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

Tracing the evolution of service management

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s, the international not-for-profit organization promoting service management, known as IT Service Management Forum (itSMF), has held annual conferences on the subject of service management. Many countries have their own chapter (for example, itSMF USA), where interested parties gather as a collective to present and discuss the subject of service management. Even within a specific country’s chapter, there is the concept of Local Interest Groups (LIGs), where smaller instances or segments gather in the interest of furthering their knowledge of service management. This was a brilliant arrangement, in that it significantly furthered the spread and adoption of formal service management capabilities within these countries. In the United States, of note was the significant adoption of ITIL® by large Midwest-based corporations, resulting in permeation east, west, and south. The establishment of LIGs...