Interfaces to other service lifecycle practices

For CSI to be successful, it is important to provide improvement opportunities throughout the entire service lifecycle. If for example, CSI focuses only on the Service Operation phase of the lifecycle it will have limited success. This is like treating a symptom of a problem instead of treating the problem itself. Often the problem may actually start in the Service Strategy or Service Design stages of the service lifecycle. That is why implementing a service improvement process needs to take a wider view. There is much greater value to the business when service improvement takes a holistic approach throughout the entire lifecycle.

The connection point between each of the core volumes is the service portfolio. It is the ‘spine’ which connects the lifecycle stages to each other.

Figure 2.5 Service portfolio spine

The remainder of this section covers the relationships between each of the publications and CSI.

Service Strategy

Service Strategy focuses on setting a strategic approach to service management as well as defining standard s and policies that will be used to design IT services. It is at this phase of the lifecycle that standards and policies are determined around measuring and reporting for an enterprise-wide view of the organization, possibly utilizing a tool such as Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard.

Service improvement opportunities could be driven by external factors such as new security or regulatory requirement s, new strategies due to mergers or acquisitions, changes in technology infrastructure or even new business service s to be introduced. Feedback from the other core phases of the service lifecycle will also be important.

Service Design

Service Design is tasked with the creation or modification of services and infrastructure architecture that are aligned to the business needs. Design elements ensure that a customer-centric viewpoint is used in creating the capability, process specification and planning, and acceptance of service management practice s. Service Design takes the strategy described in the first phase and transforms it through the design phase into deliverable IT services. Service Design is responsible for designing a management information framework that defines the need for critical success factor s (CSF), key performance indicator s (KPI), and activity metrics for both the services and the ITSM processes

New strategies, architecture, policies and business requirements will drive the need for continual improvement within Service Design.

Service Transition

Service Transition manages the transition of new or changed services into the production environment. Change and Configuration Management play major roles at this point in the lifecycle. This phase focuses on the best practice s of creating support model s, a knowledge base, workflow management, and developing communication and marketing for use in the transitioning of services to production. As new strategies and designs are introduced this provides an excellent opportunity for continual improvement. Service Transition is also responsible for defining the actual CSFs, KPIs and activity metric s, creating the reports and implementing the required automation to monitor and report on the services and ITSM processes.

Service Operation

Service Operation provides best practice advice and guidance on all aspects of managing the day-to-day operation of an organization’s IT service s. Service Operation is responsible for the monitoring and initial reporting related to the people, processes and infrastructure technology necessary to ensure a high-quality, cost-effective provision of IT services which meet the business needs. Every technology component and process activity should have defined inputs and outputs that can be monitored. The results of the monitoring can then be compared against the norms, targets or established Service Level Agreement s. When there is a discrepancy between what was actually delivered and what was expected this becomes a service improvement opportunity. Within the Service Operation phase of the lifecycle, internal review s would be performed to determine the results, what led to these results, and if necessary recommendations for some level of fine tuning.

The integration of service improvement within the service lifecycle is represented in Figure 2.6. This is an approach that provides for Continual Service Improvement activities to be in place within each of the other core disciplines of the service lifecycle.

CSI throughout the lifecycle

An organization can find improvement opportunities throughout the entire service lifecycle. Figure 2.6 shows the interaction that should take place between each lifecycle phase. An IT organization does need to wait until a service or service management process is transitioned into the operations area to begin identifying improvement opportunities.

Figure 2.6 CSI and the service lifecycle

Each lifecycle phase will provide an output to the next lifecycle phase. This same concept applies to CSI.

As an example a new service is designed or modified and passed onto Service Transition. Service Transition can provide feedback to Service Design on any design issues or everything is looking good before the service moves into Service Operation. CSI does not have to wait for the service to be implemented and in operations before any improvement opportunities are identified and communicated. These CSI steps throughout the lifecycle should not be viewed as placing blame or pointing fingers, but as a learning tool on improvement.

To be effective, CSI requires open and honest feedback from IT staff. Debriefings, or activity reviews, work well for capturing information about lessons learned such as ‘did we meet the timelines?’ and ‘did we provide quality?’ Segmenting the debriefing or review into smaller, individual activities completed within each phase of the service lifecycle and capturing the lessons learned within that phase makes the plethora of data more manageable. Collecting this information is a positive beginning toward facilitating future improvements (see Figure 2.7).

Figure 2.7 ITSM monitor control loop

CSI will make extensive use of methods and practices found in many ITIL processes such as Problem Management, Availability Management and Capacity Management used throughout the lifecycle of a service. The use of the outputs, in the form of flows, matrices, statistics or analysis reports, will provide valuable insight into the design and operation of services. This information, combined with new business requirement s, technology specification s, IT capabilities, budget s, trends and possibly external legislative and regulatory requirements will be vital to CSI to determine what needs to be improved, prioritize it and suggest improvements, if required.

It will be important to sift through large amounts of raw data before synthesizing the right information. This information must then be analysed and studied, but against what? This is where the different layers of management come in – strategic, tactical and operational – each with their own goals, objective s, CSFs and KPIs, all of which must be aligned and supportive of each other but, more importantly, aligned with the goals and objectives of the business. The ability to derive any meaningful information from the data collected depends not only on the maturity of the processes but also on the level of maturity of the services provided by IT.

Open and honest feedback is also needed from the staff responsible for hand-offs between the service lifecycles. Understanding the lessons learned, ‘What went well?’ and ‘What could have been improved?’ can influence future improvements in each stage of the lifecycle. Feedback from Service Operation to Service Transition and Service Transition to Service Design, and then from Service Design to Service Strategy is an effective way to integrate a holistic approach to CSI.

CSI on its own will not be able to achieve the desired results. It is therefore essential to leverage CSI activities and initiatives at each phase of the service lifecycle. Figure 2.8 illustrates the increased value to the organization when the sphere of influence of CSI is expanded to include each phase of the service lifecycle.

Figure 2.8 Bernard-Doppler service improvement levels of opportunity

At this point you may have concluded that all aspects of CSI must be in place before measurements and data gathering can begin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Measure now, gather data now, analyse now, begin review s of lessons learned now, make incremental improvements now. Don’t wait! Start improving now!

Дата добавления: 2015-10-02