The service management lifecycle
- 1. The Service Management Lifecycle The service lifecycle approach includes four key stages: 1. Service strategy is about designing, developing, and implementing service management as both an organizational capability and a strategic asset. 2. Service design focuses on ensuring IT services offered fulfill the objectives of the business and the customer. 3. Service transition centers on risk management, knowledge management, change management, service asset and configuration management, and related areas. Service transition creates a smooth ride from strategy, design, and development to operation. 4. Service operation strives to manage operational priorities, such as availability of IT services. Improving the user experience and the quality of existing IT services is at the heart of the value delivered by CSI. While the other four stages are best performed with agility, CSI is most effective when you embed it in each of these lifecycle stages.
- 3. Why ITIL Continual Service Improvement? Continual Service Improvement is the fifth publication in the ITIL series, but don’t take this to mean that this is the last stage of the ITIL lifecycle. Rather, it should be an integral part of every stage. If you have areas needing improvement, you can follow the CSI process, enjoy some quick wins, and demonstrate to the business that it can trust IT. This will open doors and enable you to start working with the business on further strategic initiatives, which, of course, is the service strategy component of the ITIL lifecycle. Summary Implement a CSI program so that you can take optimal advantage of your IT capabilities and resources. Find ways to make IT even more efficient, beneficial, and cost-effective so that it can continue to drive business value. CSI will also help you demonstrate value with metrics. By implementing a CSI program, you can develop baselines and maturity assessments. 7-step Improvement Process The 7-step improvement process in ITIL is integrated with the Deming Cycle and the DIKW (Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom) model. Improvement can be made across the ITIL lifecycle with each stage of the lifecycle support giving feedback to the other stages for collaborative coordinated improvements.
- 4. 1. Identify the strategy for improvement 2. Define metrics 3. Gather data 4. Process data 5. Analyze data 6. Use the data for improvement decisions 7. Implement improvements Special attention should be given to economic value of improvements, because all organizations have to recover cost for service delivered in order to exist. Financial management concepts and metrics pertaining to ROI, TCO, VOI, and ROA help here.