Service Design

1. Introduction

All organizations that use IT will depend on IT to be successful. If IT processes and IT services are implemented, managed and supported in the appropriate way, the business will be more successful, suffer less disruption and loss of productive hours, reduce costs, increase revenue, improve public relations and achieve its business objectives.

Most authorities now identify four types of IT assets that need to be acquired and managed in order to contribute to effective IT service provision. These are IT infrastructure, applications, information and people. Specifically there is a strong emphasis on the acquisition, management and integration of these assets throughout their 'birth to retirement' lifecycle. The delivery of quality IT services depends on the effective and efficient management of these assets.

These assets on their own, however, are not enough to meet the Service Management needs of the business. ITIL Service Management practices use these four asset types as part of a set of capabilities and resources called 'service assets'.

An IT service, used in support of business processes, is constructed from a combination of IT assets and externally provided 'underpinning' services. Once in place, an IT service must be supported throughout its 'life', during which time it may be modified many times, either through technological innovation, changing business environment, changing usage of the service, changing its service quality parameters, or changing its supporting IT assets or capabilities (e.g. a change in an application software component to provide additional functionality). Eventually the IT service is retired, when business processes no longer have a use for it or it is no longer cost-effective to run. Service Transition is involved in the build and deployment of the service and day-to-day support, and delivery of the service is the role of Service Operation, while Continual Service Improvement implements best practice in the optimize and retire stages.

From this perspective, Service Design can be seen as gathering service needs and mapping them to requirements for integrated services, and creating the design specifications for the service assets needed to provide services. A particular feature of this approach is a strong emphasis on re-use during design.

The main aim of Service Design is to design IT services, together with the governing IT practices, processes and policies, to realize the strategy and to facilitate the introduction of these services into the live environment ensuring quality service delivery, customer satisfaction and cost-effective service provision. Service Design should also design the IT services effectively so that they don't need a great deal of improvement during their lifecycle. However, continual improvement should be embedded in all Service Design activities to ensure that the solutions and designs become even more effective over time and to identify changing trends in the business that may offer improvement opportunities. Service Design activities can be periodic or exception-based when they may be triggered by a specific business need or event.

	Capabilities		Resources
Al	Management		Financial capital	A9
A2	Organization		Infrastructure	A8
A3	Processes		Applications	A7
A4	Knowledge		Information	A6
	People	A5	People
Figure 1.1 Resources and capabilities are the basis for value creation

1.1 Overview

• Services
• Design of Service Management systems and tools, especially the Service Portfolio
• Technology architectures and management systems
• Processes
• Measurement methods and metrics.

The publication covers the methods, practices and tools to achieve excellence in Service Design. It enforces the principle that the initial Service Design should be driven by a number of factors, including the functional requirements, the requirements within the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), the business benefits and the overall design constraints.

Chapter 4 explains the end-to-end process of the areas key to successful Service Design. These processes are utilized by all other stages of the Service Lifecycle, and other processes are taken into account by Service Design. However, it is here that Service Catalogue Management, Service Level Management, Capacity Management, Availability Management, IT Service Continuity Management, Information Security Management and Supplier Management are covered in detail.

The appendices to this publication give examples of the Service Design Package, Service Acceptance Criteria, process documentation templates, design and planning documents, environmental architectures and standards, sample SLAs, OLAs and Service Catalogue and the Service Management process maturity framework.

1.2 Context

Figure 1.2 Sourcing of service management practice

1.2.1 Service Management

1. IT systems, applications, and infrastructure are components or sub-assemblies of a larger product. They enable or are embedded in processes and services.
2. IT is an organization with its own set of capabilities and resources. IT organizations can be of various types, such as business functions, shared services units, and enterprise-level core units.
3. IT is a category of services utilized by business. They are typically IT applications and infrastructure that are packaged and offered as services by internal IT organizations or external service providers. IT costs are treated as business expenses.
4. IT is a category of business assets that provide a stream of benefits for their owners, including but not limited to revenue, income and profit. IT costs are treated as investments.

1.2.2 Good Practice In The Public Domain

To cope with the pressure, organizations benchmark themselves against peers and seek to close gaps in capabilities. One way to close such gaps is the adoption of good practices in wide industry use. There are several sources for good practices, including public frameworks, standards, and the proprietary knowledge of organizations and individuals (Figure 1.2).

