Service Strategy Flashcards
What are the reasons that ITIL has seen success as it has?
It is vendor-neutral, it is “non-prescriptive” (that is, its practices are applicable to all service providers), and its practices are “best practices.
What are the five stages of the service lifecycle?
Service strategy Service design Service transition Service operation Continual service improvement
What is the purpose of the service strategy phase?
The service strategy phase is meant to define the four P’s:
Perspective
Position
Plans
Patterns
These are what a service provider needs to execute in order to meet an organization’s business outcomes.
What are the main objectives of service strategy?
The main objectives of service strategy are to provide an understanding of:
- our service(s) and the customers who use them, and why.
- how our services create value, how they are created, supported/funded, delivered, and why. In addition, documentation.
- ow to identify new opportunities to provide services and how to exploit them.
What processes are within the scope of service strategy?
The following processes are within the scope of service strategy:
- Strategy management for IT services
- Service portfolio management
- Financial management for IT services
- Demand management
- Business relationship management
What is the business value of service strategy?
The business value of service strategy is seen in the following:
- The ability to link the actual activities to the outcomes the customer wants (giving value to them).
- The ability to understand what service levels are most useful for customers’ success, allowing the service provider to arrange itself to offer those levels quickly & easily.
- Enable quick response from the service provider.
- Support for the creation of a service portfolio.
- Aid in communication between the provider and customer.
How would you define the value of a service?
The value of a service is the level to which the service meets the customer’s expectations. The value comes entirely from what the service allows someone to do.
What are the main characteristics of service value?
The main characteristics of service value are:
- Value is defined by the customer
- Customers will select the service that, to them, has the best fit of features to cost.
- Value is measured by customers in terms of how much the service helps them meet their goals.
- The value of a service may change over time.
What are the three pieces of information that are necessary to understand a service’s value?
- What services does IT provide?
- What do the services achieve?
- How much do the services cost?
What determines how a customer perceives the value of a service?
The customer’s value from a service is determined by:
- Customer Preference
- Customer Perception
- Customer’s Actual End Result (what they got)
What are the components of a customer’s perception of a service’s value?
- Reference Value: The starting point for customer value. It’s the good things they’ve heard about the service, or how much they hate doing it themselves.
- Positive Difference: The positive difference is the perceived benefits the service will bring, based on the additional warranty and utility of the service.
- Negative Difference: This is what the customer sees themselves losing by taking on the service; things like quality issues, hidden costs, etc.
- Net Difference: How the customer actually sees the service, looking at both good and bad.
It can be said that customers do not buy services. What do they actually buy?
Customers do not buy services, instead buying the fulfillment of their particular needs.
In regards to the value of a service from a customer’s perspective, what is “reference value”?
Reference value is any prior expectation the customer has of the potential new service, compared to previous experiences or research with similar services. This might be a comparison of cost, quality, or even reputation with alternatives.
In regards to reference values, what actually drive the customer’s decision to invest in the service?
The customer will take their reference value expectations, and determine if the service is, all-in-all, better than the reference value, taking into consideration any negatives.
Why are services different from products in regards to supply and demand?
Products can be pre-made to meet future demand; services cannot, and therefore must be synchronized with demand as it fluctuates.
What is a pattern of business activity?
A pattern of business activity, or PBA, is a recognized pattern of demand for a service as observed over a period of time.
What elements make up a formal Pattern of Business Activity profile?
A Pattern of Business Activity profile should include the following:
Classification - The classification of the PBA includes whether it is automated or user-driven, the outcomes of the PBA, and the workload supported.
Attributes - Attributes are things like frequency, volume, location, duration.
Requirements - Requirements detail necessary service levels, performance, availability, security, latency, etc.
Service Asset Requirements - This details what resources are necessary and when they will be necessary.
What is a service portfolio, and what purpose does it serve?
A service portfolio outlines all the available services that the service provider… provides? It describes specific business needs that the customer might have, and the service to satisfy that need. It is not necessarily customer-facing, as it also outlines retired services, as well as services in the “pipeline”. It also may list third-party services that are necessary to primary services, and detail how the services interrelate to one another.
If the service portfolio shows services that are not “customer-facing”, how, then, can the customer make sense of it?
Service portfolios generally have a multitude of views, filters that remove unnecessary elements depending on the intended audience.
What is a service catalogue?
A service catalogue is a document that contains all live services, including those that are available for deployment. It includes two types of service: Customer-facing services, and the supporting services that are required to deliver those customer-facing services.