected Roles (Awareness)

– Selected Functions (Awareness)

– Technology and Architecture (Awareness)

– ITIL Qualification Scheme (Awareness)


ITIL v3 Qualification Scheme and Credit

Assignment


ITIL Bridge v2 – v3 credit Assignment


ITIL Foundation Certificate Exam

• Credit Value: 2

• Exam Type: Multiple choice, 40 questions



• Delivery: Online or Paper based


Certification

Level

Description Training Exam

Foundation Basic understanding of ITIL

and Service Management

concepts

ITIL Foundation V3

Course

Multiple choice, 40

questions. Time=1hr

Passing Score: 65 %

ITIL Expert Deep knowledge of ITIL

Lifecycle or capability and

managing across lifecycle

modules

Lifecycle Track = 21

hours of class room

training

Capability Track=

30 hrs of classroom

training

Managing across

Lifecycle = 30 hrs

No Exam required. You

accumulate 22 credits

from either lifecycle or

capability track and

managing exams, These

exams are complex

multiple choice.

Passing Score is 65%

Time: 90min

Advanced

Diploma

Deeper understanding of

lifecycle and capability

modules

Still in development Still in development

ITIL Certification Summary



Introduction to IT Service

Management


Module Goals

• At the end of this module you should be able to:

– Understand the background, concepts of ITIL framework,

organizations (itSMF and others) and benefits of IT Infrastructure

library

– Understand the background, definitions, concepts and benefits of IT

Service Management

– Understand ITSM implementation of ITIL


What is ITIL?

• ITIL – IT Infrastructure Library

• ITIL is a public framework that describes Best Practice in IT

Service Management

• ITIL provides a framework for the governance of IT, the ‘service

wrap’, and focuses on the continual measurement and

improvement of the quality of IT service delivered, from both a

business and a customer perspective


Introduction to ITIL – Background

• ITIL was developed in recognition of the fact that organizations are becoming increasingly dependent on IT to fulfill their corporate objectives

• A growing need for IT services of a quality corresponding to the objectives of the business, and which meet the requirements and expectations of the customer

• In the overall lifecycle of IT products, the operations phase amounts to about 70 to 80% of the overall time and cost

• ITIL offers a common framework for all the activities of the IT department, as

part of the provision of services, based on the IT infrastructure

• ITIL presents these best practices coherently in a set of documents called the

ITIL books

• Thus, effective and efficient IT Service Management processes are essential to

the success of IT


ITIL v2 Framework


ITIL v3 Lifecycle


ITIL Organizations

• Office of Government Commerce (OGC), formerly known as

CCTA, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency of

the UK government, as of April 1, 2001

• The Information Technology Service Management Forum (itSMF).

• The Dutch foundation “Exameninstituut voor Informatica” (EXIN)

and the UK “Information Systems Examination Board” (ISEB)

jointly developed a professional certification system for ITIL

• Other Examination institutes are:– APM Group International

– Loyalist Certification Services (based in North America)

– CSME (based in North America)


ITIL Books

• Originally produced in the late 80’s – early 90’s as a set of more than 40 volumes.

• ITIL v2 books were reduced to two core books that describe IT Service Management Best Practice.

– Service Support

– Service Delivery

• ITIL v3 has 5 Core Books:

– Service Strategy

– Service Design

– Service Transition

– Service Operations

– Continuous Service Improvement


Definitions of Some ITIL Terms

• Customer: Recipient of a service; usually the customer management has

responsibility for funding the service.

• Provider: The unit responsible for the provision of IT services.

• Supplier: A third party responsible for supplying or supporting underpinning

elements of the IT services

• User: The person using the service on a daily basis or as applicable

• IT Service: One or more systems that support a business process.

• Process: A Process is a connected series of activities conducted toward a

defined objectives.


Generic ITIL process Model


Roadmap To ITIL Implementation

• Service Management Training

– To carry all stakeholders along and to get management

commitment

• Continuous Service Improvement Program (CSIP)

– Best Performed as a Project, with PM best practices


CSIP Process Model


Implementing CSIP

• Set your vision and strategy

• Gain high level management commitment

• Assess the existing processes and structures

• Understand the people and culture of your organization

• Understand the technology and how it align to business needs

• Establish a service management project

• Conduct a cost/benefit analysis

• Review where we are now

• Design the service improvement processes

• Implement the plan with reviews and reports

• Audit for compliance

• Monitor and review


Benefits of ITIL to Business

• IT services become customer focused and improve the relationship

• Services are described better in more appropriate detail

• Quality, availability, reliability and cost of services are managed better

• Communication improved by agreeing on points of contact and use of common terminology

• It creates a common vocabulary.

• IT organization develops a clear structure as roles and a responsibility are defined, and becomes more efficient.

• Effective structure provides a framework for effective outsourcing of elements of IT services

• Supports and provides a stepping stone towards quality management systems.


Challenges in using ITIL

• Lack of management commitment

• Lack of effective and efficient procedures

• Insufficient time and resources

• Unrealistic expectations

• Lack of business focus

• Lack of clear roles and responsibilities

• Resistance to change from traditional processes

• Deliberate frustration of the process

• Insufficient training and support tools

• Project not cost effective

• Lack supporting agreements (OLAs, SLAs and Underpining Contract)


IT Service Management - Background

• Over the years the reliance on IT services has never been more prevalent.

• As Businesses grow, the IT services they utilize and rely on become more complex, competitive.

• Alongside this, the environments have become more regulated

• IT Managers are challenged daily with the co-ordination and working in partnership with the business to continuously deliver high quality IT services


Elements of Service Management

• IT Management is concerned with the effective and efficient use of the

four Ps’

• A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating

outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific

costs and risks

• IT Services refers to the maintenance and operation of the IT

infrastructure

People

Products

Partners

Processes


Quality of Service

• The quality of a service refers to the extent to which the

service fulfils the requirements and expectations of the

customer

• ISO-8402 Definition:

“Quality is the totality of characteristics of a product or

service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and

implied needs”


Deming Quality Cycle


IT Service Management – Objectives

• There are 3 key objectives:

– To align IT services with the current and future needs of the

business

– To improve the quality of the IT services delivered

– To reduce the long-term cost of service provision

• “IT is the business” and “The business is IT”


What is IT Service Management?

• IT Service Management is a top-down, business driven

approach for the management of IT that intentionally

addresses the strategic business value generated by the

IT organization and the need to deliver a high quality IT

service.


Why IT Service Management?

• Improves customer satisfaction

• Boosts staff morale and increases productivity

• Eliminates “fire brigade” approach to managing IT Services

• Implements changes efficiently and consistently

• Reduces re-occurring problems considerably

• Produces more business-focused metrics

• Increasing demand from business to deliver effective IT

solutions/services

• Increasing complexity of IT infrastructure and processes


IT Service Staff

• Organized in groups and subgroups

• Interact and work together as a team

• Service and customer focused

• Possess the right service culture

• Continuing education and training

• Business focused – align service provision to business needs


Service Culture - Definition

• Service Culture:

– right attitude

– behavior

– value

• To achieve or attain business success, the culture of

every organization should embrace the concept of

service and customer care


Service Culture Expectations

• Understand the rationale of having an IT organization

• Understand the customer’s perspective and requirements

• Meet and exceed customer requirements

• Treat every customer as a king; make them feel valued and

respected

• Ensure that SLAs are never breached

• The service concepts should permeate through all levels of the

organization

• Every IT staff should understand ITIL concepts and should be

service staff in every way.


Steps to Service Culture

• A good understanding of why IT Services are being provided, and

the business impact of providing poor services.

• Clearly defined targets based on agreed service levels and

expectations.

• Executive and Senior Management support and commitment


ITSM Frameworks

• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

• Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)

• HP IT Service Management Reference Model

• Framework for ICT Technical Support (FITS)


Benefits of IT Service Management

• Improved quality of service to customers

• High probability of meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations

• Boost in staff morale and improved job satisfaction

• Enhanced customer satisfaction

• Provides an understanding of the actual IT capability of an organization

• Provides accurate information on current services

• Improvements in security, accuracy, speed and availability

• Better management of the IT service organization


Benefits of IT Service Management (cont’d)

• Controlled and successful high rate of change

• Long term financial savings

• Better and feasible charging metrics

• Better focused IT Service Continuity procedures, and more

confidence in the ability to follow them when required

• Proper utilization of skilled professionals

• Improved change windows and success rate


Summary

• Review Questions



Service Management as a

Practice


Module Goals


– Describe the concept of a Good Practice

– Explain the concept of a Service

– Explain the concept of Service Management

– Learn about processes, roles and functions


What is A Good Practice?

• A good practice is simply doing things that have been shown to work effectively

• Good practice can come from different sources:Frameworks such as (ITIL, COBIT, CMM, CMMI), standards (such as ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO 9000), and proprietary knowledge of people and organization

• Adopting a good practice can help a Service Provider to create an effective service management system


What is a Service?

• A service is a means of delivering value to customers by

facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve

without the ownership of specific costs and risks


What is Service Management?

• Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities

for providing value to customers in the form of services

• Service Management is more than just organizational capabilities. It is

also a professional practice supported by an extensive body of

knowledge, experience and skills

• Service Management is what enables a Service Provider to:

– understand all the services being provided

– ensure that the services really facilitate customer outcomes

– understand the value of the services to their customers

– understand and manage all the risk and costs associated with providing the

services


Definition: Function

• Functions are units of organizations specialized to perform certain types of

work and responsible for specific outcomes

• A team or group of people and the tools they use to carry out one or more

Processes or Activities. For example the Service Desk

• The term function also has two other meanings:

– An intended purpose of a Configuration Item, Person, Team, Process, or IT Service.

For example one Function of an e-mail Service may be to store and forward

outgoing mails, one Function of a Business Process may be to dispatch goods to

Customers.

– To perform the intended purpose correctly, ‘The computer is Functioning’


Definition: Role

• Role is a set of responsibilities, activities and authorities

granted to a person or team

• A Role is defined in a Process. One person or team may

have multiple roles, for example the roles of

Configuration Manager and Change Manager may be

carried out by a single person


RACI Model

• The RACI model is an example of the authority matrix used is assigning activities to roles

• It is often used in designing organizational structure activities

– Example includes Service Desk, IT Operations

RACI authority matrix


Definition: Process

• A Process is a series of connected activities conducted towards a

definite goal

• A Process takes one or more defined inputs and turns them into

defined outputs

• A Process may include any of the Roles, responsibilities, tools and

management Controls required to reliably deliver the outputs

• Process may define Policies, Standards, Guidelines, Activities, and

Work Instructions if they are needed


Basic Process


Basic ITIL Process Elements


Process Characteristics

• Measurable – We are able to measure the process in a relevant manner.

• Performance driven – Managers want to measure cost, quality and other variables while practitioners are concerned with duration and productivity.

• Specific results – The reason a process exists is to deliver a specific result. This result must be individually identifiable and countable. While we can count changes, it is impossible to count how many service desks were completed.

• Customers – Every process delivers its primary results to a customer or stakeholder. They may be internal or external to the organization but the process must meet their expectations.

• Responds to a specific event – While a process may be ongoing or iterative, it should be traceable to a specific trigger


Summary



Practise Question

1. How many people should be accountable for a process as

defined in the RACI model?

A. As many as necessary to complete the activity

B. Only one – the process owner

C. Two – the process owner and the process enactor

D. Only one – the process architect


Practise Question

2. Which of the following is the BEST definition of the term Service

Management?

A. A set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to

customers in the form of services

B. A group of interacting, interrelated or interdependent components that

form a unified whole, operating together for a common purpose

C. The management of functions within an organization to perform certain

activities

D. Units of organizations with roles to perform certain activities


Practise Question

3. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of a process?

A. It is measurable

B. Delivers specific results

C. Responds to specific effects

D. A method of structuring an organization


Practise Question

4. Which of the following would be defined as part of every

process?

1. Roles

2. Activities

3. Functions

4. Responsibilities

A. 1 and 3 only

B. All of the above

C. 2 and 4 only

D. 1, 2 and 4 only


Practise Question

5. Which of the following statements is CORRECT for every

process?

1. It delivers its primary results to a customer or stakeholder

2. It defines activities that are executed by a single function

A. Both of the above

B. 1 only

C. None of the above

D. 2 only



The Service Lifecycle


Module Goals


– Understand the Service Lifecycle and the business value of each of

the lifecycle phase

– Explain the main goals and objectives of Service Strategy, Service

Design, Service Transition, Service Operations and Continuous

Service Improvement

– Briefly explain the value of Continual Service Improvement to the

business


The Service Lifecycle


Components of ITIL

ITIL has the following components:

• The ITIL Core – Best practice guidance applicable to all types of organizations who provide services to a business. Consists of five books:– Service Strategy

– Service Design

– Service Transition

– Service Operation

– Continual Service Improvement

• The ITIL Complementary Guidance – A complementary set of publications with guidance specific to industry sectors, organization types, operating models and technology architectures


Structure, Scope, Components and

Interfaces of ITIL

Core Structure

COBIT

SIX SIGMA

ISO 20000

CMMI

ISO 9000

ISO 27001


Goal of Service Strategy

• To operate and grow successfully in the long-term,

Service Providers must have the ability to think and act

in a strategic manner

• The goal is to help organizations develop such abilities


Goal of Service Strategy (cont’d)

• Service Strategy help service providers answer questions such as:

– What services should we offer and to whom?

– How do we differentiate ourselves from competing alternatives?

– How do we truly create value for our customers?

– How do we capture value for our stakeholders?

– How can we make a case for strategic investments?

– How can Financial Management provide visibility and control over value creation?

– How should we define service quality?

– How do we choose between different paths for improving service quality?

– How do we efficiently allocate resources across a portfolio of services?

– How do we resolve conflicting demands for shared resources?


Goal of Service Design

• The main goal of service design is to design appropriate and

innovative IT services, including their architectures, processes,

policies and documentation, to meet current and future agreed

business requirements


Value of Service Design

• The following benefits results from a good Service Design:

– Improved quality of service

– Improved consistency of service

– Easier implementation of new or changed service

– Improved service alignment

– More effective service performance

– Improved IT governance

– More effective Service Management and IT processes

– Improved information and decision-making process


Goal of Service Transition

• The main goal of service transition is to deliver services that are

required by business into operational use


Value of Service Transition To Business

• Service Transition adds value to business by improving:

– The ability to adapt quickly to new requirements and market opportunities

– Transition management of mergers, de-mergers, acquisition and transfer of services

– The success rate of changes and release for the business

– Confidence in the degree of compliance with business and governance requirement during change

– The prediction of service levels and warranties for new and changes services

– The variation of actual against estimated and approves resources plans and budgets

– The productivity of business and customers staff because of better planning and use of new and changed services


Goal of Service Operation

• The main goal of Service Operation is to deliver agreed level of

service to users and customers, and to manage the applications,

technology and infrastructure that support delivery of the

services


Value of Service Operation To Business

• It is during Service operation that services actually deliver value

to the business

• Service Operation provides for:

– Stability of services

– Quality of services

– Timely and proactive response to business impacting incidents through

incident and problem management activities


Goal of Continual Service Improvement

• The primary purpose of CSI is to continually align and re-align IT

services to the changing business needs by identifying and

implementing improvements to IT services that support business

processes


Value of CSI To Business

• Improvements: Outcomes that when compared to the ‘before’ state,

show a measurable increase in a desirable metric or decrease in an

undesirable metric

• Benefits: The gains achieved through realization of improvements,

usually but not always expressed in monetary terms

• ROI (Return on Investment)

• VOI (Value on Investment): The extra value created by establishment

of benefits that include non-monetary or long-term outcomes. ROI is a

subcomponent of VOI


Value of CSI To Business – Intangible

Benefits

• Increased organizational competency

• Integration between people and processes

• Reduction of redundancy thereby increasing business throughput

• Minimized lost opportunities

• Assured regulatory compliance that will minimize costs and

reduce risk

• Ability to react to change rapidly


Summary



Practise Question

1. Who owns the specific costs and risks associated with providing

a service?

A. Service Provider

B. Service Level Manager

C. The Customer

D. The Finance Department


Practise Question

2. What are the publications that provide guidance specific to

industry sectors and organization types known as?

A. The Service Strategy and Service Transition books

B. The ITIL Complimentary Guidance

C. The Service Support and Service Delivery books

D. Pocket Guides


Practise Question

3. Which of the following do Service metrics measure?

A. Processes and functions

B. Maturity and cost

C. The end to end service

D. Infrastructure availability


Practise Question

4. Which stage of the Service Lifecycle is MOST concerned with

defining policies and objectives?

A. Service Design

B. Service Transition

C. Service Strategy

D. Service Operation


Practise Question

5. Which of the following is MOST concerned with the design of

new or changed services?

A. Change Management

B. Service Transition

C. Service Strategy

D. Service Design


MATCHING EXERCISE



Service Strategy


Module Goals


– Explain the goals of Service Strategy

– Explain the high level objective, basic concepts, roles,

activities and key processes

– Explain how Service Assets are the basis for value creation

– Describe the basics of value creation through services

– Describe the challenges and key metrics (KPI’s)


Goal of Service Strategy

• To operate and grow successfully in the long-term, service

providers must have the ability to think and act in a strategic

manner

• The goal is to help organizations develop such abilities


Goal of Service Strategy (cont’d)

• Service Strategy help service providers answer questions such as:

– What services should we offer and to whom?

– How do we differentiate ourselves from competing alternatives?

– How do we truly create value for our customers?

– How do we capture value for our stakeholders?

– How can we make a case for strategic investments?

– How can Financial Management provide visibility and control over value creation?

– How should we define service quality?

– How do we choose between different paths for improving service quality?

– How do we efficiently allocate resources across a portfolio of services?

– How do we resolve conflicting demands for shared resources?


The four P’s of Service Strategy

• Perspective: the distinctive vision and direction. Strategic perspective begins with knowing your

competition

• Position: the basis on which the provider will compete

• Plan: how the provider will achieve their vision

• Pattern: the fundamental way of doing things –distinctive patterns in decisions and actions over time.


