The popularity of ITIL® in the past decade has led IT organizations worldwide to recognize the importance of, and invest into the delivery, support and management of IT Services. However, most of the IT Service Management efforts so far have been targeted at the back end of the service life cycle – Service Operation. Most IT organizations are simply implementing Service Support processes and functions such as Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, etc. to better manage IT services once they are in production.
The almost exclusive focus of the current service management efforts on IT Operations simply perpetuates the traditional IT model – “Build and then Manage”, wherein one group builds IT services in isolation and throws them over the proverbial “wall” to the other group that struggles to support them resulting in poor customer satisfaction. The implementation of processes and tools to manage and support IT services is absolutely necessary but hardly sufficient to realize the goals of ITSM. IT services have to be built to be manageable in the first place. Equal, if not more, attention must be paid to the front end of the service life cycle, where IT services are designed and developed.
ITIL® has long championed the “Build to Manage” philosophy and called for “a holistic approach to the design of IT services” to ensure that the service not only “satisfies the functionality required by the business” but also “all of the management and operational requirements” of the service itself. This holistic approach to Service Design requires systematic integration of ITSM best practices with Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) thru a comprehensive IT Service Engineering Framework (ITSEF) - a framework of well articulated operational requirements that must be addressed during the design and development of a service thru mandatory architectural components and SDLC activities. I strongly believe that Service Engineering Framework truly has the potential to tear down the proverbial “wall” and bring about the much needed paradigm shift from “Build and then Manage” to “Build to Manage”.
Thru this blog, I intend to explore this critical yet often ignored topic in the IT industry. I intend to use this blog as a forum for IT professionals to discuss, debate and share the critical components of the Service Engineering Framework.
The almost exclusive focus of the current service management efforts on IT Operations simply perpetuates the traditional IT model – “Build and then Manage”, wherein one group builds IT services in isolation and throws them over the proverbial “wall” to the other group that struggles to support them resulting in poor customer satisfaction. The implementation of processes and tools to manage and support IT services is absolutely necessary but hardly sufficient to realize the goals of ITSM. IT services have to be built to be manageable in the first place. Equal, if not more, attention must be paid to the front end of the service life cycle, where IT services are designed and developed.
ITIL® has long championed the “Build to Manage” philosophy and called for “a holistic approach to the design of IT services” to ensure that the service not only “satisfies the functionality required by the business” but also “all of the management and operational requirements” of the service itself. This holistic approach to Service Design requires systematic integration of ITSM best practices with Enterprise Architecture (EA) and the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) thru a comprehensive IT Service Engineering Framework (ITSEF) - a framework of well articulated operational requirements that must be addressed during the design and development of a service thru mandatory architectural components and SDLC activities. I strongly believe that Service Engineering Framework truly has the potential to tear down the proverbial “wall” and bring about the much needed paradigm shift from “Build and then Manage” to “Build to Manage”.
Thru this blog, I intend to explore this critical yet often ignored topic in the IT industry. I intend to use this blog as a forum for IT professionals to discuss, debate and share the critical components of the Service Engineering Framework.
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Dhiraj, in ITIL v3 there is a loosely defined design methodology where in Service Strategy you define the 'Service Package' and then in Service Design you define the 'Service Design Package'. This package should take into account the DR, availability, capacity, service levels, etc. for the holistic service and thus drive to a fully designed service. The key is that the service design needs to take into account the later operational processes to ensure that the service can be effectively and efficicently operated and measured.
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