Some basic notes from the handouts, based on what I expect the questions to cover.
This is not an exhaustive transcription, just some dot points to help me memorise the things I will be quizzed on later.
1.
A service is a means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that a customer wants to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.
A product is the configuration of an organisation’s resources designed to offer value for a customer.
Utility is what a service does, and if it is fit for use.
Warranty is how a service performs, and if it is fit for purpose.
A customer is a person who defines the requirements for a service, and takes responsibility for the outcomes of service consumption.
A user is an individual who uses a service.
The sponsor is the person who authorises a budget for service consumption.
Service management is a set of organisational capabilities for enabling value to customers in the form of service.
2.
Cost is the amount of money spent on a specific activity of resource.
Value is the perceived usefulness, benefits or importance of something.
Organisation is a person or group of people that has its own functions and responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives.
Output is the tangible or intangible delivery of an activity.
Outcome is a result for a stakeholder, enabled by one or more outputs.
Risk is a possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it more difficult to achive objectives. It can also be describes as uncertainty of outcome. Risk can be added to or remove from the service consumer by the service.
3.
Service Offering is a formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources and service actions.
Service relationships are established between two or more organisations to co-create value.
4.
Guiding principles are recommendations that guide an organisation in all circumstances, regardless of changes in goals, strategies, types of work or management structure. A guiding pricinple is universal and enduring.
Focus on Value. All activities by the organisation should link back to value for itself, its customers and its stakeholders. Value may come in various forms such as revenue, customer loyalty and growth opportunities.
Start where you are. It can be tempting to remove what has already been done to start over when considering an improvement, which can be a costly mistake. Do not start over without carefully considering what is currently available to be leveraged.
Progress iteratively with feedback. Resist the temptation to do everything at once. Even the largest projects must be completed iteratively. By organising the work into smaller, more manageable sections that can be executed in a timely manner a sharper focus can be maintained.
Collaborate and promote visibility. When initiatives involve the right people in the right roles, the effort benefits from increased buy-in, more relevance, better decision making, and increased likelihood of long-term success.
Think and work holistically. Establishing a holistic approach to service management includes establishing an understanding of how all of the parts of an organisation work together in an integrated way.
Keep it simple and practical. Always use the minimum number of steps required to achieve an objective. Outcome based thinking should be used to produce practical solutions that deliver valuable outcomes.
Optimise and automate. Before a process is automated, it should be optimised to the greatest degree possible.
5.
Organisations and People. Staff, customers, users, suppliers, any other stakeholder in the service relationship. Everyone should understand their interfaces with others, their contribution, and have a focus on value. All parties should be developing their skills.
Information and technology. The information that is created, managed and used in the course of service provision. The technologies in use depend on the nature of the service being provided – does the technology raise statutory or regulatory questions? Does the technology introduce risk? Will this technology continue to be viable in the future?
Partners and suppliers. Encompasses relationships with other organisations that are involved in the development, supply, support of services or continual improvement. Also incorporates contracts or other agreements between the organisation and its partners or suppliers.
Value streams and processes. Is concerned with how the various parts of an organisation work together to create value, in an integrated and coordinated way. This focuses on what activities an organisation undertakes and how they create value for stakeholders.
6.
The ITIL service value system. The SVS describes how all the components and activities of the organisation work together as a system to create value.
Key inputs to the SVS can be Opportunity and Demand.
The SVS contains: Guiding Principles, Governance, Service Value Chain, Practices, Continual Improvement.
7.
Service value chain. Interconnected elements support value streams, to facilitate response to demand facilitate value realisation through the creation and management of products and services.
Contains six SVC activities: Plain, Improve, Engage, Design and Transition, Obtain/Build, Deliver and Support.
8.
Plan. The value chain activity is to ensure a shared understanding of the vision, current status and improvement direction for all products and services across the organisation.
Improve. The purpose of the import Value Chain Activity is the continual improvement of products, services and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management.