Service Value Creation

• Service Value is defined in terms of the customer’s perceived business

outcomes, and described in terms of the combination of two components:

– Service Utility

– Service Warranty

• Service value also includes the concept of service as an asset


Utility and Warranty

• Service Utility: what the customer gets in terms of

outcomes supported and/or constraints removed

(fitness for purpose)

• Service Warranty: how the service is delivered and its

fitness for use, in terms of availability, capacity,

continuity and security

Utility + Warranty = Value


Service Management as Strategic Asset

• Service Management as a strategic assets is the use of ITIL to

transform service management capabilities into strategic assets,

by using Service Management to provide the basis for core

competency, distinctive performance and durable advantage, and

increase the service provider’s potential from their:

– Capabilities

– Resources


Capabilities and Resources


Capabilities and Resources

• Resources and Capabilities are types of assets

• Organizations use them to create value in the form of goods and

services

• Resources: Management, organization, people, and knowledge

are used to transform resources

• Capabilities: Capabilities represent an organization’s ability to

coordinate, control, and deploy resources to produce value


Service Model


Service Models

• They are blueprints for service management processes and

functions to communicate and collaborate on value creation

• Service Models describe how service assets interact with

customer assets and create value for a given portfolio of

contracts


Service Models


Service Models (cont’d)

• Service models codify the structure and dynamics of services

• Structure is defined in terms of particular core and supporting

services and service assets needed and the patterns in which

they are configured

• Dynamics describe the activities, flow of resources, coordination,

and interactions

• Dynamics of a service include patterns of business activity,

demand patterns, exceptions and variations


Definitions

• A Business case is a decision support and planning tool that

projects the likely consequences of a business action

– It is used in deciding what services to offer – part of service economics

• Service Level Package (SLP): A defined level of Utility and

Warranty for a particular Service Package. Each SLP is designed to

meet the needs of a particular Pattern of Business Activity


Types of Service Providers

• Type1: exists within an organization solely to deliver service to

one specific business unit (Internal service provider)

• Type II: services multiple business units in the same organization

– (Shared services)

• Type III: operates as an external service provider serving multiple

external customers. (External service provider)


Service Provisioning Model

• Managed Service: where a business unit requiring a service fully funds the provision of that service for itself

• Shared Service: the provisioning of multiple services to one or more business units through shared infrastructure and resources

• Utility Service: services are provided on the basis of how much is required by each customer, how often, and at what times the customer needs them


Strategy Generation

Has four activities:• Define the Market:

– What is our business?

– Who is our customer? – Understanding the customer

– What does the customer value?

– Who depends on our services?

• Develop the offerings:

– What’s the “market space” – a set of business outcomes which can be facilitated by a service

– What does the market space want?

– Can we offer anything unique in that space?

– Solutions or service should enable or enhance the performance of customer assets


Strategy Generation (cont’d)

• Develop strategic assets: – Invest in resources and capabilities of your organization. These are assets

that create value for customers and generate more business for the service provider

– Capabilities and resources are adjusted until the goal is reached

• Prepare for execution: Strategy involves thinking as well as doing


Key Processes

• Service Portfolio Management

• Demand Management

• Financial Management


Service Portfolio Management (SPM)


Service Portfolio Management (SPM)

• The Process responsible for managing the Service Portfolio

• Service portfolio management is a dynamic method for governing

investments in service management across the enterprise and

managing them for value

• Service Portfolio Management considers services in terms of the

Business value that they provide


Service Portfolio

• The complete set of Services that are managed by a Service

Provider. The Service Portfolio is used to manage the entire

Lifecycle of all Services, and includes three Categories:

– Service Pipeline (proposed or in Development)

– Service Catalogue (Live or available for Deployment)

– Retired Services


Service Portfolio/ Service Catalogue


Service Catalogue

• A database or structured document with information about all life IT Services, including those available for Deployment

• The Service Catalogue is the only part of the Service Portfolio published to Customers, and is used to support the sale and delivery of IT Services

• The Service Catalogue includes information about deliverables, prices, contact points, ordering and request processes


Service Catalogue


Service Catalogue (cont’d)

• The information is divided into two parts:

– Business Catalog: Description of available services, (visible to

the end-user)

– Technical Catalog: Description on how the services will be

supported (visible only to the IT organization)


Service Portfolio Management Methods


Service Portfolio Management Methods

• Define: inventory services, ensure business cases and

validate portfolio data

• Analyze: maximize portfolio value, align and prioritize

and balance supply and demand.

• Approve: finalize proposed portfolio, authorize services and resources.

• Charter: communicate decisions, allocate resources and charter services.


Roles and Responsibilities

• Product Manager: This role is responsible for managing services as a product over their entire lifecycle from concept to retirement through design, transition and operation– They are instrumental in the development of Service Strategy and its

execution through the Service Lifecycle within a high-performing portfolio of services

– Product Managers bring coordination and focus to the organization around the Service Catalogue, of which they maintain ownership

• Business Relationship Managers (BRMs): bring coordination and focus to the Customer Portfolio


Definitions: Business Case

• A business case is a decision support and planning tool that


• Business case is a means to identify business imperatives that

depend on service management


Definitions: Risk

• A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or affect the ability to achieve objectives

• A risk is measured by:

– the probability of threat

– the vulnerability of the asset to that threat

– the impact it will have if it occurred

• Risk Analysis and Risk Management should be applied to the Service Pipeline and Service Catalogue to identify, contain and mitigate risks within the Lifecycle phase.


Demand Management


Demand Management

• The purpose of Demand Management is to understand and

influence customer demand for services and the provision of

capacity to meet these demands

• At a strategic level, this can involve analysis of patterns of

business activity and user profiles.


Demand Management (cont’d)

• Poorly managed demand is a source of risk for service providers because of uncertainty in demand.

• Excess capacity generates cost without creating value that provides a basis for cost recovery

• Insufficient capacity has impact on the quality of services delivered and limits the growth of the service

• Demand management techniques such as off-peak pricing, volume discounts and differentiated service levels can influence the arrival of demand in specific patterns


Activity-Based Demand Management

• Business processes are the primary source of demand for services

• For example, the fulfillment of a purchase order (business activity) may result in a set of requests (demand) generated by the order-to-cash process (business process of customer)

• Analyzing and tracking the activity patterns of the business process makes it possible to predict demand for services in the catalogue that support the process. It is also possible to predict demand for underlying service assets that support those services


Financial Management


Financial Management

• Financial Management is the process responsible for managing

an IT service provider’s budgeting, accounting and charging

requirements

• It provides the business and IT with the quantification, in

financial terms, of the value of IT services, the value of the assets

underlying the provisioning of those services, the qualification of

operational forecasting


Concepts

• Service Valuation: Service Valuation quantifies, in financial terms, the funding sought by the business and IT for services delivered, based on the agreed value of those services.

• Therefore service valuation focuses primarily on two key valuation concepts:

– Provisioning Value: is the actual underlying cost to IT related to provisioning a service, including all fulfilment elements, both tangible and intangible

– Service Value Potential: is the value-added component based on the customer’s perception of value from the service or expected marginal utility and warranty from using the service, in comparison with what is possible using the customer’s own assets

• Demand modelling: Financial demand modelling focuses on identifying the total cost of utilization (TCU) to the customer, and predicting the financial implications of future service demand

• Service Portfolio Management


Concepts (cont’d)

• Service Provisioning Optimization: SPO examines the financial inputs and constraints of service components or delivery models to determine if alternatives should be explored relating to how a service can be provisioned differently to make it more competitive in terms of cost or quality

• Planning Confidence: Planning provides financial translation and qualification of expected future demand for IT Services

• Service Investment Analysis: The objective of service investment analysis is to derive a value indication for the total lifecycle of a service based on 1) the value received, and 2) costs incurred during the lifecycle of the service

• Accounting: uses financial management to understand services in terms of consumption and provisioning

• Compliance: Compliance relates to the ability to demonstrate that proper and consistent accounting methods and/or practices are being employed

• Variable Cost Dynamics: Variable Cost Dynamics (VCD) focuses on analyzing and understanding the multitude of variables that impact service cost, how sensitive those elements are to variability, and the related incremental value changes that result


Objectives of Financial Management

• To assist in the management and reduction of overall long term costs

• To identify the actual cost of services and their provision

• To provide accurate and vital financial information to assist in decision making

• To identify how IT adds value to the Customer’s business

• To enable the calculation of Total Cost of Ownership and Return On Investment

• To make customers aware of what services actually cost, if appropriate.


Objectives of Financial Management

(cont’d)

• To support the recovery of costs, from Customers if appropriate, in a fair and equitable manner.

• To provide measurements of Value For Money, and provide incentives to produced quality services aligned to business needs.

• To help influence Customer behaviour, for example by providing incentives for using non-critical resources

• To encourage more efficient use of resources

• To provide better cost information and control of external contracts and suppliers

• To assists in the assessment and management of Changes


IT Financial Management Cycle


Activities

• Budgeting

• IT Accounting

• Charging


Budgeting

• Budgeting is the process of predicting and controlling spend with

the organization

• It usually comprises a periodic cycle of negotiation (for example,

annually for budget-setting) and monitoring of spend against

budget (usually on a day-by-day basis).


Budgeting Methods

• Incremental Budgeting:

Last year’s figures are used as the basis for the new budget. This is then adjusted to the expected changes in activities, costs and prices.

• Zero-based Budgeting:

This method starts with a blank piece of paper: the Zero Base. Past experience is ignored. This requires managers to justify all their resource needs in terms of costs in their budget


Budgeting Period

• The financial (fiscal) year would be an obvious choice for the

budget period. The budget period could be a regular period such

as four-week window

• Some businesses not only draw up a detailed one-year budget,

but also a general forecast for a three or five-year period


Budgeting Process

• Budgeting starts by identifying the key factors that limit the

growth of the company, for example sales volume

• This process also includes defining the following secondary

budgets:

– Sales and marketing budget

– Production budget

– Administrative budgets

– Cost and investment budgets


Example of Budgeting Calculations

Budgeting starts by identifying the key factors that limit the growth of the company, for example sales volume.

– Budget Item

– Budget Classification – Capital or Operational

– Purchase Cost

– Annual Maintenance Cost

– Spend This Year

– Budget Next Year

– Notes

– Annualized Cost


IT Accounting

• This is a set of processes that define cost elements in line with

service elements like the hardware, software and support of the

service, even if they will not be charged to customers


Business Considerations of IT Accounting

• IT accounting is implemented based the following business

considerations:

• Accounting Centre - Estimate how much money is needed to provide, maintain and support the IT services that are required by the users and/or decide how to spend the money that will be available.

• Recovery Centre - Specifies agree fees for IT services to enable those responsible for IT support to recover some of the cost of their service provision.

• Profit Centre - Operates IT support as a separate business unit.


Cost Models

The Cost Model will consist of

COST ELEMENTS

COST TYPE

Transfer (Cross Charges)

Hardware

External Services

Software

People

Accommodation

COST CATEGORISATION

Capital OR Operational

Direct OR Indirect

Fixed OR Variable


Cost Types and Cost Elements in

determining the cost of a service

• INDIRECT COSTS – NOT directly attributable but shared.

• ABSORBED OVERHEADS – Total cost of indirect materials and expenses that are NOT passed onto the customer.

• UNABSORBED OVERHEADS – Total cost of Indirect materials; wages; expenses that are apportioned and added to the cost of each service.

• DIRECT COST – Directly attributable.


Charging

• Charging refers to all the activities needed to bill the customer for

the services provided to them.

• Charging includes determining the objective(s) of charging, as

well as the algorithm(s) for calculating charges


Charging System

• Based against Organisational policy on IT - overhead / break even

/ profit centre

• Prices should be simple, understandable, fair and realistic

• Charging mechanism to support policy


Pricing Methods/Charging Policies

• Cost: Price=cost

• Cost plus: Price=cost +/-X%

• Going rate: Price is comparable with other internal groups (internal X charge rate)

• Market rate: Price matches that charged by external suppliers (open market price)

• Fixed Price: Set price is agreed for a set period based on anticipated usage


Pricing Considerations

• The determination of a pricing objective

• Understand the actual service demand

• Correct determination of direct and indirect costs

• The level of control of the internal market

• Understanding the services available from external providers if

customers have a choice

• Taxation, regulation and legal issues


Value of Financial Management

• Reduced long term costs

• Increased confidence in setting and managing budgets

• Accurate cost information to support IT investment

• More efficient use of IT throughout the business

• Increased awareness and professionalism within IT

• Ensures that the business provides sufficient funds to run the IT

services it requires

• More business-like decision making on IT services

• Recovering IT costs in a fair manner, related to usage

• Influencing Customer and User behaviour

• Allowing comparison with alternative service providers


Summary



Practise Question

1. Which of the following should NOT be a concern of Risk

Management?

A. To ensure that the organization can continue to operate in the event of a

major disruption or disaster

B. To ensure that the workplace is a safe environment for its employees

and customers

C. To ensure that the organization assets such as information, facilities and

buildings are protected from threats, damage or loss

D. To ensure only the change requests with mitigated risks are approved for

implementation


Practise Question

1. Which of the following should NOT be a concern of Risk

Management?

A. To ensure that the organization can continue to operate in the event of a

major disruption or disaster

B. To ensure that the workplace is a safe environment for its employees

and customers

C. To ensure that the organization assets such as information, facilities and

buildings are protected from threats, damage or loss

D. To ensure only the change requests with mitigated risks are approved

for implementation


Practise Question

2. The best processes to automate are those that are:

A. Carried out by Service operations

B. Carried out by lots of people

C. Critical to the success of the business mission

D. Simple and well understood


Practise Question

3. What is the Service Pipeline?

A. All services that are at a conceptual or development stage

B. All services except those that have been retired

C. All services that are contained within the Service Level Agreement (SLA)

D. All complex multi-user services


Practise Question

4. Which function is NOT part of Financial Management for IT

services?

A. Budgeting

B. Charging

C. Procurement

D. Pricing


Practise Question

5. Which of the following is NOT a valid charging policy?

A. Cost recovery

B. Activity base costing

C. 'Cost plus' pricing

D. Market rate


Practise Question

5. Which of the following is NOT a valid charging policy?

A. Cost recovery

B. Activity based costing

C. 'Cost plus' pricing

D. Market rate


Day 2


Agenda (Day 2)

Time Activity

8.30am – 10.30am � Module 05: Service Design


11.00am – 12.00noon � Module 05: Service Design (cont’d)

12.00noon – 1.30pm � Module 06: Service Transition


2.30pm – 3.00pm � Module 06: Service Transition (cont’d)

3.00pm – 5.00pm � Module 07: Service Operation



Service Design


Module Goals


– Explain the goals of Service Design

– Explain the high level objectives ,basic concepts, scope, roles,

activities and key processes of Service Design

– Describe key metrics (KPI’s) and any challenges


Service Design

• The purpose of Service Design is to design appropriate and innovative IT services, including their architectures, processes, policies and documentation, to meet current and future agreed business requirements

• The main aim is to design new or changed services for introduction into the live environment


Goals/ Objectives

The main goals and objectives of Service Design are to:

• Design services to meet agreed business outcomes

• Design new or changed services

• Design processes to support the service lifecycle

• Identify and manage risks

• Design secure and resilient IT infrastructures, environments, applications and

data/information resources and capability

• Design measurement methods and metrics

• Produce and maintain plans, processes, policies, standards, architectures,

frameworks and documents to support the design of quality IT solutions

• Develop skills and capability within IT

• Contribute to the overall improvement in IT service quality


Scope

• New or Changed Services

• Service management systems and tools especially

Service portfolio, including Service Catalogue

• Technology Architecture and management systems

• The processes required

• Measurement methods and metrics


5 Aspects of Service Design

1 - Design of new or changed service solution – including the

functionality requirements

2 - Design of service management systems and tools, especially the

Service Portfolio

3 - Design of the technology architectures and management systems

required to improve the system

4 - Design of the processes, roles and capabilities

5 - Design of the measurement methods and metrics.


Four P’s Of Service Design

Good service design is dependent on effective and efficient use of the Four P’s of

Design:

– People: the people, skills and competencies involved in the provision of IT

services

– Products: the technology and management systems used in the delivery of

IT services

– Processes: the processes, roles and activities involved in the provision of

IT Services

– Partners: the vendors, manufacturers and suppliers used to assist and

support IT service provision.

People

Products

Partners

Processes


Service Delivery Strategies/Options

• Out-sourcing

• In-sourcing

• Co-sourcing

• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

• Application Service Provision e.g. (ASP)

• Partnership or Multi-sourcing

• Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)


Service Design Package (SDP)

• SDP defines all aspects of an IT service and its requirements

through each stage of its lifecycle.

• An SDP is produced for each new IT service, major change, or IT

service retirement.


Key Activities

• Business requirements collection, analysis and engineering to ensure they are clearly documented

• Design and development of appropriate service solutions, technology, processes, information and measurements

• Production and revision of all design processes and documents involved in Service Design

• Liaison with all other design and planning activities and roles

• Production and maintenance of policies and design documents

• Risk management of all services and design processes

• Alignment with all corporate and IT strategies and policies


Key Roles and Responsibilities

• Service Design Manager: responsible for the overall coordination and deployment of quality solution designs for services and processes

• IT Designer/Architect: responsible for the overall coordination and design of the required technologies, architectures, strategies, designs and plans

• Service Catalogue Manager: responsible for producing and maintaining an accurate Service Catalogue

• Service Level Manager: responsible for ensuring that the service quality levels are agreed and met

• Availability Manager: responsible for ensuring that all services meet their agreed availability targets


Key Roles and Responsibilities

• IT Service Continuity Manager: responsible for ensuring that all services can be recovered in line with their agreed business needs, requirements and timescales

• Capacity Manager: responsible for ensuring that IT capacity is matched to agreed current and future business demands

• Security Manager: responsible for ensuring that IT security is aligned with agreed business security policy risks, impacts and requirements

• Supplier Manager: responsible for ensuring that value for money is obtained from all IT suppliers and contracts, and that underpinning contracts and agreements are aligned with the needs of the business.


