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ITIL/Foundation/Service Management/Service composition

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This lesson introduces the main definitions used to define a service components in Information Technology Infrastructure Library 2011.

Objectives and Skills

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Objectives and skills for this service composition section of ITIL Foundation include:

  • Define the various components of a service

Activities

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  1. Review the key terms, then the questions below.
  2. Use the Discuss page to post comments and questions regarding this lesson.

Key Terms

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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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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As already stated, the core service is what the customer has asked to his provider.

Service design package

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2014.

The environment is what to be set up to let infrastructure provides the required level of service in a reasonable manner.[13]

Data

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The data domain covers what needs to be collected or transferred in order to provide the core service.[14]

Application

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2014.

Applications are all pieces of software used by the infrastructure to deliver the core service.[15]

Integration

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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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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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

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IT processes are needed by the IT service provider to deliver successfully the core service as defined in the SLA.[20]


Function

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 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

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"ITIL® 2011 glossary and abbreviations - English". December 11, 2013. Retrieved February 13, 2014.

The supplier is an external third party who will have to deliver support to any of the service component.[23]

Review Questions

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1 What is a service level package?

A set of documents that define all service levels a customer has to agree.
It is a service package where components are changed at service level to meet customer requirements.
This is a list of all service requirements at all stages of its lifecycle.

2 In which of the following components the various tasks needed to deliver a service are detailed?

The Application design.
The business process.
The service level package.
The SLA.

3 Which component documents all service requirements at all lifecycle stage?

The business process.
The OLA.
The service level package.
The SLR.

4 Where a provider could see what it could expect to earn against what a service will cost to it?

In the business case.
In the OLA.
In the service value.
In the SLA.

5 To which service level refer the following acronyms?

OLA SLA SLR
the level of service agreed by both customer and provider.
the level of service required by the customer.
the enabling services level of service needed to fulfil the core service agreed level of service.

6 Which of the following items are parts of an ITIL infrastructure?

Application.
Data.
Environment.
Process.
Utility.

7 Which of the following statement best fits for an ITIL Environment?

The external conditions that will influence or affect a service.
The full collection of supporting services needed to deliver a core service.
The part of the process that has to ensure a full compliance with local health and green regulations.

8 When we are referring to integration in ITIL world, what are we integrating?

A function into an application.
A process into a core service.
A Service Design Package in a process.
Data into applications.
Supporting services into a core service.


References

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  1. ↑ "Business process". Wikipedia. January 6, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ "Service design". www.itilfoundations.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  4. ↑ "Business case". Wikipedia. February 5, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  5. ↑ Rae, Barclay. "How to build the business case for Service Catalog". Axios Systems. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  6. ↑ "Service-level agreement". Wikipedia. January 31, 2014. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  7. ↑ Piscopo, Mark. "Service Level Agreement". www.fastitiltemplates.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  8. ↑ 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.
  9. ↑ "Service level requirement". Wikipedia. November 14, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  10. ↑ "ITIL V3 : The term SLO is deprecated in ITIL V3 to Service…". theartofservice.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  11. ↑ Veen, Annelies van der; van Bon, Jan (2007). Foundations of ITIL V3. Van Haren Publishing. ISBN 978-90-8753-057-0. 
  12. ↑ "ITIL v3 – Business Service Monitoring / Service Management". www.westglobal.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  13. ↑ "ITIL® Release & Deployment Management with Pragmatic Environment Management" (PDF). www.pragmaticconsult.com. Retrieved January 30, 2014.
  14. ↑ "ITIL – A guide to access management". www.ucisa.ac.uk. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  15. ↑ 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.
  16. ↑ Tropp, Claudia (January 26, 2010). "ITIL V3 – Bridging your ITSM and outsourcing strategies". www.esourcingforum.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  17. ↑ Rouse, Margaret (March 2011). "operational level agreement (OLA)". whatis.techtarget.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  18. ↑ "Operational-level agreement". Wikipedia. September 30, 2013. Retrieved February 16, 2014.
  19. ↑ Kempter, Andrea (August 2, 2013). "ITIL Implementation - IT Service Structure - Business Services and Supporting Services". wiki.en.it-processmaps.com. Retrieved January 19, 2014.
  20. ↑ Farne, Caesar (October 3, 2012). "Define processes and functions". itilexampreparation2011.blogspot.fr. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  21. ↑ "ITIL Processes". www.cupe.co.uk. Retrieved February 10, 2014.
  22. ↑ "ITSM Roles" (PDF). itservices.uchicago.edu. University of Chicago. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
  23. ↑ "What is Supplier Management from an ITIL perspective?". www.itilnews.com. Retrieved January 31, 2014.
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