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

Measuring and monitoring progress

As a baseline establishes where you are in your journey, it is also important to show progress in meeting the objectives of your initiative. When showing progress, the metrics you defined in your project and program plans should have intermediate reports that demonstrate the implementation effort moves toward the future state targets. Here, you show the various stakeholders that the efforts and investments being made in the program actually produce tangible and intangible results.

Showing interim results that have been achieved helps stakeholders continue to be engaged. It ensures that the stakeholders and leadership understand that progress is being made toward the objectives and what that progress reflects. It also helps to identify where issues or challenges have occurred and the possible remedies that can be introduced to mitigate the impact of those challenges. It ensures that the benefits realized are regularly communicated and celebrated...