ITIL/Foundation/Service Management/Service composition
This lesson introduces the main definitions used to define a service components in Information Technology Infrastructure Library 2011.
Objectives and Skills
[edit | edit source]Objectives and skills for this service composition section of ITIL Foundation include:
- Define the various components of a service
Activities
[edit | edit source]- Review the key terms, then the questions below.
- Use the Discuss page to post comments and questions regarding this lesson.
Key Terms
[edit | edit source]When setting up a new service, all of its components should be evaluated in order to ensure they will fulfil the current and potential future customer needs.
Business process
[edit | edit source]“ | A process that is owned and carried out by the business. A business process contributes to the delivery of a product or service to a business customer. For example, a retailer may have a purchasing process that helps to deliver services to its business customers. Many business processes rely on IT services. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers. It often can be visualized with a flowchart as a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or with a Process Matrix as a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on data in the process.[1]
It could be defined as how to raise all the service functional needs.[2]
Core service
[edit | edit source]As already stated, the core service is what the customer has asked to his provider.
Service design package
[edit | edit source]“ | Document(s) defining all aspects of an IT service and its requirements through each stage of its lifecycle. A service design package is produced for each new IT service, major change or IT service retirement. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
The purpose of Service Design Package, also called SDP, is to document each service requirements at all stages of its lifecycle.[3]
Business case
[edit | edit source]“ | Justification for a significant item of expenditure. The business case includes information about costs, benefits, options, issues, risks and possible problems. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also sometimes come in the form of a short verbal argument or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are consumed, they should be in support of a specific business need. An example could be that a software upgrade might improve system performance, but the "business case" is that better performance would improve customer satisfaction, require less task processing time, or reduce system maintenance costs. A compelling business case adequately captures both the quantifiable and unquantifiable characteristics of a proposed project.[4]
The business cases provide what could be expected by the service in term of Return on Investment.[5]
Service level agreement
[edit | edit source]“ | An agreement between an IT service provider and a customer. A service level agreement describes the IT service, documents service level targets, and specifies the responsibilities of the IT service provider and the customer. A single agreement may cover multiple IT services or multiple customers. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
A service-level agreement (SLA) is a part of a service contract where a service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service or performance). As an example, Internet service providers will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms. In this case the SLA will typically have a technical definition in terms of mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair or mean time to recovery (MTTR); various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details.[6]
By other words, it is a formal understanding with customer about the scope and the level of quality to provide.[7] [8]
Service level requirement
[edit | edit source]“ | A customer requirement for an aspect of an IT service. Service level requirements are based on business objectives and used to negotiate agreed service level targets. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
A Service Level Requirement (SLR) is a broad statement from a customer to a service provider describing their service expectations. A service provider prepares a service level agreement (SLA) based on the requirements from the customer. For example: A customer may require a server be operational (uptime) for 99.95% of the year excluding maintenance.[9]
It depicts the level required by the customer and that will be used to define the SLA.[10]
Infrastructure
[edit | edit source]Infrastructure is defined in ITIL as a combined set of hardware, software, networks, facilities, etc. (including all of the information technology), in order to develop, test, deliver, monitor, control or support IT services. Associated people, processes and documentation are not part of IT Infrastructure.[11]
It covers all IT equipment (Servers, network, personal computers …); most of the services related to this are supporting services as they are not seen by the customer but needed to deliver the core service.[12]
Environment
[edit | edit source]“ | A subset of the IT infrastructure that is used for a particular purpose – for example, live environment, test environment, build environment. Also used in the term ‘physical environment’ to mean the accommodation, air conditioning, power system etc. Environment is used as a generic term to mean the external conditions that influence or affect something. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
The environment is what to be set up to let infrastructure provides the required level of service in a reasonable manner.[13]
Data
[edit | edit source]The data domain covers what needs to be collected or transferred in order to provide the core service.[14]
Application
