Premium Resources

Four P's of Service Management Design

As you might have seen, many designs, plans and projects fail through a lack of preparation and management. Service Management implementation is all about preparing and planning the effective and efficient use of the four P’s. So what are those four P’s?

  • People

  • Processes

  • Products

  • Partners

To obtain the best benefits you must determine the roles of processes and people, implement the tools to automate the processes facilitating peoples roles and tasks.

Service Design in Lifecycle Model

Business Requirements come from the Customers or Market Space (Service Strategy) and go to Service Design for design and development along with the requirements, Service Acceptance Criteria (SAC) should also come and it must be for each activity, like SAC for strategy and design, SAC for service solutions etc. After design and development, the output comes out which is Service Design Package (SDP). SDP goes into Service Transition as an input where testing and validation takes place and it gets ready for the deployment/transition. Once services are deployed, Early Life Support (ELS) period starts and services/solutions are turned over to the operations. By the time services are not deployed, SLM manages the Service Level Requirements (SLR) and during the ELS period, pilot SLA gets implemented and monitored. On successful ELS, pilot SLA gets converted to the Live SLA and this entire phase is called Service Operations. Change Management and SLM has scope from Service Strategy to Service Operations and even further to Continual Service Improvement (CSI).

Measurement Design

There is a famous saying, “If you cant measure it, you cant manage it” in order to manage or control something. You must have right measurements in place and one of the aspects of Service Design is to design measurement metricsfor the services.

There are four types of Measurement metrics:

Effectiveness: It is measured as the accuracy and correctness of the process and its ability to deliver the ‘right result’.

For example, CSAT.

Efficiency: The productivity of the process, its speed, throughput and resource utilization.

For example, Average Handling Time (AHT) of support teams.

Progress: Milestones and deliverables in the capability of the process.

Example could be milestones in a project plan.

Compliance: Compliance of the process to governance requirements, regulatory requirements and compliance of people to the use of process.

Example could be metrics defined in SOX, HIPPA etc.

Service Design – The Big Picture

There are almost no situations within IT service provision with either internal or external service providers where there are no processes in the service design area. All IT service provider organizations already have some elements of their approach to the five aspects of service design in place, no matter how basic. In order to develop effective and efficient service solutions that meet the current and evolving requirements of the business as well as the needs of IT. It is essential that the inputs and needs of all other areas and processes are considered and reviewed within each of the service design activities. This will ensure that all service solutions are consistent and compatible with existing solutions and will meet the expectations of the customers and users. Critical facets of the key processes should be consolidated into all of the service design activities. So that all inputs are automatically referenced every time a new or changed service solution is produced.

Service Design – 5 Key Aspects

In Service Design, there are five aspects We must integrate all five aspects of design, rather than designing them in isolation. This ensures that integrated enterprise architecture is produced consisting of a set of standards, designs and architectures that satisfy, all of the management and operational requirements of services, as well as the functionality required by the business. This integrated design ensures that when a new or changed service is implemented, it not only provides thefunctionality required by the business, but also meets and continuesto meet all its service levels and targets in all areas. Here are the five aspects

  • Design of Service Solutions

  • Design services based on business requirements

  • Service Management Systems

  • Design tools needed to manage, control and support services

  • Technology & Architectural Design: Designing the technology architectures required to provide the services

  • Process Design : Designing the processes needed for transition, operate and improve the services.

  • Measurement System & Metrics: Designing the measurement methods and metrics.

Design Coordination:

To ensure the goals and objectives of the service design stage are met by providing and maintaining a single point of coordination and control for all activities and processes within this stage of the service lifecycle.

Service Catalogue Management

This management Provides the means of devoting that care and attention in a consistent fashion and ensuring that the organization accrues, all the potential benefits of a service catalogue in the most efficient manner.

Service Level Management

To ensure that all current and planned IT services are delivered to agreed achievable targets.

Availability Management

To ensure that the level of availability delivered in all IT services, that meets the agreed availability needs and/or service level targets in a cost-effective and in atimely manner.

Capacity Management

Cap[acity Management provides appropriate capacity to support resilience and overall service availability.

IT Service Continuity Management

To support the overall business continuity management (BCM) process by ensuring that, by managing the risks, that could seriously affect IT services, the IT service provider can always provide minimum agreed business continuity-related service levels.

Information Security Management

Information security is a management process within the corporate governance framework, which provides the strategic direction for security activities and ensures objectives are achieved.

Supplier Management

Ensures that suppliers and the services are provided and managed to support IT service targets and business expectations. The aim of this section is to raise awareness of the business context of working with partners and suppliers and how this work can best be directed toward realizing business benefit for the organization.