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

What are the service management frameworks for IT?

Formal service management, for an organization, is defined as the specialized internal consultancy for providing value to stakeholders and customers in the form of services (for example, a service management practice). ITSM is defined as the strategic, tactical, and operational approach to managing IT within the organization and delivering IT services to customers.

It is important to note the strategic, tactical, and operational aspects of service management. When organizations start with a formal service management capability (and no matter what framework(s) they adopt), they tend to focus on the operational aspects (for example, incident, problem, change, request, and more). These areas tend to produce efficiency with a relatively quick turnaround (time to market). Though these are important, being operational, they don’t get visibility at the higher leadership levels. Later in this book, we will focus on the need to get...