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

Establishing a pace for change

As with any significant change in an organization, it is important to manage the pace of the changes that are introduced. An organization and its stakeholders can only accommodate so much change in the way they do things. In developing a program roadmap and identifying the projects that will be executed, you will need to understand how much change you will introduce and what can be absorbed. A key factor in being able to manage change is the effectiveness of your OCM efforts. Helping stakeholders understand the benefits they will see as a result of changes will help them accommodate more change.

A key element of managing the pace of change requires an understanding of the culture of your organization and how change is introduced and managed. You should answer the following questions about your organization:

  • How has change been introduced in the past?
  • How effective is OCM across the organization in raising awareness of organizational changes...