Chapter 5: Service Management Practices & Technical Management Practices Flashcards
What are the 17 service management practices?
Availability management
Business analysis
Capacity and performance management
Change enablement
Incident management
IT asset management
Monitoring and event management
Problem management
Release management
Service catalogue management
Service configuration management
Service continuity management
Service design
Service desk
Service level management
Service request management
Service validation and testing
What is the purpose of availability management?
The purpose of the availability management practice is to ensure that services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.
Definition of availability
The ability of an IT service or other configuration item to perform its agreed function when required.
The availability of a service depends on which two factors?
how frequently the service fails, and how quickly it recovers after a failure
Two terms that need to be known in availability management (think about rail guns in the Expanse)
mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to restore service (MTRS):
*MTBF measures how frequently the service fails. For example, a service with a MTBF of four weeks fails, on average, 13 times each year.
*MTRS measures how quickly service is restored after a failure. For example, a service with a MTRS of four hours will, on average, fully recover from failure in four hours. This does not mean that service will always be restored in four hours, as MTRS is an average over many incidents.
MTBF and MTRS: How were systems designed in the past and how has that changed since then?
Older services were often designed with very high MTBF, so that they would fail infrequently. More recently there has been a shift towards optimizing service design to minimize MTRS, so that services can be recovered very quickly. The most effective way to do this is to design anti-fragile solutions, which recover automatically and very quickly, with virtually no business impact. For some services, even a very short failure can be catastrophic, and for these it is more important to focus on increasing MTBF.
When services are unavailable, what are four common measurements?
User outage minutes
Number of lost transactions (for transaction-related businesses)
Lost business value
User satisfaction
What is the purpose of business analysis?
The purpose of the business analysis practice is to (A) analyse a business or some element of it, (B) define its associated needs, and (C) recommend solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem, which must facilitate value creation for stakeholders.
Business requirements can be utility-focused or warranty-focused. What are warranty requirements and utility requirements?
*Warranty requirements Typically non-functional requirements captured as inputs from key stakeholders and other practices. Organizations should aim to manage a library of pre-defined warranty acceptance criteria for use in practices such as project management and software development and management.
*Utility requirements Functional requirements which have been defined by the customer and are unique to a specific product.
What is the purpose of capacity and performance management?
The purpose of the capacity and performance management practice is to ensure that services achieve agreed and expected performance, satisfying current and future demand in a cost-effective way.
Definition of performance
A measure of what is achieved or delivered by a system, person, team, practice, or service.
What does CI stand for?
configuration item
Any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service.
Service performance depends on what?
Service capacity
How is service capacity defined?
The maximum throughput that a CI or service can deliver
What is the purpose of the change control practice?
The purpose of the change control practice is to (A) maximize the number of successful service and product changes by (1) ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, (2) authorizing changes to proceed, and (3) managing the change schedule.
Definition of change
The addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.
What is the difference between organizational change management and change control?
Organizational change management manages the people aspects of changes to ensure that improvements and organizational transformation initiatives are implemented successfully. Change enablement is usually focused on changes in products and services.
The person or group who authorizes a change is known as a …?
Change authority.
There are three types of change, what are they?
Standard changes
Normal changes
Emergency changes
What’s the difference between standard changes, normal changes, and emergency changes?
These are low-risk, pre-authorized changes that are well understood and fully documented, and can be implemented without needing additional authorization.
These are changes that need to be scheduled, assessed, and authorized following a process.
These are changes that must be implemented as soon as possible; for example, to resolve an incident or implement a security patch. Emergency changes are not typically included in a change schedule, and the process for assessment and authorization is expedited to ensure they can be implemented quickly.
How is a standard request triggered?
How is a normal request triggered?
By a service request, but may also be operational changes
By a change request
Who is the change authority for normal changes and emergency changes?
It can be a different or the same change authority. Depends on the organization.
Who is the change authority for standard changes?
These are pre-approved changes, there is no change authority.
Which change is usually not contained in the change schedule?
Emergency change.
What is a change schedule used for?
The change schedule is used to (1) help plan changes, (2) assist in communication, (3) avoid conflicts, and (4) assign resources.
Which type of change has a facilitated risk management?
Standard change.
This risk assessment does not need to be repeated each time the standard change is implemented; it only needs to be done if there is a modification to the way it is carried out.
What is the purpose of incident management?
The purpose of the incident management practice is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.
Definition of Incident
An unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of a service.
It is important that people working on an incident provide good-quality updates in a timely fashion. What kind of information is contained in these updates?
These updates should include information about (A) symptoms, (B) business impact, (C) CIs affected, (D) actions completed, and (E) actions planned.
Each of these should have a timestamp and information about the people involved, so that the people involved or interested can be kept informed.
What six levels of escalation do incidents have?
*Some incidents will be resolved by the users themselves, using self-help. Use of specific self-help records should be captured for use in measurement and improvement activities.
*Some incidents will be resolved by the service desk.
*More complex incidents will usually be escalated to a support team for resolution. Typically, the routing is based on the incident category, which should help to identify the correct team.
*Incidents can be escalated to suppliers or partners, who offer support for their products and services.
*The most complex incidents, and all major incidents, often require a temporary team to work together to identify the resolution. This team may include representatives of many stakeholders, including the service provider, suppliers, users, etc.
*In some extreme cases, disaster recovery plans may be invoked to resolve an incident. Disaster recovery is described in the service continuity management practice.
Some organizations use a technique called swarming to help manage incidents. How does swarming work?
Many different stakeholders working together initially, until it becomes clear which of them is best placed to continue and which can move on to other tasks.
What’s the purpose of IT asset management?
The purpose of the IT asset management practice is to plan and manage the full lifecycle of all IT assets, to help the organization:
*maximize value
*control costs
*manage risks
*support decision-making about purchase, re-use, retirement, and disposal of assets
*meet regulatory and contractual requirements.
Definition IT asset
Any financially valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.
What is operational technology?
The hardware and software solutions that detect or cause changes in physical processes through direct monitoring and/or control of physical devices such as valves, pumps, etc.
What is asset management? (in the IT context)
Asset management is a well-established practice that includes the acquisition, operation, care, and disposal of organizational assets, particularly critical infrastructure.
What two subtypes of asset management exist? (in the IT context)
IT asset management (ITAM) is a sub-practice of asset management that is specifically aimed at managing the lifecycles and total costs of IT equipment and infrastructure.
Software asset management (SAM) is the infrastructure and process necessary for the effective management, control, and protection of the software assets within an organization, throughout all stages of their lifecycles.
What is a configuration management system?
To what practice does it belong?
A set of tools, data, and information that is used to support service configuration management.
Service configuration management