Key Processes

• Service Catalogue Management

• Service Level Management

• Capacity Management

• Availability Management

• IT Service Continuity Management

• Information Security Management

• Supplier Management


Service Catalogue Management



• The purpose of Service Catalogue Management (SCM) is to

provide a single, consistent source of information on all of agreed

services, their details and status, and ensure that it is widely

available to those who are approved to access it


Goal/ Objective of Service Catalogue

Management

• The goal of SCM process is to ensure that a Service Catalog is

produced and maintained, containing accurate information on all

operational services and those services being prepared to be run

operationally

• The objective of SCM is to manage the information contained in

the Service Catalogue, and to ensure that it is accurate and

reflects current details, status, interfaces and dependencies of all

services that are being run, or being prepared to run in the live

environment


Service Catalogue Management (cont’d)

• The key information within the SCM process is that contained within the Service Catalogue. The information is divided into two parts:– Business Catalog: Description of available services, (visible to the end-

user)

– Technical Catalog: Description on how the services will be supported (visible only to the IT organization)

• The main input for this information comes from the Service Portfolio and the business via either the Business Relationship Management or the Service Level Management processes


Business / Technical Service Catalogue


Service Catalogue Example


Key Role

• Service Catalogue Manager: responsible for producing

and maintaining an accurate Service Catalogue


Service Level Management


Service Level Management (SLM)

• The Process responsible for negotiating Service Level

Agreements, and ensuring that these are met

• SLM is responsible for ensuring that all IT Service Management

Processes, Operational Level Agreements, and Underpinning

Contracts, are appropriate for the agreed Service level targets

• SLM monitors and reports on Service levels, and holds regular

Customer reviews


Goal of SLM

• The main goal of Service Level Management (SLM) is to maintain

and gradually improve business aligned IT services quality

through a constant cycle of agreeing, negotiating, monitoring ,

reporting and reviewing IT service achievements through

instigating corrective actions to eradicate unacceptable level of

services


Objectives of SLM

• To ensures that the IT services required by the customer are continuously maintained and improved.

• To integrate the elements included in the provision of services.

• To document the services by clearly describing the elements in various documents.

• To provide the service in terminology which the customer can understand.

• To align IT strategy with the business needs.

• To improve IT Service Delivery in a controlled manner.


Scope

• All current Live Services

• Encompasses both existing service and potential future

requirement for new and changed services



• Service Level Manager: Has the responsibility for ensuring that

all the aims of Service Level Agreement are met, This includes:

– Keeping aware of changing business needs

– Negotiating and agreeing OLAs, and in some cases other SLAs and

agreements that underpin the SLA

– Ensuring that service reports are produced for each customer service and

that breaches of SLA targets are highlighted, investigated and actions

taken to prevent their recurrence


Service Level Management Process


SLM Process Activities

• The key activities within SLM process should include:– Determine, negotiate, document and agree on requirements for new or

changed services.

– Monitor and measure performance

– Collate, measure and improve customer satisfaction

– Produce service reports

– Conduct service review and instigate improvements - eg. SIP

– Develop and document contacts and relationships with business,

customers and stakeholder

– Develop, maintain and operate procedures for logging, and resolving all

complaints

– Log and manage all complaints and compliments

– Provide the appropriate reports

– Make available and maintain up-to-date SLM document templates and

standards


Service Level Agreement (SLA) and

Service Improvement Program (SIP)

• A service Level Agreement is an agreement between the IT organization and the customer, which details the service or services to be provided

• The Service Improvement Program is often implemented as a project, defines the activities, phases and milestones associated with improving an IT service


Operational Level Agreement (OLA) and

Underpinning Contract (UC)

• Operational Level Agreement: is an agreement with and internal

IT department detailing the provision about certain element of

the service

• Underpinning Contract: is a contract with an external provider

defining the agreements about the provision of certain elements

of a service


Service Quality Plan

• The Service Quality Plan is an important document as it contains

all management information needed to manage the IT

organization.

• The Service Quality Plan defines the process parameters of the

Service Management processes and operational management


SLA Structures

SLA’s may be developed along the following structure options:

• Service Based – e.g. E-mail service

• Customer Based – Covers all customer services

• Multi-level – divided into:

– Corporate: covers all units in the organization

– Customer: covers a particular business unit

– Service: covers a particular service for each customer group


SLA, OLA and Contract Support Structure


Content of Service Level Agreements

• Title and brief description of the agreement

• A simple description of the service and the deliverables

• Specifies parties and signatories to the agreement

• Start dates, end dates and periodical review dates

• Scope of the agreement with exclusions and inclusions

• Customer and Provider responsibilities

• The agreed service and support hours

• Service availability, reliability and continuity targets

• Response times and escalations

• Critical business periods and exceptions


SLA Recommendations

• SLA’s should be simple as possible Users should be involve early

ITIL best practices should be used The purpose should be clear

and concise


Critical Success Factors of SLM

The success of Service Level Management depends on the following

factors:

• A capable Service Level Manager with both IT and business expertise, and a supporting organization when necessary

• Clear process mission and objectives.

• Awareness campaign to provide people with information about the process, develop understanding and gain support.

• Clearly defined tasks, authorities and responsibilities within the process, distinguishing between process control and operational tasks (customer contacts)


Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

• Service elements included in SLA’s

• Elements of the SLA supported by OLA and UC’s

• Elements of the SLA’s which are monitored, and where shortcomings are reported

• Elements of the SLAs which are regularly reviewed

• Elements of the SLAs where the agreed service levels are fulfilled

• Shortcomings which are identified and covered by an improvement plan

• Actions which are taken to eliminate these shortcomings

• Trends identified with respect to the actual service levels


Challenges

• Ensuring that targets are achievable before agreeing to them

• Don't be under-ambitious, if you set targets that can be easily achieved it may be seen as an excuse for a reduction in service quality.

• Having the right monitoring tools in place to measure the actual achievements, this will avoid disputes with the customers.

• SLAs may not be supported by adequate underpinning contracts.

• The content of the SLA may be too lengthy or not business focused, therefore not used.

• SLM and other IT support functions do not fully understand the business drivers or the need for the requested service levels.

• Ensuring that adequate resources and time to support, measure and report on the SLAs


Value of SLM

• Both parties have clear view of responsibilities and specific service targets.

• Service monitoring and reviews will identify weak areas, therefore enabling the provision of higher quality IT services.

• Prevent misunderstandings between customers and IT providers.

• SLM underpins Supplier Management, the SLAs are a key part in managing supplier relationships

• IT Services will be designed to meet the SLRs (Service Level Requirements).

• SLAs can be used as a basis for charging and demonstrating to the customer what they receive for their money!

• OLAs and support contracts with external suppliers are aligned with the business services required


Capacity Management


Capacity Management

• The goal of Capacity Management is to understand the

organizations operation and IT infrastructure to ensure that all

current and future capacity and performance aspects of the

business requirements are provided cost effectively at the right

time


Objectives of Capacity Management

• Monitoring the performance and the throughput of IT services

and supporting IT components

• Understanding the current demands for IT resources and deriving

forecasts for future requirements

• Influencing the demand for resource, in conjunction with other

Service Management processes

• Tuning activities to make efficient use of resources

• Producing a Capacity Plan predicting the IT resources needed to

achieve agreed service levels


Capacity Management - Basic Concepts

• Performance Management: measuring, monitoring and tuning the performance of IT infrastructure components

• Application Sizing: determining the hardware or network capacity required to support new or modified applications, including the workload (details about the capacity requirements of the application)

• Modeling: using mathematical models to determine the impact of alternatives for capacity deployment (currently available or to be acquired), for example by considering various scenarios for the increasing demand for IT services

• Capacity Planning: developing a Capacity Plan, analyzing the current situation (preferably using scenarios) and predicting the future use of the IT infrastructure and resources needed to meet the expected demand for IT services


Capacity Management - Basic Concepts

(cont’d)

• Workload Management: dealing with, and understanding what the various business drivers are doing, and what resources they require

• Cost vs. Resources needed: the need to ensure that processing capacity that is purchased is cost-justifiable in terms of business need, and the need to make the most efficient use of those resources

• Demand vs. Supply: the need to ensure that the available supply of IT processing power matches the demands made on it by the business, both now and in the future.


Capacity Management Information

Systems (CMIS)

• Holds and analyze information needed by all sub-

processes within Capacity Management


Roles

• Capacity Manager: Has responsibility for ensuring that the aims of Capacity management are met. These includes such task as:

– Ensuring that there is adequate capacity to meet required levels of service, and that senior IT management is correctly advised on how to match capacity and demand to ensure that use of existing capacity is optimized

– Identifying with Service Level Manager, capacity are requirements through discussions with business users

– Understanding the current usage of the infrastructure and IT services, and the maximum capacity of each component


Capacity Management Process


Capacity Management Process (cont’d)

• It has 3 sub-processes:

– Business Capacity Management

– Service Capacity Management

– Component Capacity Management


Capacity Management - Sub Process

• Business Capacity Management - the objective of this sub process is to

understand the future user needs. This sub-process is primarily proactive. It

has strong links with Service Level Management in terms of the definition and

negotiation of service agreements.

• Service Capacity Management - the objective of this sub process is to

determine and understand the use of IT services. You have to understand the

performance and peak loads to ensure that appropriate service agreements

can be made and guaranteed

• Component Capacity Management – the focus in this sub-process is the

management, control and prediction of the performance, utilization and

capacity of individual IT components. It ensures that all components within

the IT infrastructure that has finite resources are monitored and measured,

and that collected data are recorded, analyzed and reported


Capacity Management Activities

• Business Capacity Management

– Developing the capacity plan

– Modeling

– Application Sizing


Capacity Management Activities (cont’d)

• Service Capacity Management and Component Capacity

Management

– Monitoring, Analysis, Tuning and Implementation

– Demand Management

– Populating the Capacity Database (CMIS)


Iterative Activities in Capacity

Management


Ad-hoc Activities

• Modeling and trending

• Application Sizing

• Demand Management


Modelling

• Modelling is a powerful Capacity Management tool and is used to forecast the behavior of the infrastructure. The tools available to Capacity Management range from estimating to extensive prototype testing.

• The Techniques include:

– Trend analysis

– Rule of thumb

– Analytical modeling

– Simulation

– Baseline assessment (benchmark) (most accurate)


Application Sizing

• Application Sizing considers the hardware needed to run new or

changed applications, such as applications under development or

undergoing maintenance, or which may be purchased at the

request of the customer.


Demand Management

• Demand Management aims to influence the demand for

capacity; it is about moving demand.

• Demand Management provides important inputs for drawing up,

monitoring and possibly adjusting both the Capacity Plan and the

Service Level Agreements


Capacity and Demand


Key Metrics (KPI’s)

• Accurate business forecasts:

– Production workload forecasts on time

– Percentage accuracy of forecasts of business trends

• Timely incorporation of business plans into the capacity

plans


Value of Capacity Management

• Increased efficiency and cost savings.

• More economic use of the IT services.

• Removal of spare and unnecessary capacity and optimizing current equipment.

• Reduce or eliminate unnecessary 'panic' buying.

• Reduce the risk of performance problems.

• Improved forecasting.

• Proactive awareness of potential Capacity issues.

• Improved relationships with customers and users.

• Service improvements seen through better control.

• Reduce the need for reactive support.


Challenges

• Customer requirements exceed technical capacity limits.

• Over expectation of the benefits realized from tuning.

• Unrealistic performance figures from equipment suppliers.

• Lack of business information due to security or commercial restrictions.

• Inaccurate or incomplete business forecasts.

• Incomplete or inaccurate information from IT support functions.

• Too much data - data overload - unable to "see the wood for the trees".

• Lack of financial resources.

• Lack of technical resources with the right skill set.


Availability Management



• Availability Management is the planning, designing,

implementing, measuring and managing of IT Service Availability

proactively and reactively to ensure that they are available to

end-users with as little disruption or downtime as possible,

during the hours they are needed.


Objectives of Availability Management

• Availability Management ensures services are available when the Customer needs them

• Optimize availability by monitoring and reporting on all key indices of availability

• Producing and maintaining the Availability Plan

• Collate, analyze and maintain availability data and produce usable reports from them

• Predicting and designing for expected levels of availability and security

• Ensuring service levels (SLAs) are not breached by measuring service availability levels with SLA and OLA specifications

• Continuously reviewing and improving service availability levels


Elements of Availability Management

• Availability Management process has 2 key elements:

– Reactive Activities: monitoring, measuring, analysis and

management of all events, incidents and problems involving

availability. These activities are principally involved within

operational roles

– Proactive Activities: involve proactive planning , design and

improvement of availability. These activities are principally

involved within service design and planning roles


Basic Concepts of Availability

Management – Common Metrics

• Service Availability is a measure of the time that the service is actually available when compared with the scheduled time. It is often calculated and presented as a % of the actual hours required, for example:

– Availability (%)= Actual hours / required hours * 100%

• Component Availability: involves all aspects of component availability and unavailability

• Service Reliability is usually measured as:

– Mean Time Between Service Interruption (MTBSI)

– Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)


Basic Concepts of Availability

Management – Common Metrics (cont’d)

• Maintainability is usually measured as Mean Time To

Restore Service (MTRS)

– Also referred to as Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)

• Serviceability is a contractual term for service reliability

and maintainability

• Service Security measure the level of Confidentiality,

Integrity and Availability to ensure that there is no

compromise


Availability Measurement


Availability Management Terms and

Measurements


Availability Management Terms

• Availability: - means that the IT service is continuously available to the customer, as there is little downtime and rapid service recovery. It is the agreed service hours when a service or component (e.g. resource, hardware, software) is available. Often expressed as a percentage and then documented in the SLA (e.g. Available Time/Agreed Service Time * 100).

• Reliability: - means that the service is available for an agreed period without interruptions. This concept also includes resilience. The reliability of a service increases if downtime can be prevented. It is expressed as MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) or MTBSI (Mean Time Between System Incidents), or number of breaks in a period

• Maintainability: relates to the activities needed to keep the service in operation, and to restore it when it fails. This includes preventive maintenance and scheduled inspections. It is expressed as MTTR ( Mean Time To Recover).

• Serviceability: relates to contractual obligations of external service providers (contractors, third parties). The contracts define the support to be provided for the outsourced services


• Security: Concerned with the security of the services ensuring that the service is delivered within secure parameters and that confidentiality, integrity and availability are not compromised.

• Vital Business Function: This is used to express the business critical elements of the business process supported by an IT service. – e.g ATM function

• Availability Management Information System (AMIS): contains all of the measurements and information required to provide the appropriate information to the business on service levels. The AMIS also assists in the production of the Availability Plan

• High Availability: is a characteristic of the IT Service that minimizes or

eliminates the impact of IT component failure to the User.

• Continuous Operation: is a characteristic of the IT Service that minimizes or

eliminates the impact of planned downtime to the User.

• Continuous Availability: is a characteristic of the IT Service that minimizes or

eliminate the impact of all failures and planned downtime to the User.

Availability Management Terms (cont’d)


The Availability Management Process

237


Availability Management Processes

• Reactive Activities: monitoring, measuring, analysis and

management of all events, incidents and problems involving

availability. These activities are principally involved within

operational roles

• Proactive Activities: involve proactive planning , design and

improvement of availability. These activities are principally

involved within service design and planning roles


Roles

• Availability Manager: responsible for ensuring that all

services meet their agreed availability targets


Value Of Availability Management

• Influences customer satisfaction and help to maintain or grow future business and profitability

• Increases the overall levels of confidence that management actually has in the IT organization.

• Focus point, across the IT Organization, that helps to drive up levels of availability.

• Reduces frequency, duration and impact of IT service failures over time

• IT Services can be designed with the appropriate level of Service Availability.

• Provides true end-to-end availability reporting to ensure that the

SLM function can accurately report service availability within their SLA's.


Value of Availability Management

(cont’d)

• There is a single contact and responsible person for the

availability of products and services.

• New products and services fulfill the requirements and

availability standard agreed with the customer.

• The availability standards are monitored continuously and

improved where appropriate.

• Appropriate corrective action is undertaken when a service is

unavailable.

• The emphasis is shifted from remedying faults to improving

service.


Challenges

• Avoiding availability measurements that mean nothing to the

business or the customer.

• Overcoming restrictions on not being able to measure availability

at the point of service delivery.

• Identifying and securing skilled resource for the role.

• Justifying costs to management, for example the cost of some

countermeasures such as hardware which may be seen as

redundant kit and unnecessary.

• Lack of senior management buy-in


Challenges (cont’d)

• Undue reliance on other Service Management functions being in

place, for example Service Desk, Configuration Management and

its associated CMDB.

• Lack of suitable software - although tools are available,

information is gathered from a number of sources, with a lot of

information being gathered manually.

• Dependency on suppliers, in particular for maintainability and

reliability.

• Difficulty in determining and understanding the business and

customer availability requirements


IT Service Continuity Management


IT Service Continuity Management

(ITSCM)

• The goal of ITSCM is to:

– Manage an organization's ability to continue to provide a known, agreed

and pre-determined level of IT Service

– Support business requirements, following some kind of interruption to the

business

– Recover IT Service and Technology within required and agreed time scales

to support the overall Business Continuity process.


Objectives of IT Service Continuity

Management

• Reduce the immediate and ongoing impact of a failure or disaster

on the business

• Reduce the vulnerability and risk to the business

• Prevent loss of Customer and User confidence

• Produce IT recovery plans that are integrated with and fully

support Business Continuity Plan

• Restore IT Services to at least the minimum level that supports

the business

• Prevent any negative financial impact

• Ensure that regulatory requirements are complied with

• Use as a competitive advantage and a marketing tool


Definition: Disaster

• An event that affects a service or system such that significant

effort is required to restore the original performance level

• Disaster is more serious than an incident. A disaster is a business

Interruption


Examples of Disaster that may affect

services

• Fire and floods

• Structural failure

• Data loss

• Explosions

• Accidental damages

• Industrial actions

• System failure (Hardware & Software)

• Network link failure

• Theft and sabotage


ITSCM Lifecycle


Business Continuity Management

Lifecycle

• Initiate Business Continuity Management

• Requirements & Strategy Definition

• Implementation

• Operational Management


ITSCM Roles

• IT Service Continuity Manager: responsible for ensuring

that the aims of IT Continuity Management are met

• Management (Crisis Manager) – responsible for crisis

management. Includes senior management/executive

board with the overall authority and control within the

organization


Value of ITSCM

• Management of risk leads to reduction of likelihood of disaster occurrence.

• Management of risk leads to reduction in impact if disaster did occur.

• Meeting regulatory requirements.

• Improved relationships between the IT organization and the Business.

• Greater awareness by the IT organization of the business service priorities and needs.

