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

Setting a baseline

When establishing a service management program, one of the key challenges for the program team is communicating value and benefits to the senior leadership. This program, like all major efforts, requires a commitment of resources and people to make it happen. It also requires an organization to make changes to the way you do things. In order to effectively communicate the benefits of the program, there must be a means to measure progress and return on investment (ROI). To demonstrate progress and ROI, there must be an understanding of where the organization starts from. The term used to define that starting point is a baseline.

Baselines need to be captured when a program starts and as reporting is conducted, comparing the results of the program changes to the starting point or baseline. As the program progresses and reporting occurs, baselines are updated to reflect the new current state, so as more change is completed, the benefits can be shared with the management...