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

Process activities

Problem management is one of the service management processes that has consistent activities for each problem request.

Figure 7.7 shows the flow for problem management:

Figure 7.7 – Example problem management process flow

Figure 7.7 – Example problem management process flow

The following subsections will describe what is involved in each of these activities.

Identifying a problem

Identifying a problem can occur in a variety of ways. The inputs described several ways that the service provider may identify that a problem has been raised. Once a problem has been identified, the next step is to log the problem and information about it.

Recording the problem

You should record the problem in the appropriate mechanism created for that purpose. There should be clear guidance on the information that should be recorded about this problem. Information that should be considered when recording the problem includes the following:

  • Who initiated the problem
  • Who will own...