• Capability to recover and restore IT services in the order that the business really needs to have the best chance of recovering.

• Reduction in insurance premiums (lower risk).

• Increased confidence in IT's ability to actually recover (since it's been tested!)

• The perceived credibility and professionalism of IT is increased


Challenges

• A lack of investment in resources and time to perform the activities.

• Lack of time and available skilled resources to be involved in risk assessment, testing and rehearsing IT service recovery activities. E.g. "We're too busy delivering live service to rehearse for a disaster that may or may not happen!"

• Lack of business involvement in proper planning, risk assessment and testing leads to the IT Service Organization making best estimates about service recovery options.

• IT is more advanced than the business in it's overall approach to Business Continuity - leading to well structured IT recovery but poor business involvement and execution


Information Security Management



• The goal of the ISM process is to align IT security with

business security and ensure that information security

is effectively managed in all service and Service

Management activities


Objectives of Information Security

Management

• Ensure that:

– Information is available and usable when required

(availability)

– Information is observed by or disclosed to only those who

have a right to know (confidentiality)

– Information is complete, accurate and protected against

unauthorized modification (integrity)

– Business transactions, as well as information exchanges, can

be trusted (authenticity and non-repudiation)


Basic Concepts

• Security Framework: 5 step ( Plan, implement, evaluate,

(control), maintain)

• Security Policy

• Information Security Management System (ISMS): Security

Policies, Reports, Controls, Risk and response

• Security Controls:

• Risks Analysis, Reports, Classification

• Manage Security Breaches and incidents


Roles

• Security Manager: responsible for ensuring that IT

security is aligned with agreed business security policy

risks, impacts and requirements



Process


Value to the business

• ISM ensures that an information security policy is maintained and

enforced that fulfils the needs of the Business Security Policy and

the requirements of corporate governance

• ISM raise awareness of the need for security within all IT services

and assets throughout the organization, ensuring that the policy

is appropriate for the needs of the organization


Supplier Management


Supplier Management (SM)

• The goal of Supplier Management process is to:

– Manage suppliers and the services they supply

– Provide seamless quality of IT service to the business,

ensuring value for money is obtained

– Ensure that suppliers perform to the targets contained within

their contracts and agreements, while conforming to all the

terms and conditions


Objectives of Supplier Management

• The main objectives of the Supplier Management process are to:

– Obtain value for money from supplier and contracts

– Ensure that underpinning contracts and agreements with

suppliers are aligned to business needs, support and align

with agreed targets in SLRs and SLAs, in conjunction with SLM

– Manage relationship with suppliers

– Manage supplier performance

– Maintain a supplier policy and a supporting Supplier and

Contract Database (SCD)


Basic Concepts

• Supplier Strategy Policies

• Plans and reports

• Supplier and Contract Database (SCD): records all

contractor and contract details


SM Process


Definition: Supplier and Contract

• A Supplier is a third party responsible for supplying goods o

services that are required to deliver IT services. Examples of

suppliers include hardware and software vendors

• A Contract is a legally binding agreement between two or more

parties



• Ensures delivery to the business end-to-end, seamless, quality IT

services that are aligned to the business expectations

• Ensures that the business obtains value from supporting supplier

services and that they are aligned with business needs.


Summary



Practise Questions

1. Availability Management is responsible for availability of the:

A. Services and components

B. Services and business processes

C. Components and business processes

D. Services, Components and business processes


Practise Questions

2. Contracts are used to define:

A. The provision of IT services and business services by a Service Provider

B. The provision of goods and services by Suppliers

C. Service levels that have been agreed between the Service Provider and

their Customer

D. Metrics and Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in an external agreement


Practise Questions

3. Which of the followings is NOT an example of Self-help

capabilities

A. Requirement to always call the service desk for service requests

B. Web front-end

C. Menu-driven range of self help and service requests

D. A direct interface into the back-end process-handling software


Practise Questions

4. What is the BEST description of an Operational Level Agreement

(OLA)?

A. An agreement between the Service provider and another part of the

same organization

B. An agreement between the Service provider and an external

organization

C. A document that describes to a customer how services will be operated

on a day-to-day basis

D. A document that describes business services to operational staff


Practise Questions

5. In which of the following situations should a Problem record be

created?

A. An event indicates that a redundant network segment has failed but it

has not impacted any users

B. An incident is passed to second-level support

C. A Technical Management team identifies a permanent solution to a

number of recurring incidents

D. Incident Management has found a workaround but needs some

assistance in implementing it



Service Transition


Module Goals


– Explain the high level goals, objectives, basic concepts, scope,

roles, activities and key processes of Service Transition

– Explain the Service V Model


Service Transition (ST)

• The purpose of Service Transition is to:

– Plan and manage the capacity and resources required to

package, build, test and deploy a release into production and

establish the services specified in the customer and

stakeholder requirements

– Provide a consistent and rigorous framework for evaluating

the service capability and risk profile of new or changed

service before release and deployment


Goals of Service Transition

• Deliver services that are required by business into operational

use

• Reduce variations in the predicted versus actual performance of

transitioned services

• Reduce known errors and minimize the risks from transitioning

the new service change(s) into production


Objectives of Service Transition

• Plan and manage the resources to establish successfully a new or changed service into production with predicted cost, quality and time estimates

• Ensure there is minimal unpredicted impact on the production services, operation and support organization

• Increase customer and Service Management staff satisfaction with the Service Transition practices including deployment of the new or changes service, communication, release document, training and knowledge transfer


Key Principles

• Understanding all services, their utility and warranties - to transition a

service effectively it is essential to know its nature and purpose in terms of the

outcomes and/or removed business constraints (utilities) and the assurances

that the utilities will be delivered (warranties)

• Establishing a formal policy and common framework for implementation

of all required changes

• Supporting knowledge transfer, decision support and re-use of processes,

systems and other elements – effective Service Transition is delivered by

involving all relevant parties, ensuring appropriate knowledge is available and

that work done is reusable in future similar circumstances

• Anticipating and managing ‘course corrections’ – being proactive and determining likely course correction requirements


Service V Model


Service V Model (cont’d)

• The Service-V model is traditionally associated with the water-fall cycle, but it can also be used for other lifecycles such as prototyping, RAD approaches. It also applies to processes such as Change Management, Release and Deployment, SACM, Validation and testing

• It is iterative in nature

• Within each cycle of the iterative development, the V-model concepts of establishing acceptance requirements against the requirements and design can apply, with each iterative design being considered for the degree of integrity and competence that would justify release to the customer for trial and assessment


Service V Model (cont’d)

• The left hand side represents the specifications of the service

requirements down to the detail Service Design.

• The right-hand side focuses on the validation activities that are

performed against the specifications defined on the left-hand

side.

• There is a direct involvement of equivalent party on each side

during each stage.

• For example: Customers who sign off the agreed service

requirements will also sign off the service Acceptance Criteria

and test plan


Key Processes

• Transition Planning and Support

• Change Management

• Service Asset and Configuration Management

• Release and Deployment Management

• Service Validation and Testing

• Evaluation

• Knowledge Management


Transition Planning and Support


Transition Planning and Support

• Transition Planning and Support is the process responsible for

planning all service transition processes and coordinating the

resources they need


Goals of Transition Planning and Support

• Plan and coordinate resources to ensure that the requirements of

Service Strategy encoded in Service Design are effectively

realized in Service Operations

• Identify, manage and control the risks of failure and disruption

across transition activities

• Provide support for service transition teams and people

• Plan the change is such a way that ensures the integrity of all

identified customers assets, services and configurations can be

maintained as they evolve during the service transition

• Ensure that service transition risks, issues and deviations are

reported to appropriate stakeholders and decision makers


Objectives of Transition Planning and

Support

• Plan and coordinate the resources to establish successfully a new service or service changes into production within the predicted cost, quality and time estimates

• Ensure that all parties adopt the common framework of standard re-usable process and supporting systems in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the integrated planning and coordination activities

• Provide clear and comprehensive plans that enable the customer and business change projects to align their activities to the service transition plans


Principles/ Policies/ Basic Concepts

• Service Transition Policy

• Release Policy: Release policy should be defined for one or more service and should include:

– Release frequency

– Roles and responsibility at each stage to the release

– The mechanism to automate builds, installation and distribution


Activities

• Service Transition Strategy: Defines the overall approach to organizing service transition and allocating resources

• Prepare for Service Transition: This includes:– Reviewing and accepting inputs from other lifecycle stages

– Reviewing and checking input deliverables. Eg. SDP,

– Identifying, scheduling and raising RFC

– Checking for transition readiness

• Planning and Coordinating Service Transition: Release and deployment activity should be planned in stages. If possible it should employ PM best practices

• Provide Transition process support in the form of :– Advice: Communicate with all stakeholders

– Administration: Manage the transition process

• Progress monitoring and Reporting: Monitor against intention set out in the

plan and measuring to establish that transition is proceeding according to plan


Value to the Business

• Effective Transition Planning and Support can significantly

improve a service provider’s ability to handle high volumes of

change and releases across its customer base



• The number of releases implemented that met the customers

agreed requirement in terms of cost, quality, scope and release

schedule

• Reduced variation of actual versus predicted scope, quality, cost

and time

• Increase customer and user satisfaction with plans and

communication that enable the business to align their activities

with the Service Transition Plans


Change Management


Change Management

• The Change Management is the process for managing the

implementation of changes to the IT infrastructure including

hardware, software, services or related documentation


Goal of Change Management

• The goal of the Change Management process is to ensure that:

– standardized methods are used for the efficient and prompt handling of all

changes,

– all changes are recorded in the Configuration Management System

– overall business risk is optimized

• Respond to the business and IT request for change that will align

the services with the business needs.


Objectives of Change Management

• To ensure that standardized methods, processes and

procedures are used for all Changes

• To facilitate the efficient and prompt handling of all

Changes

• To maintain the proper balance between the need for

Change and the potential detrimental impact of Changes.


Scope

• Change management addresses all service change.


What is a Service Change?

• A Service Change is the addition, modification or removal of an

authorized, planned or supported service or service component

and its associated documentation


7 R’s Of Change Management

1. Who RAISED the change?

2. What is the REASON for the change?

3. What is the RETURN required from the change?

4. What are the RISKS involved in the change?

5. What RESOURCES are required to deliver the change?

6. Who is RESPONSIBLE for the build, test and implementation of the change?

7. What is the RELATIONSHIP between this change and other changes?


Types of Change Request

• A Change is implemented as a reactive solution to an Incident or

a Problem

• A Change may be the result of a new IT software or hardware

requirement

• A response to changing Customer and business requirements

• In response to changes made to a product or service by the OEMs

(or vendors) or contractors


Examples of Changes

• Updating a failed desktop PC

• Installing a new software application

• Assigning a software license to a different user

• Installing additional memory in a server

• Revising a procedure document


Types of Change

• Standard Change – is fully defined and approved, recorded, but

not assessed by Change Management. This change is made

routinely. (pre-approved)

• Normal Change – is not a Standard Change and will follow

normal change management procedure.

• Emergency Change – is given absolute priority, must be carried

out as soon as possible and does not follow normal change

procedure


Key Change Management Roles

• Change ManagerThe Change Manager coordinates the day-to-day responsibilities of the entire change process. He is responsible for filtering, accepting and classifying all Requests For Change (RFC). The change Manager chairs the CAB

• Change Advisory Board (CAB)A change advisory committee is a regular meeting attended by key representatives in the Change Management process. It is a forum for the review and approval or rejection of proposed changes and change plans and is usually documented

• Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB)

ECAB provides assistance to the Change Manager through approval ofEmergency Changes

Note: Not all emergency changes required ECAB

For example - authorization to carry out the work may have already been pre-approved


Terminologies in Change Management

• Request For Change (RFC)

A request for change is completed for each change, with different roles contributing at different stages. It provides a checklist of items to be considered and approved before implementing a change.

• Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC)

This document contains details of approved Changes, simple description of the Changes. For instance installation of anti-virus software. It will also include date and time of change

• Projected Service Availability (PSA):

PSA contains details of IT services and users affected due to the currently planned FSC– It contains the details on the nature and duration of impact on business

– It also indicates the extent of the effect of the currently planned FSC to SLAs


Forward Schedule of Changes and

Projected Service Availability

• FSC and PSA documents must agreed with all relevant process or structure, for instance the Customers, Service Desk, Service Level Management and Availability Management

• These documents (FSC and PSA) must be available to everyone within the organization to prepare them and win their support for the change

• A brief record of the outcome of change advisory committee meetings should be circulated for acceptance and kept for the record.

• The details of changes to be implemented in the long-term and short-term scope must be provided to ensure a proper, well managed and controlled implementation


Remediation Planning

• No change should be approved without having a back-out plan -

what to do if the change is not successful


Change Management Process Flow


Change Management Process Flow

(cont’d)


Change Management Activities

• Create and record the RFC

• Review RFC and change proposal: Filtering /reject

• Access and evaluate the change: the impact, cost ,benefits and

risk of change

• Authorize the change: authorize or reject; communicate to the

initiator of the RFC and others

• Plan updates

• Coordinate change implementation

• Review and Close change record


Change Management Interfaces



• The number of changes implemented which met the customers agreed

requirements within the constraints of (quality/cost/time)

• Reduction in the number of disruptions due to defects and rework caused by

inaccurate specifications, poor or incomplete impact analysis

• Incidents attributed to changes

• Percentage accuracy in change estimates

• Reduction in the number of unauthorized changes

• Reduction in the backlog of change requests

• Reduction in the number and percentage of unplanned changes and

emergency fixes

• Change success rate

• Reduction in the number of failed changes



• Reduces adverse impact of changes on the quality of IT services.

• Protects IT Service from the negative impacts of poorly

designed/built or tested changes.

• Ensures that the change is scheduled correctly to avoid conflicts

with important business or IT events.

• Ensures proper alignment of IT services to the actual business

need.

• Improves productivity of business and IT people since there are

less Incidents

• Ensures a better assessment of the cost of proposed changes.


Value to the business (cont’d)

• Improves user productivity through more stable and better IT services

• Improves IT personnel productivity, as they are not distracted from their planned work by urgent changes or back-out procedures

• Fewer changes are reversed, and any back-outs that are implemented proceed more smoothly

• Improves overall ability to handle multiple changes in the correct sequence

• Ability to temporarily 'freeze' (or lock-out) all Changes to provide total protection for IT Service


Challenges

• Lack of awareness and understanding of the Change Process by the IT Organization.

• Cultural difficulties in accepting a single, centralized change system

• Lack of support from the CAB and/or CAB/EC when handling large volumes of changes.

• Lack of control over the volume of emergency Changes and the level of influence Change Management have over this volume in the future.

• Lack of an accurate Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to underpin the Change Process.

• There may be attempts to implement changes without going through the agreed procedures.


Challenges (cont’d)

• Paper-based systems are too difficult to use and will present too many problems.


• Difficulties ensuring contractors staff comply with change procedures

• Lack of knowledge and ownership of key individuals when assessing any Change.

• Appointing a highly experienced Change Manager with a broad experience and sufficient business and technical knowledge (this aspect is often underestimated).


Service Assets and Configuration

Management


Service Assets and Configuration

Management

• The process responsible for both Configuration Management and

Asset Management


Goal of SACM

• The goal of SACM is to identify, control and account for service

assets and configuration items (CI), protecting and ensuring their

integrity across the service lifecycle.


Objectives of SACM

• Account for the existence and status of IT assets and Configurations.

• Control and maintain the status of IT assets

• Support all the other IT Service Management Processes. (especially Incident, Problem, Change and Release Management)

• Support the adherence to legal, licensing and contractual obligations

– What's where?

– What's it doing?

– Is it 'legal‘?


Configuration Management System

(CMS)

• A Configuration Management System (CMS) is required to

manage large and complex IT services and infrastructures

• CMS holds all information for a CI within the designated scope


Configuration Management System

(CMS)


Service Knowledge Management System

(SKMS) Relationship


Definitions: Configuration and

Configuration Model

• Configuration: is anything we need to record and control

• Configuration can be broken down into a number of

Configuration items (CI’s)

• Configuration Model: A way to record services and infrastructure

and the relationships between configuration items (CI’s)


Example: Configuration model


Definition: Configuration Item (CI)

• Configuration Item (CI) is any individual Infrastructure

component or an item (for example an Incident Record) related

to the Infrastructure within a Configuration

• A CI can vary considerably in type, size and complexity; ranging

from a whole system down to a specific component on a circuit

board

• A CI can also be broken down into any number of Component CI's

• The hierarchy, different levels and details at each level at which

CI's are defined and grouped varies between IT Service

Organizations


CI Relationship

• The relationship between CIs are useful for diagnosing errors and predicting the availability of services. There are two types of relationship

• Physical relationship:- Forms part of: this is the parent/child relationship of the CI, e.g. a floppy disk drive forms part of a PC, and a software module forms part of a program.

- Is connected to: e.g. a PC connected to a LAN segment.

- Is needed for: e.g. hardware needed to run an application.

• Logical relationship:- Is a copy of: copy of a standard model, baseline or program.

- Relates to: a procedure, manuals and documentation, a SLA, or customer area.

- Is used by: e.g. a CI needed for providing a service, or a software module which is called by a number of programs.


Types of Configuration Item (CI)

• Service Lifecycle CIs: such as business case, service management plans,

Service Design Package, change, test and release plans

• Service CIs: such as:

– Service capability assets: management, organization, processes,

knowledge, people

– Service resource assets: financial capital, systems, application,

information, data, infrastructure and facilities

– Service model

– Service package

– Release package

– Service acceptance criteria


Types of Configuration Item (CI) (cont’d)

• Organizational CIs: documentation that define for e.g. the organizational

business strategy or policies

• Internal CIs: such as software and hardware required to maintain the

infrastructure

• External CIs: such as external customer requirements and agreements,

releases from suppliers and subcontractors and external services

• Interface CIs: that are required to deliver the end-to-end service across a

service provider interface


Example: Configuration Item (CI)


Definition: Configuration Baseline

• The Baseline is a product or system established at a specific point

in time, that captures both a structure and details of that product

or system

• This enables that product or system to be rebuilt to the state

described by the structure and details at a later date.