Public frameworks and standards are attractive when compared with proprietary knowledge:

• Proprietary knowledge is deeply embedded in organizations and therefore difficult to adopt, replicate or transfer, even with the cooperation of the owners. Such knowledge is often in the form of tacit knowledge that is inextricable and poorly documented.
• Proprietary knowledge is customized for the local context and specific business needs to the point of being idiosyncratic. Unless the recipients of such knowledge have matching circumstances, the knowledge may not be as effective in use.
• Owners of proprietary knowledge expect to be rewarded for their long-term investments. They may make such knowledge available only under commercial terms through purchases and licensing agreements.
• Publicly available frameworks and standards such as ITIL, COBIT, CMMI, eSCM-SP, PRINCE2, ISO 9000, ISO/IEC 20000, and ISO/IEC 27001 are validated across a diverse set of environments and situations rather than the limited experience of a single organization. They are subject to broad review across multiple organizations and disciplines. They are vetted by diverse sets of partners, suppliers and competitors.
• The knowledge of public frameworks is more likely to be widely distributed among a large community of professionals through publicly available training and certification. It is easier for organizations to acquire such knowledge through the labour market.

Ignoring public frameworks and standards can needlessly place an organization at a disadvantage. Organizations should cultivate their own proprietary knowledge on top of a body of knowledge based on public frameworks and standards. Collaboration and coordination across organizations are easier on the basis of shared practices and standards.

1.2.3 ITIL And Good Practice In Service Management

The ITIL Library has the following components:

• The ITIL Core - best practice guidance applicable to all types of organizations who provide services to a business
• The ITIL Complementary Guidance - a complementary set of publications with guidance specific to industry sectors, organization types, operating models and technology architectures.

Figure 1.3 The ITIL Core

The ITIL Core consists of five publications (Figure 1.3). Each provides the guidance necessary for an integrated approach, as required by the ISO/IEC 20000 standard specification:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement.

Each publication addresses capabilities having direct impact on a service provider's performance. The structure of the Core is in the form of a lifecycle. It is iterative and multidimensional. It ensures organizations are set up to leverage capabilities in one area for learning and improvements in others. The Core is expected to provide structure, stability and strength to Service Management capabilities with durable principles, methods and tools. This serves to protect investments and provide the necessary basis for measurement, learning and improvement.

The guidance in ITIL can be adapted for use in various business environments and organizational strategies. The Complementary Guidance provides flexibility to implement the Core in a diverse range of environments. Practitioners can select Complementary Guidance as needed to provide traction for the Core in a given business context, much like tyres are selected based on the type of vehicle, purpose and road conditions. This is to increase the durability and portability of knowledge assets and to protect investments in Service Management capabilities.

1.2.3.1 Service Strategy

Organizations use the guidance to set objectives and expectations of performance towards serving customers and market spaces, and to identify, select and prioritize opportunities. Service Strategy is about ensuring that organizations are in a position to handle the costs and the risks associated with their Service Portfolios, and are set up not just for operational effectiveness but also for distinctive performance. Decisions made with respect to Service Strategy have far-reaching consequences, including those with delayed effect.

Organizations already practising ITIL use this publication to guide a strategic review of their ITIL-based Service Management capabilities and to improve the alignment between those capabilities and their business strategies. This publication of ITIL encourages readers to stop and think about why something is to be done before thinking of how. Answers to the first type of questions are closer to the customer's business. Service Strategy expands the scope of the ITIL Framework beyond the traditional audience of IT Service Management professionals.

1.2.3.2 Service Design

1.2.3.3 Service Transition

1.2.3.4 Service Operation

1.2.3.5 Continual Service Improvement

1.3 Purpose

This publication follows on from the Service Strategy publication, which provides guidance on alignment and integration of the business needs to IT. It enables the reader to assess the requirements when designing a service, and documents industry best practice for the design of IT services and processes.

Although this publication can be read in isolation, it is recommended that it be used in conjunction with the other ITIL publications. The guidance in the ITIL publications is applicable generically. It is neither bureaucratic nor unwieldy if utilized sensibly and in full recognition of the business needs of the organization. Service Design is important for setting the stage to deliver services effectively to the business and meet the demand for growth and change. Enhancement is typically greater in cost and resource than development. Significant consideration should therefore be given to designing for the ease and economy of support over the whole lifecycle, but more importantly it is not possible to completely reengineer a service once in production. It may be possible to get close, but it will be impossible to get back to a design once something is running. Retrofitting the design is difficult and costly and never achieves what could have been achieved if designed properly in the first place.

1.4 Usage

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