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

Benefiting from quick wins

What is a quick win? A quick win, also described as low-hanging fruit, is an effort that can be performed in a fairly short period of time, maybe two to six sprints or one to six months. It can be done by a small team, such as a staff of two to five. It tends to be a low-cost improvement. It is typically something that an organization can easily recognize as an opportunity to improve. Quick wins are valuable in that they tend to generate enthusiasm for an initiative because they produce results very quickly. They tend to be very recognizable as something that delivers benefits and can be implemented with little effort and resources. They allow a bigger initiative to show progress toward a larger goal or objective. Quick wins allow the organization to see improvements without significant investment in time, money, or resources. In Chapter 16, there was a review of the continual improvement activities, which can be used by smaller groups within the organization...