Value to business

Each stage in the ITIL Service Lifecycle provides value to business. For example, service value is modelled in Service Strategy; the cost of the service is designed, predicted and validated in Service Design and Service Transition; and measures for optimization are identified in Continual Service Improvement. The operation of service is where these plans, designs and optimizations are executed and measured. From a customer viewpoint, Service Operation is where actual value is seen.

There is a down side to this, though:

• Once a service has been designed and tested, it is expected to run within the budgetary and Return on Investment targets established earlier in the lifecycle. In reality, however, very few organizations plan effectively for the costs of ongoing management of services. It is very easy to quantify the costs of a project, but very difficult to quantify what the service will cost after three years of operation.
• It is difficult to obtain funding during the operational phase, to fix design flaws or unforeseen requirements – since this was not part of the original value proposition. In many cases it is only after some time in operation that these problems surface. Most organizations do not have a formal mechanism to review operational services for design and value. This is left to Incident and Problem Management to resolve – as if it is purely an operational issue.
• It is difficult to obtain additional funding for tools or actions (including training) aimed at improving the efficiency of Service Operation. This is partly because they are not directly linked to the functionality of a specific service and partly because there is an expectation from the customer that these costs should have been built into the cost of the service from the beginning. Unfortunately, the rate of technology change is very high. Shortly after a solution has been deployed that will efficiently manage a set of services, new technology becomes available that can do it faster, cheaper and more effectively.
• Once a service has been operational for some time, it becomes part of the baseline of what the business expects from the IT Services. Attempts to optimize the service or to use new tools to manage it more effectively are seen as successful only if the service has been very problematic in the past. In other words, some services are taken for granted and any action to optimize them is perceived as ‘fixing services that are not broken’.

This publication suggests a number of processes, functions and measures which are aimed at addressing these areas.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1035