Engage. The purpose of this VCA is to ensure a good understanding of stakeholder transparency, with continual engagement and good relationships with all stakeholders.
Design and Transition. To ensure products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs and time to market.
Obtain and build. To ensure service components are available when and where they are needed, and meet agreed specifications.
Deliver and support. To ensure products and services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholders specifications.
9.
Information Security Management. To protect information needed by the organisation to conduct its business.
Relationship Management. To establish and maintian relationships between the organisation and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels. It includes the identification, analysis, monitoring and continual improvement of relationships with and between stakeholders.
Supplier Management. To ensure the organisations suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately to ensure the seamless provision of quality products and services.
IT Asset Management. To plan and control the lifecycle of IT assets to help the organisation control costs, maximise value and minimise risk.
Monitoring and event management. To systematically observe services and service components and record configuration changes which are considered to be events.
Release management. To make new and changed services and features available for use.
Service configuration management. Collects and manages information about a wide variety of CIs, including software, hardware, network, people, suppliers and documentation.
Deployment management. To move new or changed components to live environments; may also be involved in deploying components to testing or staging environments.
Continual improvement. To align the organisations practices and services with changing business needs.
Change control. To maximise the number of successful product and service changes by ensuring risk has been properly assessed, authorising changes to proceed and managing the change schedule.
Incident management. To minimise the impact of negative incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.
Problem management. To reduce the likelihood of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors.
Service request management. To support the agreed quality of a service by handling pre-defined user initiated requests in an effective and user-friendly manner.
Service desk. To capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. Should also serve as the first point of contact for the service provider with all of its users.
Service level management. To set clear business-based targets for service levels, and to ensure that delivery of services is properly assessed, monitored and managed against these targets.
10.
IT Asset. Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.
Event. A change of state that has significance for the management of a service or other Configuration Item.
Configuration item. A component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT product or service.
Change. The addition, removal or modification of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.
Incident. An unplanned interruption to a service, or reduction in the quality of services.
Problem. A cause, or potential cause, of one or more incidents.
Known error. A problem that has been analysed but not resolved.
11.
Continual Improvement.
Encouraging improvement, securing time and budget for improvement, logging improvement opportunities, assessing and prioritising improvement opportunities, making business cases, planning and implementing, measuring and evaluating, coordinating improvement activities.
Plan, Improve, Engage, Design, Transition, Obtain/build, Deliver and Support.
Change Control.
Standard change = pre approved.
Normal change = Goes through formal change approval process.
Emergency change = Can be actioned ASAP, needs to be approved.
Incident Management.
Some incidents will be resolved by users, some using KB articles, some by the helpdesk, more complex incidents will be escalated for resolution.
Incidents can be escalated to suppliers, partners or vendors.
The most complex incidents may require a temporary team to resolve.
Problem Management.
Problems are the causes of incidents. Require investigation and analysis.
Problem Identification, Problem Control, Error Control.
Trend analysis, recurring and duplicate issue identification, risk of recurrence, analysing information received from vendors, developers, etc.
Service Request Management.
Delivery action request, information request, service or resource provision request, resource or service access request.
Should be standardised and automated. Should have policies for delivery and approval. User expectation management. Opportunities for improvement identified. Worflows to document redirecting of any requests.
Service desk.
Phone calls, online chat, ticketing, emails.
Limited time window, or 24hr. Centralised or distributed team. Workflow system. Workforce management and resource planning. Knowledgebase. Remote access tools, dashboard and monitoring tools. Configuration management systems.
Service level management.
End to end visibility. Shared view of services. Ensures org meets service levels through collection, analysis and reporting of metrics. Captures and reports on service issues.
SLAs – Must be related to a defined service in service catalog. Should relate to defined outcomes and not simply operational metrics. Should reflect an agreement.
SLAs – Data comes from – Customer engagement, customer feedback, operational metrics, business metrics.
Adventures in a Binary Landscape 