• The Baseline is also used as the benchmark against which all

Changes are measured


Definition: Definitive Media Library

(DML)

• DML is the secure library in which the definitive authorized

version of all media CIs are stored and protected. It stores the

master copies of versions that have passed quality assurance

checks.

• The DML stores all authorized versions of all Software CIs. It will

comprise of a logical filestore for developed software and a

secure physical store holding purchased software

• Any access to DML is strictly controlled by SACM


Other Definitions

• A secure library is a collection of software, electronic or

document CIs of known type and status. Access to items in a

secure library is restricted

• A secure store is a location that warehouses IT assets. e,g. secure

stores used for desktop deployments

• Definition Spares: These are spare components and assemblies

that are maintained for systems in the infrastructure. These can

be used for additional systems or in the recovery of failed system

• A snapshot of a current state of a configuration item or and

environment, e.g. from a discovery tools.


Configuration Management Database

(CMDB)

• The Configuration Management Database (CMDB) is a database

that contains all relevant details of each Configuration Item (CI)

and details of the important relationships between CIs.

• The data is made up of configuration items records and attributes

of the records

• CMDB is part of CMS


DML and CMDB Relationship


Configuration Management Process

Activity Model


SACM and Change Mgmt Roles and

Responsibilities

• Service Asset Manager:

– Implements the organization’s Asset Management policy and standards

– Evaluates existing Asset Management systems and the design, implementation and management of new/improved systems for efficiency and effectiveness

– Agrees scope of the Asset Management process, functions, the items that are to be controlled, and the information that is to be recorded develops Asset Management standards, plans and procedures

– Plans population of the asset DB; manages the asset DB, central libraries and tool’s ensures regular housekeeping of the asset DB

– Assists auditors to audit the for compliance



Responsibilities (cont’d)

• Configuration Manager:

– Implements the organization’s Configuration Management policy

– Evaluates existing CMS and the design, implementation and management of new/improved systems for efficiency and effectiveness

– Assist auditors to audit the activities of the Configuration Management team for compliance

• Configuration Analyst:– Proposes the scope of the Asset and Configuration Management process,

functions, the items that are to be controlled, and the information that is to be recorded; develops Asset and Configuration Management standards, plans and procedures

– Performs configuration audits to check that the physical IT inventory is consistent with the asset and CMS and initiates necessary corrective action

– Creates and populates project libraries and CM system; checks items and group of items into the CM tools

– Accepts baseline products from third parties and distributes products

– Builds system baselines for promotion and release

– Maintains project status information and status accounting and reports




• Configuration Administrator / Librarian: is the custodian and

guardian of all master copies of software assets as

documentation CIs registered with Asset and Configuration

Management

• CMS/Tools Administrator: Evaluates proprietary Asset and

Configuration Management tools and recommends those that

best meet organizations budget, resource, timescale and

technical requirements

• Configuration Control Board: ensures that the overreaching

intention and policies of CM are employed throughout the

Service Management lifecycle




• Change Authority: formal authority is obtained for each change from a change authority that may be a role, person or group of people

• Change Advisory Board

• Performance and Risk Evaluation Manager:

– Uses SDP and release package to develop the evaluation plan to input to service testing

– Establishes risk and issues associated with all aspects of the Service Transition

– Provides evaluation reports



• Assets identified as to cause of service failure

• Improved speed of incident management to identify faulty CI and

restore service

• Ration of used licenses against paid for licenses – (it should be

close to 100%)

• Percentage reduction in business impact outages and incidents

caused by poor Asset Configuration Management

• Improved audit compliance



• Provides accurate and timely information on CI's to support other

IT Service Management Processes.

• Facilitates the adherence to legal and contractual requirements

such as Software Licenses.

• Facilitates the adherence to cost controls and budgets, especially

useful for knowing how many of each item is maintained within,

say a maintenance contract. - Improves the visibility of any CI's

current status.



• Improves the overall level of consistency and standardization across a multiple CI type.

• Supports Security Management by highlighting any "unknown" CI's for example an "unknown" Service is connected to the core network. What is it? Who owns it? How is it configured?

• Facilitates impact analysis for Incident and Problem Management.

• Provides confidence for IT Service Senior Management that everything is truly "known", is "under control" and can be referenced in a structured way.


Challenges

• CI’s defined at too high or too low a level

• Implementation without sufficient project planning

• Implementation in isolation without necessary support from

Change and Release processes


• Support tools lack the required flexibility

• Process is circumvented and perceived as bureaucratic

• Scope too wide or too low

• Schedules and expectations that are over-ambitious

• Disjointed from project lifecycle


Release and Deployment Management



• Release and Deployment management aims to build, test and

deliver the capability to provide the services by Service Design

and that will accomplish the stakeholders’ requirements and

deliver intended objectives


Goal of Release and Deployment

Management

• The goal of Release and Deployment Management is to deploy

release into production and establish effective use of the service

in order to deliver value to the customer and be able to hand

over to service operations


Objectives of Release and Deployment

Management

• Ensures that a release package can be built, installed and

deployed efficiently to a deployment group or target

environment successfully and on schedule

• Ensures minimal unpredicted impact on the production services,

operations and support organization

• Ensures that the new or changed services and its enabling

systems, technology and organization are capable of delivering

the agreed service requirements


Objectives of Release and Deployment

Management (cont’d)

• Planning, coordinating and implementing (or arranging the implementation) of software and hardware

• Designing and implementing efficient procedures for the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems

• Ensuring that the hardware and software related to changes are traceable and secure, and that only correct, authorized, and tested versions are installed

• Communicating with users and considering their expectations during the planning and rollout of new releases



Concepts

• Release Unit and Identification:

– Release Unit : A portion of the IT Infrastructure that can normally be released

together.

– Release identification: a naming convention used to uniquely identify a release.

E.g. Payroll system v1.1.1

• Roll-out: To deliver, install and commission new or changed CI's across the

Organization

• Major releases: major rollout of new hardware and software, generally with significantly increased functionality.

• Minor software releases and hardware upgrades: these generally include a number of minor improvements and fixes of known errors..

• Emergency fixes: normally implemented as a quick fix for a problem or known error


Release Design Options and

Consideration

• Big Bang Vs Phased:

– Big Bang Option: new or changed service is deployed to all users in one

operation

– Phased approach: initial release to some users, then phased or roll-out to

other segments of the user community

• Push or Pull:

– Push approach: used where the service component is deployed from the centre and pushed out to the target locations. Big band phased approach are considered push, since the new or changed service is delivered to users not by their choice

– Pull approach: is used for software releases where the software is made available in a central location but users are free to pull the software down to their location – e.g. anti-virus update



Consideration

• Automation vs Manual

• Designing Release and Release Packages:

– Release architecture must be designed, with its dependencies fully defined

– Release Package: A release package may be a single release unit or multiple set of release unit

– A Release Package may consist a set of documentations and procedures



Consideration


Example of Release Package


Release and Deployment Models

• Release and deployment models includes the approach, mechanism, processes, procedures and resources required to build and deploy the release on item and within budget

• Release and deployment models define:– Controlled environments required to build and test release for each

release level

– The roles and responsibilities

– Template release promotion schedules

– Supporting system, tools and procedures

– The handover activities and responsibilities for executing handover


Release Policy

• Release Policy: An important document that states the roles and

responsibilities for Release Management

• Typically, Policies contain information of the scope, standards and

working practices of the Release Management function

• This is used to clarify to the other IT Service teams exactly how a

Release is managed - from planning through to implementation



Activities

• Efficient Release Management process includes the following activities:

– Release policy and planning

– Release building and configuration

– Testing and release acceptance

– Rollout planning

– Communication, preparation and training

– Release distribution and installation



• Service Test Manager:– Defines the test strategy

– Designs and plans testing conditions, test scripts and test data

– Allocates and oversees test resources, ensuring test policies are adhered

to

– Provides management reporting on outcomes, success rates, issues and

risks



• Release and Deployment Manager: is responsible for the planning, design,

build, configuration and testing of all software and hardware to create the

release package for the delivery of, or changes to the designated service.

• Other responsibilities include:

– Manages all aspects of the end-to-end release process

– Updates the SKMS and CMS

– Ensures coordination of build and test environment team and release teams

– Ensures teams follow the organization's established policies and procedures



• Release Build and Packaging Manager:

– Establishes the final release configuration

– Builds the final release delivery

– Rests the final delivery prior to independent testing

– Establishes reports about outstanding known errors and workarounds

– Provides input to the final implementation sign-off process

Release Build and Packaging Manager interfaces with other functions such as:

– Security Management

– Test Management

– Change as SACM

– Capacity Management

– Availability Management

– Incident Management

– Quality Management



• Deployment Staff:

– Deals with the final physical delivery of the service implementation

– Coordinates release documentation and communication, including training and customer, Service Management and technical release notes

– Plans the deployment in conjunction with change and knowledge Management and SACM

– Provides technical and application guidance and support through out the release

– Provides feedback on the effectiveness of the release

– Records metrics for deployment to ensure within agreed SLAs



• Variance from service performance required by customers (minimal and reducing)

• Number of incidence against the service (low and reducing)

• Increased customer and user satisfaction with service delivered

• Decreased customer dissatisfaction – service issue resulting from poorly tested or untested services



• Planning for future releases is more efficient as a result of having a release policy.

• Changes to software are handled more efficiently by bundling them together.

• End-users suffer less frequent disruption caused by changes.

• Having a repeatable process for installations is quicker and less error prone than relying on memory.

• Installing equipment in the same way each time makes support easier because you have to resolve incidents and problems only once.

• Emphasis on training before rollout means that users can make the most of new functionality as soon as it is available



• Software version control ensures that no one reintroduces problems through installing the wrong version

• New technical staff can follow documented instructions created by predecessors so continuity of skills is preserved

• Technical staff unfamiliar with particular software or hardware have documented guidance which can help their personal development

• Resolution of incidents is quicker through fast reinstallation of builds

• Quicker resolution of problems is possible through comparison with standard build instructions

• Less time spent on incidents and problems means more time available for proactive support


Challenges

• Avoidance or circumvention to policy, procedures and working practices

• Unclear ownership of activities across Development, Test and Live environments between IT Service Staff and Development / Operational Staff

• Senior Management pressure to roll out a Release before it has been fully tested, or it is considered fully ready

• Lack of clear understanding about what exactly is contained within a Release leading to misconceptions on implementation

• Lack of support from environment staff to enable Releases to progress

according to planned time scales

• Without an adequate test environment it may be difficult to assess new

versions or new software properly before the release.

• If software is to be released at several sites, then it should be ensured that

this is synchronized, to prevent version differences between sites


Service Validation and Testing


Service Validation and Testing

• The process responsible for Validation and testing of new or

changed IT or Service

• Validation ensures that business requirements are met even

though these may have changed since design


Goal of Service Validation and Testing

• Goal of Service Validation and Testing is to assure that the

service will provide value for the customer and their business


Objectives of Service Validation and

Testing

• Provides confidence that a release will create a new service or changes to a service offering that deliver the expected outcomes and value for the customer with the projected costs, capacity constraints.

• Validates that a service is “fit for purpose” – it will deliver the required performance with the desired constraint removed

• Assures that service is “fit for use” – it meets certain specifications under the specified terms and conditions of use

• Confirms that the customer and stakeholder requirements for the new or changed service are correctly defined and remedy any errors or variances early in the service lifecycle as this is considerable cheaper than fixing errors in production



• Service quality assurance: This is delivered through verificationand validation which in turn are delivered through testing

• Service quality policy

• Risk policy: As it relates to testing

• Service transition policy

• Change management policy

• Test Strategy

• Test models

• Type of test : E.g. Load and Stress test


Validation and Testing Process



• The key value to the business and customers from Service Testing

and Validation is in terms of the established degree of confidence

that a new or changes service will deliver the value and

outcomes required of it and understanding of the risks


Challenges

• Inability to maintain test environment and test data that matches

the live environment

• Insufficient staff, skills and testing tools

• Projects overrunning and allocated test timeframes being

squeezed to restore go-live dates but at the cost of quality


Evaluation


Evaluation

• The process responsible for assessing a new or changed IT

Service to ensure that risks have been managed and to help

determine whether to proceed with the change

• Evaluation is also used to mean comparing with intended

outcome, or comparing one alternative to another


Goal of Evaluation

• The goal of Evaluation is to set stakeholders’ expectations

correctly and provide effective and accurate information to

Change Management to ensure changes do not adversely affect

service capacity and introduced risk are not transitioned

unchecked


Objectives of Evaluation

• Evaluates the intended effects of a service change and as much of

the unintended effects as is reasonably practical given the

capacity, resources and organizational constraints

• Provides good quality outputs from the evaluation process so

that change management can expedite decision on whether a

service change is to be approved or not



• Policies: Service Design or service changes will be evaluated

before being transitioned

• Principles: the intended effects of a service change and as much

of the unintended effects of a change will be evaluated

• Basic Concepts: Plan-do-check-act

• Risk Management – Risk profile


Key Metrics / KPI’s

• Number of incidence against the service (low and reducing)

• Variance from service performance required by customers

(minimal and reducing)

• Number of failed designs that have been transitioned - zero


Challenges

• Developing standard performance measures and measurements

methods across projects and suppliers

• Projects and suppliers estimating delivery dated inaccurately and

causing delays in scheduling evaluation activities

• Understanding and being able to assess, the balance between

managing risk and taking risk as it affects the overall strategy of

the organization and service delivery


Knowledge Management



• Knowledge Management is a process that deals with gathering, analyzing, storing and sharing knowledge and information

• Knowledge Management includes the oversight of the management of knowledge, the information and data from which that knowledge derives


Goal of Knowledge Management

• The goal of knowledge Management is to enable organizations to

improve the quality of management decision making by ensuring

that reliable and secured information and data is available

throughout the service lifecycle


Objectives of Knowledge Management

• Enables the Service Provider to be more efficient and improve quality of service, increase satisfaction and reduce the cost of service

• Ensures staff have a clear and common understanding of the value that their services provide to customers and the ways in which benefits are realized from the use of those services

• Ensures that, at a given time and location, the Service Provider staff have adequate information on:

– Who is currently using their services

– The current states of consumption

– Service delivery constraints

– Difficulties faced by the customer in fully realizing the benefits expected from the service


Policies, Principles and Basic Concepts

DIKW – a way of understanding the relationships btw data, information knowledge, and wisdom.

DIKW shows how each builds on each other


Data-to-information-knowledge-wisdom

(DIKW)

• Data: a set of discrete facts about events. Most organizations capture data in a database such as CMDB. Knowledge management activity with data are:

– Capture accurate data

– Analyze, synthesize, and transform data into information

– Identify relevant data

• Information: comes from providing context to data. Knowledge Management activity manages information content in a way to make it easy to capture, use, query, re-use, find etc.

• Knowledge: is composed of tacit experiences, ideas, insights, values and judgments of individuals. Knowledge is dynamic and context based. Knowledge management puts it into ease of use which can aid in making decisions

• Wisdom: Proper application of knowledge



(SKMS)

• A set of tools and databases that are used to manage knowledge and information

• The SKMS includes Configuration Management Systems as well as other tools and databases

• The SKMS stores, manages, updates and presents all information that an IT Service Provider needs to manage the full lifecycle of a service



(SKMS) Relationship



(SKMS)

• Service Knowledge Management System is a broader concept that covers a wider base of knowledge such as:

– The experience of staff

– Records of peripheral matters ( e.g. weather, user numbers and behaviors, organization performance figures

– Supplier’s and partners requirements, abilities and expectations

– Typical and anticipated user skill level

– KEDB

– CMS

– CMDB



• Knowledge Management is significant within Service transition since relevant and appropriate knowledge is one of the key service elements being transitioned

• Effective knowledge management is a powerful asset to all roles in the service lifecycle

• User, service desk support staff and suppliers understanding of the new or changed service, including knowledge of errors signed off before deployment , to facilitate their roles within that service

• Assisting in decision on whether to accept or proceed with items and services by delivering all available relevant information and (omitting unnecessary information ) to key decision makers


Summary



Practise Question

1. Which of the following is NOT a purpose of Service Transition?

A. To ensure that a service can be managed, operated and supported

B. To provide certification in project management

C. To provide quality knowledge of Change, Release and Deployment

Management

D. To plan and manage the capacity and resource requirements to manage

a release


Practise Question

2. Which of the following is the CORRECT definition of a Release

Unit?

A. A measurement of Cost

B. A function defined within Service Transition

C. The team of people responsible for implementing a release

D. The portion of a service or IT infrastructure that is normally released

together


Practise Question

3. Service Transition contains detailed description of which

processes?

A. Change Management, Release and Deployment Management,


B. Change Management, Incident Management, Supplier Management

C. Service Level Management, Change Management, Release and

Deployment Management

D. Availability Management, Problem Management, Event Management


Practise Question

4. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. The Configuration Management System is part of the known error

database

B. The Service Knowledge Management System is part of the Configuration

Management System

C. The Configuration Management System is part of the Service Knowledge

Management System

D. The Configuration Management System is part of the Configuration

Management database


Practise Question

4. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. The Configuration Management System is part of the known error

database

B. The Service Knowledge Management System is part of the Configuration

Management System

C. The Configuration Management System is part of the Service

Knowledge Management System

D. The Configuration Management System is part of the Configuration

Management database


Practise Question

5. Which of the following options is a hierarchy that is used in

Knowledge Management?

A. Wisdom – Information – Data – Knowledge

B. Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom

C. Knowledge – Wisdom – Information – Data

D. Information – Data – Knowledge – Wisdom



Service Operation


Module Goals


– Explain briefly the goal of Service Operation

– Explain the high level objectives, basic concepts, scope, roles, activities and key process of service operation

– Describe the key metrics, challenges, CFI’s and risks of some Service Operation process


Goal of Service Operation

• The main goal of Service Operation is to coordinate and carry out

the activities and processes required to deliver and manage

services at agreed levels to business users and customers


Balancing Goals of Service Operation

Service Operation must balance between the following conflicting goals:

• Internal IT view versus external business view

– Internal View: The way IT organization sees it

– External View: The way users / customer sees it

• The organization that focuses more on the business aspect without attention on how services will be delivered end up making promises they cannot keep

• Likewise, more focus on internal systems without looking at what service they support it will end up with expensive systems that little value


Balancing Goals of Service Operation

• Stability versus Responsiveness: No matter how good the

functionality and design of an IT service is, it will be worth

nothing if service components are not available or if they don’t

perform consistently

• Quality of Service vs. Cost of Service: must maintain quality

while keeping cost and resource utilization down

• Reactive vs. Proactive Activities


Scope

The scope of Service Operation includes:

• The Services themselves. Any activity that forms part of a service is included in Service Operation, whether it is performed by the Service Provider, an external supplier or the user or customer of that service

• Service Management Processes. The ongoing management and execution of many Service Management processes are performed in Service Operation

• Technology. All services require some form of technology to deliver them

• People: Regardless of what services, processes and technology are , they are all about people.