[edit | edit source]“ | Software that provides functions which are required by an IT service. Each application may be part of more than one IT service. An application runs on one or more servers or clients. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
Applications are all pieces of software used by the infrastructure to deliver the core service.[15]
Integration
[edit | edit source]Integration refers to the interaction between the various applications and the data they will need to carry in order, at the end, to deliver the core service in a level expected by the customer.[16]
Operational level agreement
[edit | edit source]“ | An agreement between an IT service provider and another part of the same organization. It supports the IT service provider’s delivery of IT services to customers and defines the goods or services to be provided and the responsibilities of both parties. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships among the internal support groups of an organization working to support a service-level agreement (SLA).[17] The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.[18]
Supporting service
[edit | edit source]As previously stated, the supporting services are all the services not firmly required by the customer but that will be anyway needed to properly deliver the core service.[19]
IT process
[edit | edit source]IT processes are needed by the IT service provider to deliver successfully the core service as defined in the SLA.[20]
Function
[edit | edit source]“ | A team or group of people and the tools or other resources they use to carry out one or more processes or activities. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
As it will be described more in details further, the functions cover all internal teams in charge of supporting the various IT components.[21]
Roles
[edit | edit source]“ | A set of responsibilities, activities and authorities assigned to a person or team. A role is defined in a process or function. Role is also used to describe the purpose of something or what it is used for. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
The role is the activity or responsibility provided to a team in order to control that resources are properly delivered to a service.[22]
Suppliers
[edit | edit source]“ | A third party responsible for supplying goods or services that are required to deliver IT services. Examples of suppliers include commodity hardware and software vendors, network and telecom providers, and outsourcing organizations. | ” |
— "ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2014. |
The supplier is an external third party who will have to deliver support to any of the service component.[23]
Review Questions
[edit | edit source]
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ "Business process". Wikipedia. January 6, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
- ↑ Betz, Charles T. (October 2011). "ITIL®, COBIT®, and CMMI®: Ongoing Confusion of Process and Function" (PDF). www.bptrends.com. p. 2. Retrieved January 23, 2014.
- ↑ "Service design". www.itilfoundations.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ↑ "Business case". Wikipedia. February 5, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
- ↑ Rae, Barclay. "How to build the business case for Service Catalog". Axios Systems. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ↑ "Service-level agreement". Wikipedia. January 31, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
- ↑ Piscopo, Mark. "Service Level Agreement". www.fastitiltemplates.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ↑ Wegmann, Alain; Regev, Gil; Garret, Georges-Antoine; Maréchal, François. "Specifying Services for ITIL Service Management" (PDF). École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ "Service level requirement". Wikipedia. November 14, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
- ↑ "ITIL V3 : The term SLO is deprecated in ITIL V3 to Service…". theartofservice.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ Veen, Annelies van der; van Bon, Jan (2007). Foundations of ITIL V3. Van Haren Publishing. ISBN 978-90-8753-057-0.
- ↑ "ITIL v3 – Business Service Monitoring / Service Management". www.westglobal.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ↑ "ITIL® Release & Deployment Management with Pragmatic Environment Management" (PDF). www.pragmaticconsult.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
- ↑ "ITIL – A guide to access management". www.ucisa.ac.uk. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ Meijer, Machteld; Smalley, Mark; Taylor, Sharon; Dunwoodie, Candace. "ITIL® V3 and BiSL: Sound guidance for business IT alignment from a business perspective" (PDF). www.axelos.com. p. 5. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ Tropp, Claudia (January 26, 2010). "ITIL V3 – Bridging your ITSM and outsourcing strategies". www.esourcingforum.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ Rouse, Margaret (March 2011). "operational level agreement (OLA)". whatis.techtarget.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ "Operational-level agreement". Wikipedia. September 30, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
- ↑ Kempter, Andrea (August 2, 2013). "ITIL Implementation - IT Service Structure - Business Services and Supporting Services". wiki.en.it-processmaps.com. Retrieved January 19, 2014.
- ↑ Farne, Caesar (October 3, 2012). "Define processes and functions". itilexampreparation2011.blogspot.fr. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
- ↑ "ITIL Processes". www.cupe.co.uk. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
- ↑ "ITSM Roles" (PDF). itservices.uchicago.edu. University of Chicago. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
- ↑ "What is Supplier Management from an ITIL perspective?". www.itilnews.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
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