- Define your services
- Link them to business processes
- Assign resources
- Consider costs and risks
- Outline service specification based on a valid business case
- Run the strategy processes
- Define the strategy
- Define services and their customers
- Define value creation and delivery
- Define required capabilities/resources
- Identify possible service opportunities
Types of Services Categories
- Core services - deliver the basic outcomes required by one or many customers
- Enabling services - necessary services to deliver core services
- Enhancing services - supplements to core services to make them more attractive or useful to customers
The maximum value comes from a perfect balance between utility and warranty.
- Utility
- Functionality of a service
- Fit for purpose
- Enabling a job to be done or to be done better
- Warranty
- Fit for use
- Mix of availability, capacity, continuity, and security
Value in Service Strategy
- Always try to understand the utility oand warranty of any new or changed service
- Utility "sells" services
- Warranty requires resources and therefore represents additional costs
Cyclic Nature of Value
- Value is revisited in each stage of the lifecycle through utility and warranty
- Stay on track to deliver the expected value to the operational environment
Resources - tangible, can be purchased
- Financial Capital - Money ready for investment
- Infrastructure - Buildings, server rooms, hardware, HVAC, UPS
- Applications - off-the-shelf and custom
- Information - massive amounts of data (email lists, customer spending habits)
- People - Labor is a commodity that can be procured quickly to accomplish tasks.
Capabilities - must be grown or developed
- Management - fusion of other capabilities
- It's difficult to find good management that understands your business processes and methods
- Organization - many methods exist, but yours must be developed.
- ITIL provides guidance for organization, but no plan to follow
- Processes - yours must be developed
- Knowledge - data and the information it creates
- Knowledge management helps your organization move from tacit to explicit knowledge
- People - motivated, trained, and experienced workforce
Ensure a correct mixture of services to balance IT investment to support the business objectives.
Service Pipeline | Retired Services | ||
Service Catalog |
Service Pipeline
- Information on all services from concept to operation
- Restricted visibility to those who have a need to know
Service Catalog
- Information on all services in operational environment and those being appeared for rollout
- Customers can view info
Retired Services
- ITIL doesn't state when to retire services, the organization decides
- Can keep them for reference or delete them, resources are released
Establish/maintain business relationship between service provider and customer. Identify customer needs and ensure service provider can meet the needs.
- Mitigate needs.
- Understand, inform, and meet customer's perceived needs
- Communicate needs inside the service provider's organization
- Identify trends that could impact the services to a particular customer.
- Identify changes in a customer's environment.
- Mediate requirements when multiple customers need different things from the service.
- Create formal complain methods, procedures, and excalation processes
Manage financial resources and costs for services.
- Secure funding to design, develop, and deliver services to support business processes
- Ensure service provider doesn't promise what they cannot deliver
- Maintain balance of cost and quality, supply and demand
Financial Management Fundamentals
- Budgeting - forecasting of cost
- Accounting - Money is devided into cost centers to keep track of expenditures
- Charging - (not mandatory)
Business Case
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Argues the benefits and costs of a service
-
Created for new or changing services
-
Provides an expected ROI
-
Introduction - short summary of business issues driving the change
- Provides background to leadership
- Contains a statement of objectives
-
Methods and Assumptions - describes the method used in the business case
-
Business impacts - expected return on investment (ROI, financial) and value of investment (VOI, non-financial)
- Driven by utility and warranty
-
Risks and Contingencies - details the uncertainties identified during analysis and proposes countermeasures for each
-
Recommendations - conclusions based on the business case
- A proposal for future action with alternatives and their costs
ITIL doesn't dictate organization, but does recommend roles:
- Service Owner
- Process Owner
- Process Manager
Service Automation and Analytics
- Enables consistency and higher efficiency
- Captures data for management to make decisions
- Maximum automation => maximum efficiency
Simulation - model a potential service solution and analyze the results
- Which stakeholder defines the value of a service?
Customer - When talking about services, what does utility mean?
The service is fit for purpose. - Which statement is correct concerning creating value through services?
- An important factor is the customer's perspective of value.
- Enabling the outcomes of the service provider determines value.
- Value perception is determined by the preferences of the service provider.
- The value of a service is only measured by its ROI.
- Which is not a stage in the Service Lifecycle?
- Service Optimization
- Service Design
- Service Operation
- Service Strategy
- What should be delivered by a service to the customer?
Value - What does warranty mean when talking about services?
The service is fit for use. - What should be found in the service catalog?
Details of all currently available or live services - The main purpose of Business Relationship Management is ____.
Understanding the needs of the customer by the service provider - Which of the following is not a process that occurs in Service Strategy?
- Strategy Management
- Knowledge Management
- Service Portfolio Management
- Business Relationship Management
- Which is NOT a fundamental aspect of financial management?
- Charging
- Accounting
- Budgeting
- Analysis