Role Of Communication in Service

Operation

• Good communication is needed with other IT teams and

departments, with users and internal customers, and between

the Service Operation teams and departments themselves

• Issues can often be prevented or mitigated with appropriate

communication


Types of Communication in Service

Operation

• Routine operational communication

• Communication between shifts

• Performance reporting

• Communication in projects

• Communication related to changes

• Communication related to exceptions

• Communication related to emergencies

• Training on new or customized processes and service designs

• Communication of strategy and design to Service Operation teams


Key Functions in Service Operation

• Service Desk Function

• Technical Management Function

• Application Management Function

• IT Operation Management Function


Service Desk Function

• A Service Desk is a functional unit made up of a dedicated

number of staff responsible for dealing with a variety of service

events, often made via telephone calls, web interface, or

automatically reported infrastructure events


Goal of Service Desk Function

• To act as the central point of contact between the Users,

Customers, IT Services department and the external support

organizations

• To handle Incidents, requests and interface with other processes

with the principal aim of ensuring restoration of normal

operational service with minimal business impact on the

customer while ensuring that the agreed service levels are not

breached


Service Desk Objectives

• The primary aim of the Service Desk is to restore the ‘normal service’ to the users as quickly as possible

• To provide a single point of contact for the Users

• To deliver the high quality support critical for achieving business goals

• To help identify and lower the cost of ownership for IT Services as a whole

• To support changes across distributed business, technology and process boundaries

• To aid User retention and satisfaction

• To assist identification of business opportunities


Service Desk Responsibilities

• Receive and record all calls from users; deal directly with simple requests and complaints.

• Provide initial assessment of all Incidents; make first attempt at Incident resolution and/or refer to 2nd line support, based on agreed service level

• Keep record of all requests and complaints

• Monitor and escalate all Incidents according to agreed service levels.

• Coordinate second-line and third party support activities

• Keep Users informed on status and progress

• Produce regular management reports


Keep Users / Customers Informed

Regularly

Service Desk should ensure that :

• Customers/Users are regularly informed on status and progress made on their incidents

• Customers/Users are promptly informed on any planned downtime to initiate necessary change control management procedures

• Customers/Users are kept informed on any changes in their IT environment and what responsibilities are expected of them

• Customers/Users are informed of any other necessary information


Types of Central Point of Contacts

Implementation

• Call Centre: this type of support unit records calls only and does not provide a

solution. The calls are routed to specialist departments that deal with them. In

some cases, the recording and routing of calls can be automated using voice

response systems.

• Help Desk: for this type of support unit, calls are recorded, described in

general terms, and immediately routed. The Help Desk provides some levels of

support. The advantage of this approach is that incident recording is

standardized. The disadvantage is that the response time is longer and first-

call resolution rates are much lower than with a skilled Service Desk

• Service Desk: The service desk is the single point of contact between IT and

users, where they can submit enquiries, log incidents, obtain help and request

change. The principal responsibility of the service desk is to enable

communication with users and to enable actions to resolve events affecting

the use of computer systems.


Setting up a Service Desk

The following actions need to be carried out when setting up a Service Desk:

• Ensure the business need is identified and understood

• Obtain management support, budget and resources

• Ensure the solutions aligns with the Service Strategy and Vision

• Identify, achieve and communicate quick wins

• Define clear objectives and deliverables

• Start simply and phase the implementation

• Involve and educate Users

• Advertise and sell the benefits to all parties

• Train IT staff to be Service staff


Service Desk Organizational Structures

Service Desk structure that should be considered when establishing one include:

• Local Service Desk

• Central Service Desk

• Virtual Service Desk

• Other Organizational Structure / Considerations:

– Follow the Sun Model: is 24/7 distributed model spanning many geographic regions

– Specialized groups within SD: – Handles specific type of incidents. Calls are automatically routed to these groups

– Environment: Physical Location of Service Desk must be considered


Local Service Desk

A "Local" Service Desk will support local business needs. It should be fit for purpose and

highly in tune with what the business users need. Operating standards and processes are

required to maintain consistent quality of service.


Centralized Service Desk

A "Central" Service Desk supports multiple locations and sometimes multiple geographies. The

business is distributed. Centralization provides a consistent service experience. Standards are

maintained and staffing levels and expertise can be controlled easier. This usually leads to lower

overall operating costs.


Virtual Service Desk

A "Virtual" Service Desk operation is location independent. Sometimes Service Desk Analysts work

from home or across a number of locations. This is more common in large multi-national organizations

where multi-language assistance is required. Users feel like they are communicating locally. Standard

operating practices, processes and user experience must be upheld.


Service Desk Roles

• Service Desk Manager: Manages the overall desk activities, including the supervisors

• Service Desk Supervisor

• Service Desk Analysts: provide first-level support through taking calls and handling the resulting incidents or Service Requests using the Incident Reporting and Request Fulfillment processes

• Super User: Designated user /users within SD that have in-depth knowledge and can interface with other groups. They may help with training other users


Understanding the Customer and User

• Know and understand the user community

• Understand the business drivers

• Understand the Services used

• Appreciate the impact of failure and downtime

• Manage location, language and cultural challenges

• Understand the management structure of the IT Service Organization.

• Have an intelligent contact point that is helpful and works on behalf of

the user


Service Desk Call Escalation

Types of issues that warrant escalation:

• Telephone pick-up times

• Telephone talk times

• Managing urgent customer requests

• Managing service breaches

• Managing customer-initiated breaches

• Recording service breach details


Service Desk Staffing

• Staffing Level: small, large, full, part-time

• Staffing Skills: less technical , more technical

• Training: Adequate training required

• Staff Retention: Significant loss of staff can affect the quality of service


The Service Desk Staff

• Customer focused

• Trained in interpersonal skills

• Articulate and methodical

• Multilingual (where necessary)

• Able to understand the business goals

• Genuinely wanting to deliver a first-class service

• Able to understand and accept that:

– The Customer’s problem affects the business– Without the Customer, there is no support department– The Customer is an expert in their own field


Service Desk Technologies

• Integrating Service Management tools with System Management tools

• Communication technology such as Computer Telephony Integration

(CTI) or Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)

• Interactive Voice Response systems (IVR)

• E-mail

• Fax servers (fax via e-mail or the Internet)

• Forwarding calls to pagers, mobile phones, laptop and palmtop

computers

• Knowledge, search and diagnostic tools (knowledge base, case based

reasoning)

• Automated system management and network tools

• Intranet and Internet self-service platforms


Service Desk Metrics

• Percentage of incidents which could be closed without resorting to other levels such as second or third-line support or suppliers

• The number of calls handled per workstation/user and the total for the Service Desk

• Average incident resolution time, by impact, or time to realize a service request. Both the cycle time and the time actually spent on the case should be specified

• PABX reports on the average answer time, number of calls prematurely terminated by users, average call duration, and relative metrics per Service Desk agent


SLA Targets

• The SLA targets for overall incident-handling and resolution times

need to be agreed with the customers and between all teams

and departments – and OLA/UC targets need to be coordinated

and agreed with individual support groups so that they underpin

and support the SLA targets.


Customers’ Feedbacks/ Surveys

To implement a successful customers’ survey, the following should be considered carefully:

• Scope of the survey

• Target Audience

• Clearly defined questions

• Make the survey easy to complete

• Make sure the customers understand the benefits of the survey

• Conduct survey regularly and follow through on the results

• Translate survey results into actions


Outsourcing Service Desk

• The decision to outsource is a strategic issue for Senior Managers. If done then consider:

– Common tools and processes: the outsourced desk should use the same tools and processes

– Good communications: The lines of communication between the outsourced Service Desk and the other support groups need to work very effectively. Physical location can help

– Ownership of Data: Clear ownership of data collected must be established – between the outsourcing organization and the service provider


Service Desk Value

• Improved User service, perception and satisfaction

• Increased User accessibility via the single point of contact

• Improved quality and faster response to Users requests

• Improved teamwork and communication

• Better managed infrastructure and control

• More effective and efficient use of support resources

• Increased level of business productivity

• Better management of information for decision support


Service Desk Challenges

• User service not considered a priority


• Resistance to changed working practices

• Incorrect or insufficient resources and skill levels

• Insufficient or inadequate marketing of Service Desk

• Over reliance on technology

• Insufficient funding and budget allocation


Technical Management Function


Technical Management Function

• Technical Management refers to the groups, departments or teams

that provide technical expertise and overall management of the IT

Infrastructure

• Technical Management helps to plan, implement and maintain a stable

technical infrastructure and ensure that required resources and

expertise are in place to design, build, transition, operate and improve

the IT services and supporting technology


Technical Management Role

Technical Management plays a dual role:

• It is the custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related to managing the IT Infrastructure. In this role, Technical Management ensures that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed and refined.

• It provides the actual resources to support the ITSM Lifecycle. In this role Technical Management ensures that resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate and improve the technology required to deliver and support IT services


Technical Management Objectives

• The objectives of Technical Management are to help plan,

implement and maintain a stable technical infrastructure to

support the organization’s business processes through:

– Well designed and highly resilient, cost-effective technical topology

– The use of adequate technical skills to maintain the technical

infrastructure in optimum condition

– Swift use of technical skills to speedily diagnose and resolve any technical

failures that do occur.


Technical Management Activities

Generic activities include:

• Identifying the knowledge and expertise required to manage and operate the IT Infrastructure and to deliver IT services

• Initiating training programmes to develop and refine the skills in the appropriate technical resources and maintaining training records for all technical resources.

• Change Management relies on the technical knowledge and expertise to evaluate changes, and many changes will be built by Technical Management

• Technical Management will provide information for, and operationally maintain, the Configuration Management system and its data

• Technical Management is involved in the Continual Service Improvement processes


Technical Management Activities –

(cont'd)

• Definition of standards used in the design of new architectures and participation in the definition of technology architectures during the Service Strategy and Design phases

• Involvement in the design and building of new services

• Availability and Capacity Management are dependent on Technical Management for engineering IT services to meet the levels of service required by the business

• Technical Management departments or groups are integral to the performance of Incident Management. They receive incidents through Functional escalation and provide second- and higher-level support

• Technical Management as a function provides the resources that execute the Problem Management process.


Technical Management Organizational

Structure

• Technical Management is usually organized based on the infrastructure that each team supports such as:

– Server Team: Wintel / UNIX

– Network Team

– Application Support

– Desktop Team

– Storage Team

– Database Team

– Directory Services Team


IT Operation Management Function


IT Operation Management Function

• IT Operation Management can be defined as the function

responsible for the ongoing management and maintenance of an

organization’s IT infrastructure to ensure delivery of the agreed

level of IT services to the business

• IT Operation Management is responsible for the management

and maintenance of the IT infrastructure required to deliver the

agreed level of IT services to the business


IT Operation Management has 2

functions

• Operation Control: Oversees the execution and monitoring of the operational activities and events in the IT Infrastructure. They also perform these specific roles:– Console Management

– Job Scheduling, or the management of routine batch jobs or scripts

– Backup and Restore

– Print and Output management

– Performance of maintenance activities on behalf of Technical or Application Management teams or departments

• Facility Management: refers to the management of the physical IT environment, typically a Data Centre or computer rooms and recovery sites together with all the power and cooling equipment. Facilities Management also includes the coordination of large-scale consolidation projects, e.g. Data Centre consolidation or server consolidation projects


IT Operation Management Objectives

The objectives of IT Operation Management include:

• Maintenance of the status quo to achieve stability of the organization’s

day-to-day processes and activities

• Regular scrutiny and improvements to achieve improved service at

reduced costs, while maintaining stability

• Swift application of operational skills to diagnose and resolve any IT

operations failures that occur.


IT Operation Management Roles

IT Operation Management plays a dual role:

• IT Operation Management is responsible for executing the activities and performance standards defined during Service Design and tested during Service Transition. In this sense IT Operation’s role is primarily to maintain the status quo. The stability of the IT Infrastructure and consistency of IT services is a primary concern of IT operations

• IT Operation is part of the process of adding value to the different lines of business and to support the value network - the ability of the business to meet its objectives and to remain competitive depends on the output and reliability of the day-to-day operation of IT


IT Operation Management Roles

• IT Operation Manager: Provide overall leadership, control and

decision-making and take responsibility for the IT Operation

Management teams and department

• Shift Leaders:

• IT Operation Analysts: are senior IT Operation staff who are able to

determine the most effective and efficient way to conduct a series of

operations, usually in high-volume, diverse environments

• IT Operators:


Monitoring and Control

• The measurement and control of services is based on a continual cycle of monitoring, reporting and subsequent action

• Monitoring: refers to the activity of observing a situation to detect changes that happen over time.

• Reporting: refers to the analysis, production and distribution of the output of the monitoring activity

• Control: refers to the process of managing the utilization or behaviour of a device, system or service. It is important to note, though, that simply manipulating a device is not the same as controlling it – by taking action


Application Management Function


Application Management Function

• Application Management is responsible for managing applications throughout their lifecycle

• Application Management is to applications what Technical Management is to the IT Infrastructure

• Note: Application Management works closely with Development, but is a distinct function with different roles


Application Management Role

Application Management plays a dual role:

• It is the custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related to managing applications. In this role Application Management, working together with Technical Management, ensures that the knowledge required to design, test, manage and improve IT services is identified, developed and refined..

• It provides the actual resources to support the ITSM Lifecycle. In this role, Application Management ensures that resources are effectively trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate and improve the technology required to deliver and support IT services


Application Management Role – (cont'd)

In addition it performs these specific roles:

• Providing guidance to IT Operation about how best to carry out the

ongoing operational management of applications. This role is partly

carried out during the Service Design process, but it is also a part of

everyday communication with IT Operation Management as they seek

to achieve stability and optimum performance.

• The integration of the Application Management Lifecycle into the ITSM

Lifecycle


Application Management Objectives

• The objectives of Application Management are to support the organization’s

business processes by helping to identify functional and manageability

requirements for application software, and then to assist in the design and

deployment of those applications and the ongoing support and improvement

of those applications

• These objectives are achieved through:

– Applications that are well designed, resilient and cost-effective

– Ensuring that the required functionality is available to achieve the required

business outcome

– The organization of adequate technical skills to maintain operational applications

in optimum condition

– Swift use of technical skills to speedily diagnose and resolve any technical failures

that do occur.


Application Management lifecycle


Application Management Activities

Generic activities include:

• Successful Release Management is dependent on involvement from Application Management staff. In fact they are frequently the drivers of the Release Management process for their applications

• Application Management as a function provides the resources that execute the Problem Management process. It is their technical expertise and knowledge that is used to diagnose and resolve problems

• Definition of standards used in the design of new architectures and participation in the definition of application architectures during the Service Strategy

• Involvement in projects, not only during the Service Design process, but also for Continual Service Improvement or operational projects, such as Operating System upgrades, server consolidation projects or physical moves


Application Management Activities

(cont'd)

• Managing vendors. Many Application Management departments or groups are the only ones who know exactly what is required of a vendor and how to measure and manage them. For this reason, many organizations rely on Application Management to manage contracts with vendors of specific applications. If this is the case it is important to ensure that these relationships are managed as part of the SLM process

• Involvement in definition of Event Management standards and especially in the instrumentation of applications for the generation of meaningful events


Application Management Organizational

Structure

Application Management teams and departments tend to be organized according to the categories of applications that they support. Typical examples of Application Management organizations include:

– Financial applications

– Messaging and collaboration applications

– Business-specific applications (e.g. health care, insurance, banking, etc.)

– Web portals

– IT applications, such as Service Desk, Enterprise System Management, etc.


Application Management Roles

• Applications Managers/Team-leaders:

– Take overall responsibility for leadership, control and decision-making for the applications team or department

– Provide technical knowledge and leadership in the specific applications support activities covered department

• Applications Analyst/Architect:

– Working with users, sponsors and all other stakeholders to determine their evolving needs

– Developing and maintaining standards for application sizing, performance modeling, etc

– Performing cost–benefit analyses to determine the most appropriate means to meet the stated requirement


Key Processes in Service Operation

• Event Management

• Incident Management

• Request Fulfillment

• Problem Management

• Access Management


Event Management


Event Management

• Event Management monitors all events that occur throughout

the IT infrastructure, to monitor normal operation and to detect

and escalate exception conditions.

• Event Management is therefore the basis for Operational

Monitoring and Control


Objectives of Event Management

• To detect events, make sense of them and determine the

appropriate control action

• To communicate operational information as well as warnings and

exceptions

• Event Management also provides a basis for Service Assurance

and Reporting; and Service Improvement


What is an Event?

• An event is a change of state that has significance for the management of a configuration item or IT service

• An event can be defined as any detectable or discernible occurrence that has significance for the management of the IT Infrastructure or the delivery of IT service and evaluation of the impact a deviation might cause to the services

• Events are typically notifications created by an IT service, Configuration Item (CI) or monitoring tool


What is an Event? (cont'd)

• An event may indicate that something is not functioning correctly, leading to an incident being logged.

• Events may also indicate normal activity, or a need for routine intervention such as changing a tape

• The term Event is also used to mean an Alert or notification created by any IT Service, Configuration Item or Monitoring tool

• Events typically require IT Operation personnel to take actions, and often lead to Incidents being logged


Types of Events

• Events that signify regular operation:

– E.g. - a user has logged in to use an application

• Events that signify an exception:

– E.g. - a device’s CPU is above the acceptable utilization rate

• Events that signify unusual, but not exceptional, operation:

– E.g. - A server’s memory utilization reaches within 5% of its

highest acceptable performance level


Difference Between Monitoring and

Event Management

Event Management depends on monitoring but they differ:

• Event Management: generates and detects notifications

• Monitoring: checks the status of components even when no events are occurring.

