Managing the IT Services Process

Managing the IT Service Process is the first book of its kind to recognize the truth of IT Service delivery. It takes the overall view of the service management process and links together the elements of service level management, systems availability, costs and benchmarking, and the helpdesk. In the last 5 years there has been a major structural shift in the IT industry with the traditional position of Helpdesk Manager being replaced by a new function of IT Services Manager. The industry is now concentrating on the formulation of an end-to-end service process that replaces the previous norm of several disparate and non-integrated sections in an IT department such as the helpdesk, applications maintenance, operations, development procurement and systems management. Managers are focusing on a totality of management so they can correlate costs and processes and offer their customers an integrated service. Managing the IT Services Process is an instructional manual written by an acknowledged industry expert and includes techniques, charts, methods, case studies and anecdotes to support the text. The author encourages the reader to formulate an end-to-end IT service process by using a step by step approach. The text describes and encourages integration in IT and therefore will be useful for managers involved in the unified process.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Identifying IT services: The Service Culture; Who is Responsible?; A Structural Basis; The IT Delivery Process; The difference between a service and a process; Principles of service identification and design; Going Into Detail – types of services; The Services: The Specifics of Individual Service Design; The Service List; Applying Service Levels; Wasted service levels; Differentiated Service Levels; Why we must formalize service levels; Client categorization; Service level examples; The Processes: Designing processes; Process/Procedure Design – Management or Staff Responsibility?; Interfaces; Processes in Practice; The Change Management Process; Some IT services Procedures; Procedures in the Non-Standard Change Process; IT Services Organization: Relating to the Business; A Dichotomy of Structure; Towards A Basic IT Structure; IT Structure – the Present-Future Split; The ITSC – The Core of IT Management; Functions in the IT Department; IT Development; IT Administration; IT services; IT services Geography; Staffing: We'll Always Need People; Management Causation of Staff Requirements; The Right People; Hierarchy; Career Path; Performance and Motivation; Managing Skillsets; How Many People?; Mixing responsibilities; The Extended Day; Managing small-scale projects; Client Relationships: Who is the IT services Client?; Corporate responsibility; User competence; The user as a corporate asset; The Question of Affordability; The Decline of Customer Service; Client Roles in the Service Process; Formal User Roles; The Service Level Agreement; Managing Service Delivery: The Service Level Agreement (revisited); The Service Catalogue; Financing IT services; Cost Justification; Measuring IT services: Tactical View of Measurement; Strategic View of Measurement; The 'Big Four' Statistics; Quantifying the Unquantifiable; Reporting: Data for Data's Sake?; Data-Centric and Decision-Centric Reporting; Snapshot Reporting; Reporting in Isolation; Reporting as a Customer Interaction; Operational Reporting; Tools: Outline of IT services Tools; Why No Purpose-Built IT services Tools?; The 'Point of Commonality'; One Concept to Link All IT services Operations; Projects and Tasks; Match the Tool to the Process; Conclusions