Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

By : Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets
4 (1)
Book Image

A Practical Guide to Service Management

4 (1)
By: Keith D. Sutherland, Lawrence J. "Butch" Sheets

Overview of this book

Many organizations struggle to find practical guidance that can help them to not only understand but also apply service management best practices. Packed with expert guidance and comprehensive coverage of the essential frameworks, methods, and techniques, this book will enable you to elevate your organization’s service management capability. You’ll start by exploring the fundamentals of service management and the role of a service provider. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with the different service management frameworks used by IT and enterprises. You'll use system thinking and design thinking approaches to learn to design, implement, and optimize services catering to diverse customer needs. This book will familiarize you with the essential process capabilities required for an efficient service management practice, followed by the elements key to its practical implementation, customized to the organization’s business needs in a sustainable and repeatable manner. You’ll also discover the critical success factors that will enhance your organization’s ability to successfully implement and sustain a service management practice. By the end of this handy guide, you’ll have a solid grasp of service management concepts, making this a valuable resource for on-the-job reference.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Importance of Service Management
6
Part 2: Essential Process Capabilities for Effective Service Management
18
Part 3: How to Apply a Pragmatic, Customized Service Management Capability
Appendix B: SLR Template

Process activities

Release and deployment management has consistent activities for each release depending on the release type and the testing requirements defined in the release plans.

Figure 9.2 shows the flow for release and deployment management:

Figure 9.2 – Example of a release and deployment management process flow

Figure 9.2 – Example of a release and deployment management process flow

The activities defined for release and deployment management include the following:

  1. Authorizing the release
  2. Planning the release and deployment
  3. Building the release
  4. Testing the release
  5. Validating the release
  6. Deploying, transferring, or retiring the release
  7. Reviewing the release
  8. Closing the release

The subsequent paragraphs describe what is involved in each of the activities described in the process flow.

Change authorization is the trigger that initiates release and deployment management activities. Since a release is made up of one or more approved changes, release and deployment...