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 SLM:

  • Service level agreement (SLA): An SLA is defined as an agreement between the customer and the service provider within the same organization. The agreement will document the service, how it is measured, what the customer and service provider are responsible for, and the business processes that are fulfilled.
  • Operational level agreement (OLA): An OLA is defined as an agreement with a component provider within the service provider organization that describes the performance and availability capabilities that could be offered for a service. It describes the commitments made by component providers to support the SLA targets.
  • Underpinning contract: An underpinning contract is defined as a contract between the internal service provider and their external suppliers. The underpinning contract should align with and support OLA and SLA targets. Also described in this chapter as the supplier contract.
  • Service...