• Types of Monitoring Tools:

– Active Monitoring: Polls key CIs to determine their status and availability. Any exceptions will generate an alert that needs to be communicated to the appropriate tool or team for action

– Passive Monitoring: Tools that detect and correlate operational alerts or communications generated by CIs


Definition: Alert

• A warning that a threshold has been reached, something has

changed, or a failure has occurred

• Alerts are often created and managed by System Management

tools and are managed by the Event Management Process


Event Management Roles

The roles of the Service Operation functions in Event Management are as follows:

• The role of the Service Desk

• The role of Technical and Application Management

• The role of IT Operation Management

• Event Monitoring is commonly delegated to the Operation Bridge where it exists

• If Event Management activities are delegated to the Service Desk or IT Operation Management, Technical and Application Management must ensure that the staff are adequately trained and that they have access to the appropriate tools to enable them to perform these tasks


Incident Management


Incident Management

• The goals of Incident Management is to restore normal service

operation as quickly as possible with minimum disruption to the

business, thus ensuring that the best achievable levels of

availability and service are maintained.


Objectives of Incident Management

• To restore normal service operation as quickly as possible with minimal disruption to the business.

• To ensure that the best achievable levels of availability and service are maintained

• To ensure the best use of resources to meet business needs

• To develop and maintain meaningful records relating to incidents

• To devise and apply a consistent approach to all incidents reported


Scope

• Incident Management includes any event which disrupts, or

which could disrupt, a service

• Includes events which are communicated directly by users, either

through the Service Desk or through an interface from Event

Management to Incident Management tools


Basic Concepts

• Timescales: Timescales must be agreed for all incident-handling stages (these will differ depending upon the priority level of the incident) – based upon the overall incident response and resolution targets within SLAs – and captured as targets within OLAs and Underpinning Contracts (UCs). All support group should know this

• Incident Models: An Incident Model is a way of pre-defining the steps that should be taken to handle a process (in this case a process for dealing with a particular type of incident) in an agreed way

• Major incidents: A separate procedure, with shorter timescales and greater urgency, must be`used for ‘major’ incidents


What is an Incident?

• ITIL defines an Incident as any event that is not part of the

standard operation and which causes, or may cause, an

interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service

• The key features of an incident are that it is spontaneous,

unplanned, and unwanted

• Failure of a configuration item that has not yet impacted service

is also an incident, for example failure of one disk from a mirror

set


Incident Management Roles

• Incident Manager: Responsible for the following:

– Driving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Incident Management process

– Producing management information

– Managing the work of incident support staff (first- and second-line)

– Monitoring the effectiveness of Incident Management and making recommendations for improvement

– Developing and maintaining the Incident Management systems Managing Major Incidents

– Developing and maintaining the Incident Management process and procedures

• First line Support

• Second line support

• Third line support


Terminologies in Incident Management

• Lines Of Support:

– First-line support (also known as tier 1 support) is normally provided by the Service Desk.

– Second-line by the management departments

– Third-line by the software developers and architects, and

– Fourth-line support by suppliers


Lines Of Support


Incident Management Terminologies

• Escalations: Incident escalation is critical to ensure that they are managed throughout their overall duration.

• Two Types of Escalations:– Functional escalation (horizontal) – functional escalation means involving

more specialist personnel or access privileges (technical authority) to solve the incident

– Hierarchical escalation (vertical) – hierarchical means that a vertical move is made (to higher levels) throughout the organization because the authority (organizational authority, powers) or resources required for resolution are insufficient


Incident Escalation


Incident Management Terminologies

(cont'd)

Urgency, Impact and Priority

• Impact of the incident: extent of the deviation from the normal service level, in terms of the number of users or business processes affected

• Urgency of the incident: the acceptable delay to the user or business process

• Priority of the incident: is determined on the basis of urgency and impact


Determining Impact, Urgency and

Priority


Example of Priority Coding System


Incident Lifecycle


Incident Management Process Flow


Incident Management Activities

• Incident Identification: identifies incidents as soon as they occur

• Incident Logging: Records basic diagnostics details of the incident

• Incident Categorization: e.g. server, software, hardware. Is it a service request? Then follow Request Fulfillment process

• Incident Prioritization: based on urgency and impact coding system

• Initial diagnosis: provides initial support

• Incident Escalation: performs functional or Hierarchal escalation if necessary

• Investigation and Diagnosis: investigates/diagnose further

• Resolution and recovery: apply and test to confirm the resolution

• Closure: The Service Desk checks that the incident is fully resolved and that the users are satisfied before the incident can be closed


Incident Ownership, Monitoring,

Tracking and Communication

• In most cases, the Service Desk, as the owner of all incidents, is

responsible for progress monitoring. Subsequently, the Service

Desk should:

– Keep an up-to-date log of actions taken

– Monitor incidents and invoke escalation procedures

– Inform the user about the status of their incident


Metrics

• Total numbers of Incidents (as a control measure)

• Breakdown of incidents at each stage (e.g. logged, work in progress,

closed etc)

• Number and percentage of major incidents

• Mean elapsed time to achieve incident resolution or circumvention,

broken down by impact code

• Percentage of incidents handled within agreed response time (incident

response-time targets may be specified in SLAs, for example, by impact

and urgency codes)

• Average cost per incident

• Number of incidents reopened and as a percentage of the total


Metrics (cont'd)

• Number and percentage of incidents incorrectly assigned

• Number and percentage of incidents incorrectly categorized

• Percentage of Incidents closed by the Service Desk without reference to other levels of support (often referred to as ‘first point of contact’)

• Number and percentage the of incidents processed per Service Desk agent

• Number and percentage of incidents resolved remotely, without the

need for a visit

• Number of incidents handled by each Incident Model

• Breakdown of incidents by time of day, to help pinpoint peaks and

ensure matching of resources.

• Reports should be produced under the authority


Critical Success Factors

• A good Service Desk is key to successful Incident Management

• Clearly defined targets to work to – as defined in SLAs

• Adequate customer-oriented and technically training support staff with the correct skill levels, at all stages of the process

• Integrated support tools to drive and control the process

• OLAs and UCs that are capable of influencing and shaping the correct behaviour of all support staff.


Value Of Incident Management

• Reduction in business impact through timely resolution of Incidents

• Proactive identification of amendments and / or enhancements needed

• Management information directly related to the provision of the required service(s)

• Greater efficiency through better use of resources

• Elimination of 'lost' Incidents

• Greater accuracy of infrastructure data


Incident Management Challenges

• Lack of serious ‘buy-in’/ commitment by management

• Lack of agreed Customer service levels

• Lack of knowledge or resources for resolving Incidents

• Lack of integration with other ITIL processes

• No agreed service levels

• User/ IT staff by-passing the process

• Lack, unsuitability, or high cost, of software tools


Incident Management Risks

• Incidents being bogged down and not progressed as intended because

of inadequate support tools to raise alerts and prompt progress

• Lack of adequate and/or timely information sources because of

inadequate tools or lack of integration

• Mismatches in objectives or actions because of poorly aligned or

nonexistent OLAs and/or UCs.

• Being inundated with incidents that cannot be handled within

acceptable timescales due to a lack of available or properly trained

resources


Request Fulfillment


Request Fulfilment

• Request Fulfillment is the process for dealing with Service Requests –

many of them actually smaller, lower-risk, changes – initially via the

Service Desk, but using a separate process similar to that of Incident

Management but with separate Request Fulfillment records/tables –

where necessary linked to the Incident or Problem Record(s) that

initiated the need for the request


Objectives of Request Fulfillment

• To provide a channel for users to request and receive standard services for which a pre-defined approval and qualification process exists

• To provide information to users and customers about the availability of services and the procedure for obtaining them

• To source and deliver the components of requested standard services (e.g. licenses and software media)

• To assist with general information, complaints or comments


Service Request

• A service request is a request from a user for information or

advice, or for a standard change, or for access to an IT service.

E.g. – password change

• Note: A service request is different from an incident


Request Fulfillment Roles

• Initial handling of Service Requests will be undertaken by the Service Desk and Incident Management

• Eventual fulfillment of the request will be undertaken by the appropriate Service Operation team(s) or departments and/or by external suppliers, as appropriate

• Often, Facilities Management, Procurement and other business areas aid in the fulfillment of the Service Request


Policies/ Principles/ Basic Concepts

• All requests should be logged and tracked

• The ownership of Service Requests resides with the Service Desk, which monitors, escalates, dispatches and often fulfils the user request

• The process should include appropriate approval before fulfilling the request

• Many Service Requests will be frequently recurring, so a predefined process flow (a model) can be devised to include the stages needed to fulfill the request, the individuals or support groups involved, target timescales and escalation paths

• Request models – many organizations will wish to create pre-defined Request Models (which typically include some form of pre-approval by Change Management)

• Service Requests will usually be satisfied by implementing a Standard Change.


Value of Request Fulfillment to business

• It provides quick and effective access to standard services which business staff can use to improve their productivity or the quality of business services and products.

• Request Fulfillment effectively reduces the bureaucracy involved in requesting and receiving access to existing or new services, thus also reducing the cost of providing these services

• Centralizing fulfillment also increases the level of control over these services. This in turn can help reduce costs through centralized negotiation with suppliers, and can also help to reduce the cost of support


Challenges

• Clearly defining and documenting the type of requests that will be

handled within the Request Fulfillment process (and those that will

either go through the Service Desk and be handled as incidents or

those that will need to go through formal Change Management) – so

that all parties area absolutely clear on the scope

• Establishing self-help front-end capabilities that allow the users to

interface successfully with the Request Fulfillment process.



• Agreement of what services will be standardized and who is authorized to request

them. The cost of these services must also be agreed

• Publication of the services to users as part of the Service Catalogue. It is important that

this part of the Service Catalogue must be easily accessed, perhaps on the Intranet,

and should be recognized as the first source of information for users seeking access to

a service

• Definition of a standard fulfillment procedure for each of the services being requested.

This includes all procurement policies and the ability to generate purchase orders and

work orders

• A single point of contact which can be used to request the service. This is often

provided by the Service Desk or through an Intranet request, but could be through an

automated request directly into the Request

• Self-service tools needed to provide a front-end interface to the users. It is essential

that these integrate with the back-end fulfillment tools, often managed through

Incident or Change Management


Problem Management


Problem Management

• Problem Management is the process responsible for managing

the lifecycle of all problems.


Objectives of Problem Management

• The primary objective of problem management is to minimize

the adverse effect on the business of Incidents and Problems

caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to proactively

prevent the occurrence of Incidents, Problems and Errors.


Scope

• Problem Management includes the activities required to diagnose the root cause of incidents and to determine the resolution to those problems. It is also responsible for ensuring that the resolution is implemented through the appropriate control procedures, especially Change Management and Release Management

• Problem Management will also maintain information about problems and the appropriate workarounds and resolutions, so that the organization is able to reduce the number and impact of incidents over time. In this respect, Problem Management has a strong interface with Knowledge Management, and tools such as the Known Error Database will be used for both


Policies/principles/basic concepts

• Problem Models: This is very similar in concept to the idea of

Incident Models already described. Some problems require

special handling and pre-defined model or process


What is a Problem?

• ITIL defines a ‘problem’ as the cause of one or more incidents

• The cause is not usually known at the time a problem record is

created, and the problem management process is responsible for

further investigation


Definitions

• Known error is a problem whose root cause has been

determined

• The purpose of a Known Error Database (KEDB) is to allow

storage of previous knowledge of incidents and problems – and

how they were overcome – to allow quicker diagnosis and

resolution if they recur

– It is essential that any data put into the database can be quickly and

accurately retrieved.

• A Workaround is a temporary way of overcoming the difficulties

– In cases where a workaround is found, it is important that the problem

record remains open, and details of the workaround are always

documented within the Problem Record


Definitions: Configuration Management

System (CMS)

• The CMS will hold details of all of the components of the IT

Infrastructure as well as the relationships between these components.

It will act as a valuable source for problem diagnosis and for evaluating

the impact of problems (e.g. if this disk is down, what data is on that

disk; which services use that data; which users use those services?).


Problem Management Process Flow


Relationship between incidents, Problem

and Known Errors

Error in

infrastructure

Incident

Problem

Known

Error

RFC

Structural

Resolution


Problem Management Process Activities

• Problem Management consists of two major processes:

– Reactive Problem Management, which is generally executed as part of Service Operation

– Proactive Problem Management which is initiated in Service Operation, but generally driven as part of Continual Service Improvement


Problem Management Process Activities

• Problem Detection: can come from: monitoring tools, service desk etc.

• Problem Logging

• Problem Categorization: e.g. software, hardware, NIC failure

• Problem Prioritization: based on urgency and impact

• Investigation and Diagnostics: to try to diagnose the root cause of the problem

• Work Around

• Raising a Known Error Record: a Known Error Record must be raised and placed in the Known Error Database

• Problem Resolution

• Problem Closure: after resolution, the Problem Record should be formally closed

• Major Problem Review: a review should be conducted to learn any lessons for the future.


Problem Management Roles

• Problem Manager: The problem manager (PM) is responsible for all the problem management activities

• Problem Solving Groups: The actual solving of problems is likely to be undertaken by one or more technical support groups and/or suppliers or support contractors – under the coordination of the Problem Manager

– Problem Support Roles – Reactive: This unit is responsible for all reactive support functions like problem and error control

– Problem Support Roles – Proactive: This unit is responsible for all proactive activities like identifying trends

– Incident Support Roles: This unit is responsible for providing assistance in handling major incidents


Responsibilities of Problem

Management

• Intervention where escalation times are exceeded

• Resolution of ‘ownership’ dispute

• Liaison with suppliers/vendors’ staff

• Control of major incidents and problems

• Post Implementation Reviews


Elements of Proactive Problem

Management

• Trend Analysis: identifying faults and general problem areas that

need to be tackled

• Targeting Preventative Support Action: by calculating the

ongoing cost of Incidents - the so called 'pain factor' - which leads

to proactive action

• Providing relevant and targeted information: to other IT Service

Management functions, such as IT Service Level Management


Identifying Problem Areas


Implementation of Problem

Management

• Define the structure and scope of Problem Management

• Plan and Implement the Service Desk, ideally with integrated Service Support

tools

• Device a Coding Systems

– Incident, problems and error categories

– Severity Coding

• Information related to know errors and workarounds should be documented

so that it is easily referenced

• The process should be subject to a detailed revision

• Train staff using the information to understand the depth and power of the

information available

• Regular inspection to insure the continued relevance of documentation in the

light of changing business and environment


Metrics

• The total number of problems recorded in the period (as a control measure)

• The percentage of problems resolved within SLA targets (and the percentage

that are not!)

• The number and percentage of problems that exceeded their target resolution

times

• The backlog of outstanding problems and the trend (static, reducing or

increasing?)

• The average cost of handling a problem

• The number of major problems (opened and closed and backlog)

• The percentage of Major Problem Reviews successfully performed

• The number of Known Errors added to the KEDB

• The percentage accuracy of the KEDB (from audits of the database)

• The percentage of Major Problem Reviews completed successfully and on

time



• Successful Problem Management Depends on:

– Effective automated incident records and effective records of the

behavior of the infrastructure.

– Feasible objectives and making the best possible use of the

expertise of personnel

– Effective cooperation between Incident Management and Problem

Management


Value of Problem Management to

business

• Proactive prioritization of which Problems should be eliminated first

(and second...)

• Understanding of where the Organizations 'pain' areas are

• An holistic view of where ALL of the Organizations problems are up to

in terms of status

• The provision of permanent resolutions to Problems to help drive IT

Service Quality and business satisfaction

• Support the Incident Management and Service Desk functions by

providing constructive feedback on the quality of their work


Challenges

• Lack of serious ‘buy-in’/ commitment by management

• Lack of good Incident control process

• Individuals need to balance the work between Incident-handling and Problem-solving.

• The management has to map the right skills to the right activities, and identify and

deploy the problem-solving talents of individual staff.

• Inadequate assessment of business impact of Incidents and Problems

• Insufficient time and resources to build and maintain a proper knowledge base

• Bypassing of Service Desk role

• Proper linkage of Known Errors is required as the key to moving from the classical

reactive position to truly proactive Problem Management

• Collaborating with multiple groups, sometimes across different geographies and

companies (third parties), means

• Ensuring that regular daily, weekly and monthly reports are produced for IT Service

Management

• Managing the incoming volume of Problem Records V's Progressing existing (open)

Problem Records


Access Management


Access Management

• Access Management is the process of granting authorized users

the right to use a service, while preventing access to non-

authorized users

• It has also been referred to as Rights Management or Identity

Management in different organizations


Goal of Access Management

• The goal of Access Management is to provide the right for users

to be able to use a service or group of services

• It is the execution of policies and actions defined in Security and



Policies / Principles / Basic Concepts

• Access: refers to the level and extent of a service’s functionality or data that a user is entitled to use

• Identity: refers to the information about them that distinguishes them as an individual and which verifies their status within the organization

• Rights: (also called privileges) refer to the actual settings whereby a user is provided access to a service or group of services. Typical rights, or levels of access, include read, write, execute, change, delete

• Services or Service Groups: Instead of providing access to each service for each user separately, it is more efficient to be able to grant each user – or group of users – access to the whole set of services that they are entitled to use at the same time

• Directory Services: refers to a specific type of tool that is used to manage access and rights


Access Management Roles

• The role of the Service Desk: The Service Desk is typically used as a means to request access to a service. The Service Desk will also be responsible for communicating with the user to ensure that they know when access has been granted and to ensure that they receive any other required support

• The role of Technical and Application Management: they will ensure that mechanisms are created to simplify and control Access Management on each service at each stages of the service lifecycle such as SD,ST, SO

• The role of IT Operation Management: it is common for operational Access Management tasks to be delegated to IT Operation Management e.g. Operation Bridge if exist, will monitor and handle and resolve issue related to access management


Challenges and Critical Success Factors

• Conditions for successful Access Management include:

– The ability to verify the identity of a user (that the person is who they say they are)

– The ability to verify the identity of the approving person or body

– The ability to verify that a user qualifies for access to a specific service

– The ability to link multiple access rights to an individual user

– The ability to determine the status of the user at any time (e.g. to determine whether they are still employees of the organization when they log on to a system

– The ability to manage changes to a user’s access requirements

– The ability to restrict access rights to unauthorized users

– A database of all users and the rights that they have been granted.


