What is IT Service Management?

• Pink News

July 02, 2014

Using “Ask Jeeves” I posed the question “What is IT Service Management?” Not surprisingly top of the responses was “Service Management Software”, other responses included:

• “IT Service Management involves assessing and improving IT processes and technologies to meet business objectives. An IT service management solution enables organizations to monitor, achieve and improve IT service reliability often measured against quantifiable requirements or service level agreements (SLAs).” This sounds to me like a toolset.
• “IT Service Management is concerned with delivering and supporting IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of the organisation. ITIL® provides a comprehensive, consistent and coherent set of best practices for IT Service Management processes, promoting a quality approach to achieving business effectiveness and efficiency in the use of information systems.” Almost there but I did not ask about “ITIL” – whatever that is?

There were several other responses either pointing me towards a toolset or towards ITIL. However, the one I like best because it does not point to either a toolset or a framework is:

“IT Service Management (ITSM) is a process-based practice intended to align the delivery of information technology (IT) services with the needs of the enterprise, emphasizing benefits to customers. ITSM involves a paradigm shift from managing IT as stacks of individual components to focusing on the delivery of end-to-end services using best practice process models.” The bold bits are the crucial ones.

So that is IT Service Management but let’s now ask what an IT Service is. Our friend the IT Sceptic says “Users regard IT as a utility delivering “stuff” in the same way as other utilities deliver water or power. IT is a pipe and what comes out the end are IT services. Users don’t give a toss about the ponds, pumps, purifications and pipes needed to deliver out of the pipe—they just care about the consumables delivered to the screen in front of them.” Now this I really like because I agree with him!

User / customers whatever you want to call them do not care about how you provide the facilities they want they just want them there when they require them – just like a utility. The job of IT Service Management is to ensure the utility is there and available when required to the level of agreed consistency, quality and reliability.

I suppose we could ask “How do we ensure this utility provision.” That is where IT Service Management frameworks (there are quite a few) and standards (a few more) can help. The only must do about this whole thing is understanding your user / customer requirements and needs against your capability to deliver.

Will a toolset help us to understand requirements? Not own their own. Will a framework help us to understand the requirements – again not on its own. A combination of toolset & framework – well now we are getting there. However there is still something missing, something intangible, something we cannot touch, something we all know about but do not necessarily recognise. COMMON SENSE – well done, have a rest now.

So I asked Jeeves again “What is common sense?” Poor old fella had to think about that one. Here are some responses:

“”That collection of prejudices you have acquired by age 18.” Albert Onerock!

“Staying away from dangerous situations.”

“Common sense is morality, generosity, prudence, awareness, quest for knowledge, following the rules, asking when you don’t know.”

“That which is assumed to be universal, but is universally revealed to be assumption.”

But the one that would appear to be most applicable (at least to me) is “Sound and prudent judgement.”

I would like to refine that a little by combining elements of two of the above “Sound and prudent judgement based on awareness, quest for knowledge, following the rules, and asking when you don’t know.”

So where are we now?

We have an IT service that we can view as something that the customer / user wants delivered in a consistent manner they find acceptable, to a level they deem acceptable at a cost they see as acceptable.

IT Service Management is the mechanism we use to align the delivery of IT services with the needs of the enterprise, emphasizing benefits to customers. ITSM involves a paradigm shift from managing IT as stacks of individual components to focusing on the delivery of end-to-end service.”

Both of the above supported by common sense or sound and prudent judgement based on awareness, quest for knowledge, following the rules, and asking when you don’t know.”

That’s it – IT Service Management in less than 1000 words. Anything else?

Written by Dave Jones, Principal ITSM Consultant @ Pink Elephant EMEA, based on an original paper by Troy Du Moulin, Pink Elephant Inc.