ITIL Service Operation

An Introduction to ITIL Service Operation

Service Operation is aimed at IT Managers, IT Consultants, Service Practitioners, Outsourcers and IT Service Vendors. It is (unsurprisingly) the core service operation book of the latest incarnation of ITIL and it has been carefully positioned between the ITIL Service Transition Book, and well… encompassed by the ITIL Continual Service Improvement book.   

Service Operation is at the very heart of day-to-day, business as usual, Service Delivery. It contains much of the old ITIL V2 Service Support Blue book - you know: incident, technical management, problem management and aspects of change management. New to Service Operation, but not to ITIL, is Access Management and Service Request Fulfilment.

Think of it as a blueprint to help build and run the “factory of IT Service Delivery” - all underpinned by Infrastructure and Application Delivery.

Service Operation focusses on the precise execution and delivery of all processes and services to deliver business value for customers and users in a consistent, reliable and repeatable manner.

An often overlooked benefit of Service Operation is that it also provides Operational Validation of the Service being delivered.

Service Operation is subject to Continual Service Improvement and ultimately the delivery of service excellence. Quite how real world, hard working Service Operation folks get the time to successfully carry out quality improvements is where consultants often come in.

The goal of Service Excellence can also be supported by the attainment of the world’s first global standard for IT Service Management, ISO/IEC 20000

The primary goals of Service Operation are to: -

• Enable responsive, stable and repeatable IT Service Delivery
• Provide robust end-to-end working practices
• Deliver improved Processes such as Incident and Problem Management
• Deliver new Processes such as: Event Management and Service Request Fulfilment
• Promote more adaptive, responsive and agile Service Operation functions
• Help shape and define Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition and Continual
Service Improvement (the core of the new ITIL V3 Service Lifecycle Model)

Service Operation purpose

In summary, the purpose is: -

• To coordinate and deliver key activities and processes required to provide and manage
services at agreed levels to the business, users and customers

• To manage the technology and toolsets that are used to deliver and support services

• To manage, measure, control and feedback improvements in the day to day operations

• To monitor performance, assess metrics and gather data to input into the Continual Service Improvement Process Area

What is the value of Service Operation to a business?

The required value of what any given service should provide to the business is actually modelled in Service Strategy and that model manifests itself in a more structured way within Service Design.

The structure and cost of the Service is then designed and validated in Service Design and Service Transition. The actual measures for required levels of optimization are identified in Continual Service Improvement.

A critical point that is covered within the book is: -

“The only value that matters is that perceived by the customer. Service Operations is where the value is delivered and judged.”