Summary



Practise Questions

1. Which of the following is NOT a typical objective of Problem

Management?

A. To prevent Problems and their resultant incidents

B. To manage Problems throughout their lifecycle

C. To restore service to a user

D. To eliminate recurring incidents


Practise Questions

2. Which of the following are types of communication you could

expect the functions within Service Operations to perform?

1. Communication between Data Centre shifts

2. Communication related to changes

3. Performance reporting

4. Routine operational communication

A. 1 only

B. 2 and 3 only

C. 1, 2 and 4 only

D. All the above


Practise Questions

3. What guidance does ITIL give on the frequency of production of

service reporting?

A. Service reporting intervals must be defined and agreed with the

customers

B. Reporting intervals should be set by the Service provider

C. Reports should be produced weekly

D. Service reporting intervals must be the same for all services


Practise Questions

4. What is the BEST description of the purpose of Service

Operation?

A. To decide how IT will engage with Suppliers during the Service

Management lifecycle

B. To proactively prevent all outages to IT services

C. To design and build processes that will meet business needs

D. To deliver and manage IT services at agreed levels to business users and

customers


Practise Questions

4. What is the BEST description of the purpose of Service

Operation?

A. To decide how IT will engage with Suppliers during the Service

Management lifecycle

B. To proactively prevent all outages to IT services

C. To design and build processes that will meet business needs

D. To deliver and manage IT services at agreed levels to business users

and customers


Practise Questions

5. Which of the following BEST describes a Problem?

A. A known error for which the cause and resolution are not yet known

B. The cause of two or more incidents

C. A serious Incident which has a critical impact to the business

D. The cause of one or more Incidents


Day 3


Agenda (Day 3)

Time Activity

8.30am – 10.30am � Module 07: Service Operation (cont’d)


11.00am – 12.00noon � Module 08: Continual Service Improvement

� Module 09: Technology and Architecture

12.00noon – 1.30pm � Revision, Q&A


2.30pm – 4.00pm � Mock Exam

4.00pm – 5.00pm � Discussions and Networking



Continual Service Improvement


Module Goals


– Explain the goals of Continual Service Improvement

– Explain the high level objectives, scope, basic concepts,

process activities, roles and metrics of CSI

– Explain the 7 step improvement process

– Explain the values, challenges, and Risk of CSI


Goal of Continual Service Improvement

(CSI)

• The primary purpose of CSI is to continually align and re-align IT

services to the changing business needs by identifying and

implementing improvements to IT services that support business

processes


Objectives of CSI

• Review, analyze and make recommendations on improvement opportunities in each lifecycle phase: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation.

• Review and analyze Service Level Achievement results.

• Identify and implement individual activities to improve IT service quality and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of enabling ITSM processes.

• Improve cost effectiveness of delivering IT services without sacrificing customer satisfaction.

• Ensure applicable quality management methods are used to support continual improvement activities.


Scope of CSI

There are three main areas that CSI needs to address:

• The overall health of ITSM as a discipline

• The continual alignment of the portfolio of IT services with the current

and future business needs

• The maturity of the enabling IT processes for each service in a

continual service lifecycle model


Activities

• Reviewing management information and trends to ensure that services are meeting agreed service levels

• Reviewing management information and trends to ensure that the output of the enabling ITSM processes are achieving the desired results.

• Conducting, periodically, maturity assessments against the process activities and roles associated with the process activities to demonstrate areas of improvement or, conversely, areas of concern.

• Conducting, periodically, internal audits verifying employee and process compliance

• Reviewing existing deliverables for relevance

• Making ad-hoc recommendations for approval

• Conducting periodic customer satisfaction surveys

• Conducting external and internal service reviews to identify CSI opportunities


Role of IT Governance in the Service

Lifecycle

Enterprise governance (source: CIMA)


Definition: Governance

• Enterprise Governance: Enterprise governance is an emerging term ... to describe a framework that covers both the corporate governance and the business management aspects of the organization

• Corporate Governance: Corporate governance is about promoting corporate fairness, transparency and accountability – e.g. SOX

• IT governance: is the responsibility of the board of directors and executive management. It is an integral part of enterprise governance and consists of the leadership, organizational structures and processes that ensure that the organization’s IT sustains and extends the organization’s strategies and objectives

• IT must now comply with new rules and legislation and continually demonstrate their compliance through successful independent audits by external organizations

• CSI plays an important role in IT governance


Continual Service Improvement Model


7-Steps to Continual Service

Improvement


7-Steps to Continuous Service

Improvement (cont’d)

• Step 1 - Define what you should measure

• Step 2 - Define what you can measure

• Step 3 - Gather the data

• Step 4 - Process the data

• Step 5 - Analyze the data

• Step 6 - Present and use the Information

• Step 7 - Implement corrective action




• Step 1 - Define what you should measure: A set of measurements

should be defined that fully support the goals of the organization. The

focus should be on identifying what is needed to satisfy the goals fully,

without considering whether the data is currently available. Compile a

list of what you should measure. This will often be driven by business.

Make it simple.

• Step 2 - Define what you can measure: CSI requirements can conduct

a gap analysis to identify the opportunities for improvement as well as

answering the question ‘How do we get there?’




• Step 3 Gather the data: This covers monitoring and data collection. A combination of monitoring tools and manual processes should be put in place to collect the data needed for the measurements that have been defined.

– Quality is the key objective of monitoring for CSI. Therefore monitoring focuses on the effectiveness of a service, process, tool, organization or CI. The emphasis is on identifying where improvements can be made to the existing level of service, or IT performance, typically by detecting exceptions and resolutions.

– CSI is not only interested in exceptions. If a Service Level Agreement is consistently met over time, CSI is also interested in determining whether that level of performance can be improved




• Step 4 - Process the data : Raw data is processed into the required

format, typically providing an end-to-end perspective on the

performance of services and/or processes

• Step 5 - Analyze the data: Data analysis transforms the information

into knowledge of the events that are affecting the organization. The

result of data analysis will answer these questions:

– Are we meeting targets?

– Are there any clear trends?

– Are corrective actions required? What is the cost?




• Step 6 - Present and use the Information : The knowledge gained can

now be presented in a format that is easy to understand and allows

those receiving the information to make strategic, tactical and

operational decisions. The information needs to be provided at the

right level and in the right way for the intended audience. It should

provide value, note exceptions to service, and highlight any benefits

that have been identified during the time period

• Step 7 - Implement corrective action : The knowledge gained is used to

optimize, improve and correct services, processes, and all other

supporting activities and technology. The corrective actions required to

improve the service should be identified and communicated to the

organization


Integration with lifecycle stages and

service management processes


CSI and the lifecycles


The Deming Circle

The goal in using the Deming Cycle is steady, ongoing improvement. It is a fundamental tenet of Continual Service Improvement.


The Deming Cycle (cont'd)

Deming Cycle – adapted for CSI


Activities and Skills Required


Activities and Skills Required (cont’d)

• Example Activity : Define what you should measure

Roles involved in the ‘define what you should measure’ activity


Activities and Skills Required (cont’d)

• Example Activity : Gather Data

Roles involved in the ‘Gathering the data ’ activity


Service Reporting

• A significant amount of data is collated and monitored by IT in the daily delivery of quality service to the business, but only a small subset is of real interest and importance to the business

• The business likes to see a historical representation of the past period’s performance that portrays their experience, but it is more concerned with those historical events that continue to be a threat going forward, and how IT intends to mitigate against such threats.

• It is not enough to present reports depicting adherence or otherwise to SLAs. IT needs to build an actionable approach to reporting, i.e. what happened, what IT did, how IT will ensure it doesn’t impact again and how IT are working to improve service delivery generally


Service Measurement – Baselines

• An important beginning point for highlighting improvement is to establish baselines as markers or starting points for later comparison

• Baselines are also used to establish an initial data point to determine if a service or process needs to be improved

• It is important that baselines are documented, recognized and accepted throughout the organization


Service Measurement – Value To

Business

There are four basic reasons to monitor and measure:

• Validate previous decisions that have been made

• Direct activities in order to meet set targets - this is the most prevalent

reason for monitoring and measuring

• Justify that a course of action is required, with factual evidence or

proof

• Intervene at the appropriate point and take corrective action


Types of CSI Metrics

There are three types of metrics used to support CSI activities:

• Technology metrics: often associated with component and application based metrics such as performance, availability.

• Process metrics: captured in the form of Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and activity metrics.

• Service metrics: the results of the end-to-end service. Component/technology metrics are used to compute the service metrics



• Service Manager: manages the development, implementation, evaluation and on-going management of new and existing products and services

• CSI Manager: is responsible for the overall CSI activities within an organization. This new role is essential for a successful improvement programme

• Process Owner: This key role is accountable for the overall quality of the process and oversees the management of, and organizational compliance to, the process flows, procedures, data models, policies and technologies associated with the IT business process

• Service Owner: The Service Owner is accountable for a specific service within an organization regardless of where the underpinning technology components, processes or professional capabilities reside


Service Owner

• The Service Owner is accountable for a specific service within an

organization regardless of where the underpinning technology

components, processes or professional capabilities reside.

• The Service Owner is responsible for continual improvement and the

management of change affecting the services under their care.

• The Service Owner is a primary stakeholder in all of the underlying IT

processes which enable or support the service they own


Responsibilities of Service Owner

Key Responsibilities include:– Service Owner for a specified service

– Provides input in service attributes such as performance, availability etc.

– Represents the service across the organization

– Understands the service (components etc.)

– Point of escalation (notification) for major Incidents

– Represents the service in Change Advisory Board meetings

– Provides input in CSI

– Participates in internal service review meetings (within IT)

– Works with the CSI Manager to identify and prioritize service improvement

– Participates in external service review meetings (with the business)

– Responsible for ensuring that the service entry in the Service Catalogue is accurate and is maintained

– Participates in negotiating SLAs and OLAs


Process Owner

• This key role is accountable for the overall quality of the process and oversees the management of, and organizational compliance to, the process flows, procedures, data models, policies and technologies associated with the IT business process

• The Process Owner performs the essential role of process champion, design lead, advocate, coach and protector

• Typically, a Process Owner should be a senior level manager with credibility, influence and authority across the various areas impacted by the activities of the process

• The Process Owner is required to have the ability to influence and ensure compliance to the policies and procedures put in place across the cultural and departmental silos of the IT organization


RACI Model

• The RACI model is an example of the authority matrix used is assigning activities to roles

• Clear definitions of accountability and responsibility are CSFs for any improvement activity

RACI authority matrix


RACI Model Example for a Change

Mgmt. Process

RACI authority matrix for a change management process


Definitions: Business Case

• A business case is a decision support and planning tool that


• Business Case should articulate the reason for undertaking a

service or process improvement initiative


Definitions: Risk

• A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or affect the ability to achieve objectives

• A risk is measured by the probability of threat, the vulnerability of the asset to that threat, or the impact it will have if it occurred.

• CSI can complement this activity and help to deliver business benefit


Value to Business

• Overall improved quality of business operations by ensuring that IT services underpin the business processes

• More reliable business support provided by Incident, Problem and Change Management processes

• Customers will know what to expect from IT and what is required of them to ensure this can be delivered

• Increased staff productivity because of increased reliability and availability of IT services

• IT Service Continuity procedures are increasingly focused on supporting business continuity and meeting the business needs through continued availability

• Better working relationships between customers and the IT service provider


Value to Business (cont’d)

• Enhanced customer satisfaction as service providers understand and deliver what is expected of them

• Improved quality of service and service availability, leading to improved business productivity and revenue

• Better planning for purchases, development and implementation

• Better management information regarding business processes and IT services

• Improved alignment between the business and IT

• Increased flexibility and adaptability will exist within the services

• Faster and improved quality of response to business needs

• Faster and better quality projects, deployments and changes (delivered on time, to cost and quality).


Challenges


• Inadequate resources, budget and time

• Lack of mature service management processes

• Lack of information, monitoring and measurements

• Lack of Knowledge Management

• A resistance to planning and a reluctance to be proved wrong

• A lack of corporate objectives, strategies, policies and business direction

• A lack of IT objectives, strategies and policies

• Lack of knowledge and appreciation of business impacts and priorities

• Diverse and disparate technologies and applications

• Resistance to change and cultural change

• Poor relationships, communication and a lack of cooperation between IT and the business

• Lack of tools, standards and skills

• Tools too complex and costly to implement and maintain



• Appointment of a CSI manager

• Adoption of CSI within the organization

• Management commitment – i.e. ongoing participation in CSI activities, communication vision etc.

• Defining clear criteria for prioritizing improvement projects

• Adoption of the service lifecycle approach

• Sufficient and ongoing funding for CSI activities

• Resource allocation – people are dedicated to CSI activities

• Technology to support the CSI activities

• Adopting of processes – embracing service management processes


Risks

• Being over-ambitious – don’t try to improve everything at once. Be realistic with timelines and expectations

• Not discussing improvement opportunities with the business – the business has to be involved in improvement decisions that will impact them

• Not focusing on improving both services and service management processes

• Not prioritizing improvement projects

• Implementing CSI with little or no technology

• Implementing a CSI initiative with no resources – this means that people must be allocated and dedicated to this

• Not performing all steps of the 7-Step Improvement Process


Risks (cont’d)

• Lack of making strategic, tactical or operational decisions based on knowledge gained – reports are actually used; people see that the reports are being used

• Lack of management taking action on recommended service improvement opportunities

• Lack of meeting with the business to understand new business requirements

• The communication/awareness campaign for any improvement is lacking, late or missing altogether

• Not involving the right people at all levels to plan, build, test and implement the improvement

• Removing testing before implementation or only partially testing.


Summary



1. What are the three types of metrics that an organization should

collect to support CSI?

A. Return on Investment (ROI), Value on Investment (VOI), Quality

B. Strategic, tactical, operational

C. Critical Success Factors (CSFs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),

Activities

D. Technology, process and service

Practise Question


Practise Question

2. Which of the following are the two primary elements that

create value for customers?

A. Value on Investment (VOI), Return on Investment (ROI)

B. Customer and User satisfaction

C. Understanding service requirements and Warranty

D. Utility and Warranty


Practise Question

3. Which of the following best describes the goal of Information

Security Management Process?

A. To align IT security with business security and ensure that information

security is effectively managed in all service and Service Management

activities’.

B. To ensure that the information security risks are appropriately managed

and enterprise information resources are used responsibly.

C. To provide a focus for all aspects of IT security and manage all IT security

activities.

D. To provide the strategic direction for security activities and ensures

objectives are achieved



Technology and Architecture


Module Goals


– Explain the generic requirements for an integrated ITSM

technology

– Understand how Service Automation assists with integrating

Service Management processes


Technology Considerations

• The same technology, with some possible additions, should be used for

the other phases of ITSM – Service Strategy, Service Design, Service

Transition and Continual Service Improvement – to give consistency

and allow an effective ITSM Lifecycle to be properly managed


Generic Requirements

• An integrated ITSM technology is needed that includes the following core functionality:

– Self-Help

– Workflow or process engine

– Integrated CMS

– Discovery/Deployment /Licensing technology

– Remote control

– Diagnostic utilities

– Reporting

– Dashboards


Generic Requirements (cont’d)

• Integration with Business Service Management

• Event Management

• Work-Flow and automated escalation

• Request Fulfillment

• Access Management

• Telephony

• Support Tools


Generic Requirements (cont’d)

• Integrated ITSM Technology for:

– Change management

– Configuration Management

– Problem Management,

– Service Desk

– Incident Management

– Integrated CMS with CMDB

– IT service Continuity Planning

• Integration with System, Application and Network Management


Service Automation Benefits

• The following are some of the areas where service management can benefit from automation:

– Design and modeling

– Service catalogue

– Pattern recognition and analysis

– Classification, prioritization and routing

– Detection and monitoring

– Optimization


Preparing for Automation

• The following guidelines should be applied:

– Simplify the service processes before automating them

– Clarify the flow of activities, allocation of tasks, need for

information, and interactions

– In self-service situations, reduce the surface area of the contact

users have with the underlying systems and processes

– Do not be in a hurry to automate tasks and interactions that are

neither simple nor routine in terms of inputs, resources and

outcomes


Summary



Practise Question

1. Which of the following should be supported by technology?

1. Verification of Configuration Management System (CMS) data

2. Control of user desk-tops

3. Creation and use of diagnostic scripts

4. Visibility of overall IT Service performance

A. 2, 3 and 4 only

B. 1, 2 and 3 only

C. 1, 3 and 4 only

D. All of the above


Practise Question

2. Which of the following areas would technology help to support

during the Service Operation phase of the Lifecycle?

1. Identifying configuration of user desktop PCs when Incidents are logged

2. Control of user desk-top PCs

3. Create and use diagnostic scripts

4. Dashboard type technology

A. 1, 2 and 3 only

B. All of the above

C. 1, 3 and 4 only

D. 2, 3 and 4 only


Practise Question

3. Which of the following areas would technology help to support

during the Service Transition phase of the lifecycle?

1. Data mining and workflow tools

2. Measurement and reporting systems

3. Release and Deployment technology

4. Process Design

A. All of the above

B. 1, 3 and 4 only

C. 2, 3 and 4 only

D. 1, 2 and 3 only


Revision/ Q&A


Team Activity

Time Allowed: 30 minutes

Incident Scenarios

A. The LAN at CWG head office is down, affecting over 100 users. The cost to the business if the

incident is not resolved in the next 2 hours is put at 2 million Naira.

B. The Director of ExpertEdge Software and Training is attempting to print his end of the week report

for submission to the Group Managing Director (GMD) of CWG, but the printer won’t work. The

GMD is currently on a tour of the company’s branch in Ghana and will not be back in three days.

C. A web application service is down and external customers of the application may not be able to

place their orders. CWG may loose 250,000 Naira per day if the service remains down.

Activity

1. Assume that all the incidents described above are happening simultaneously. Design a priority

matrix, and apply the matrix to suggest the priority of each situation.

2. Make a list of the information you would record for each and every incident. Use the scenarios

above to ensure that you have captured everything that you’ll need to resolve the incidents.


Mock Exam

• Exam Type: Multiple choice, 40 questions



• Delivery: Paper based


Revision/ Q&A

turnkey_itil v3 foundation_pdf version

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