Service Operation Flashcards
What is service management?
Set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in form of services
Definition of Service
Means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, without the ownership of specific costs and risks
Function
Units of organizations specialized to perform certain types of work and responsible for specific outcomes
Processes
Closed-loop systems that provide change and transformation towards a goal. Have the following characteristics –
- measurable
- specific results
- customers
- responds to a specific event
Purpose of Service Operation
Purpose of Service Operation is to coordinate and carry out the activities and processes required to deliver and manage services at agreed levels to business users and customers
Scope of Service Operations
The scope includes:
- the services themselves
- Service Management processes
- technology
- people
Down side to Value to Business
- once service designed and tested, it is expected to run within the budgetary and ROI targets established earlier in cycle
- difficult to obtain funding during operational phase to fix flaws or unforeseen requirements
- difficult to obtain additional funding for tools or actions aimed at improving efficiency of Service Operation
- Once service operational for a time, it becomes part of the baseline expectation of business
Service Operation Optimization
- long-term incremental improvement
- short-term ongoing improvement
Processes within Service Operation
- Event Management
- Incident and Problem Management
- Request Fulfillment
- Access Management
Functions within Service Management
- Service Desk
- Technical Management
- IT Operations Management
- Application Management
Interfaces to other Service Management Lifecycle Stages
- Change Management
- Capacity and Availability Management
- Financial Management
- Knowledge Management
- IT Service Continuity
- Service Reporting and Measurement (CSI)
Definition of Group
Number of people who are similar in some way – who perform similar activities.
Definition of Team
Formal type of group – work together to achieve a common objective.
Definition of Department
Formal organizational structures that exist to perform a specific set of activities on an ongoing basis.
Definition of Division
A number of departments group together.
Definition of Role
Set of connected behaviors or actions performed by a person, team, or group in a specific context.
Internal IT vs. External Business View
- External view of IT is the way in which services are experienced by users and customers.
- Internal view of IT is the way in which IT components and systems are managed to deliver services.
Organizations need to achieve a balance between external and internal focus.
Stability vs. Responsiveness
Service Operation needs to ensure that the IT infrastructure is stable and available as designed. At the same time, SO needs to recognize that business and IT requirements change.
Balancing Service Quality and Cost
- Early in lifecycle possible to achieve significant increases in service quality with small amount of money
- Later, small improvements are very expensive
Reactive vs. Proactive
- Reactive – no action unless prompted to do so by an external driver
- Proactive – always looking for ways to improve
Proactivity dependent on variables, such as:
- maturity of organization
- culture of organization
- role IT plays in business and mandate it has to influence strategy and tactics of business
- level of integration of management processes and tools
- maturity and scope of knowledge management
Service Design and Service Operation
Service Design Processes offer –
- clear definition of IT service objectives and performance criteria
- linkage of IT service specification to performance of the IT infrastructure
- definition of operational performance requirements
- mapping of services and technology
- ability to model effect of changes in tech and business requirements
- appropriate cost models
Operational Health
Isolate a few “vital signs” that are defined as critical for the successful execution of a business function. Leads to self-healing systems –
Self-healing system characteristics:
- resiliance built into system (redundant disks)
- software, data, and operating system resilience built in (mirror databases)
- ability to shift processing from one physical device to another without disruption
- built-in monitoring utilities
- correlation engine (determine significance of each event)
- set of diagnostic tools (database of known errors)
- ability to generate a call for human intervention (raising an alert or generate an incident)
Communication
- Routine operational communication
- Communication between shifts
- Performance reporting
- Communication in projects
- Communication related to changes
- Communication related to exceptions
- Communication related to emergencies
- Training on new or customized processes and service designs
- Communication of strategy and design to SO teams
Types of Meetings
- Operations meetings
- Department, group, team meetings
- Customer meetings
Documentation
IT Operations Management, Application Management, Technical Management teams involved in documentation.
- process manuals
- technical procedures manuals
- planning documents (capacity and availability plans and service continuity plans)
- creation and maintenance of Service Portfolio
- Definition and maintenance of Service Management tool instructions to meet reporting requirements
Event Management
Monitors all events that occur through the IT infrastructure to allow for normal operations and also detect and escalate exception conditions.
Event defined as any detectable or discernable occurrence that has significance for the management of the IT infrastructure or delivery of IT service and evaluation of the impace a deviation might cause to the service.
Events created by –
- IT service
- Configuration Item
- monitoring tool
Event management basis of operational monitoring and control
Provides a way of comparing actual performance and behavior against design standards and SLAs
Monitoring Tools
- Active – poll key CIs to determine their status and availability
- Passive – detect and correlate operational alerts or communications generated by CIs
Scope of Event Management
- Configuration items
- Environmental conditions (fire and smoke detection)
- Software license monitoring
- Security (including intrusion detection)
- Normal activity (use of an application or performance of a server)
Difference between Monitoring and Event Management
Event management is focused on generating and detecting meaningful notifications.
Monitoring is broader
Event management works with occurrences that are specifically generated to be monitored
Monitoring tracks occurrences, but also actively seeks out conditions that do not generate events
Event Management Value to Business
- EM provides early detection of incidents
- Allows some types of automated activity to be monitored by exception
- Allow for early response by appropriate person or team
- Reduce use of expensive human resources for monitoring
Types of Events
- Regular operation
- Exception
- Unusual, but not exceptional operation
Event Management Process Flow
- Event occurs
- Event notification
- Event detection (by agent running on server)
- Event filtering (communicate to management tool or ignore it)
- Significance of events (informational, warning, exception)
- Event correlation (what is significance of event)
- Trigger (initiate a response)
- Response selection
- Review actions
- Close event