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 terms and definitions

There are key terms related to configuration management; the definitions are as follows:

  • Configuration management system: This is the logical entity containing the CMDBs and other information sources to manage data and information about the operational environments.
  • CMDB: This is the repository where CIs and their attributes are recorded and maintained. An organization may have one or more CMDBs containing CIs.
  • CI: A CI is defined as a service component that must be managed to deliver an IT service. CIs are under the control of change management.
  • CI record: A CI record is defined as a set of attributes about a CI. See the examples of CI records in the preceding section.
  • Class: A class is defined as the highest level that a set or collection of similar items can be grouped together, such as hardware or software.
  • Type: A type is defined as a subset of a class. It is the common name that an asset may be known as, such as a computer...