THE FOLLOWING ITIL INTERMEDIATE EXAM OBJECTIVES ARE DISCUSSED IN THIS CHAPTER:

• ✓  The service design issues relating to:
  • Business impact analysis
  • Service level management
  • Risks
• ✓  The six-stage implementation approach
• ✓  Measurements of service design

In this chapter we will explore service design in terms of business impact, service level management, and risks, and you will be required to apply your understanding of these concepts in the exams. You will also be required to understand and analyze the use of the six-stage implementation approach. Lastly, we will look at the measurements of service design.

Business Impact Analysis

Business impact analysis (BIA) is a valuable resource when identifying business needs, impacts, and risks. This method is an essential element of the overall business continuity process, which we looked at in the discussion of the IT service continuity process, and influences the risk reduction and disaster recovery strategy. BIA identifies the parts of the organization that would be most affected by a major incident and what effect the incident would have on the overall business. IT provides insight into identifying the most critical business functions; it also highlights when this criticality differs depending on the time of the day, week, month, or year.

Business impact analysis can also be very helpful in other areas because it provides a far better understanding of the service than would otherwise be the case.

Business management may use the results of business impact analysis to ascertain the effect on the business of the complete or partial loss of a business process or function. This would include whether a manual work-around exists, whether the staff are aware of it, and what the cost of using a manual method would be.

Business impact analysis is also useful in service management, where understanding the effects of the loss of an IT service to the business informs processes such as availability management and IT service continuity management. As part of the design phase of a new or changed service, a business impact analysis should be conducted to help define the business continuity strategy and to enable a greater understanding about the function and importance of the service. This helps to define critical services, what constitutes a major incident, and the subsequent impact and disruption caused to the business. It should be taken into consideration that when scheduling changes or planning service outages, IT must understand the important periods to avoid and the cost of loss of service as well as the potential security implications of a loss of service.

Service Level Management

As part of the service level management process, which we considered earlier, service level requirements for all services are gathered from the business. IT’s ability to meet these requirements will be assessed and finally agreed on in a formal service level agreement (SLA).

For new services, the requirements must be ascertained at the start of the development process, not after completion. Building the service with service level requirements prioritized as part of the most important factors is essential from a service design perspective.

Risks to the Services and Processes

It is important that normal business operations are not disrupted by the implementation of service design and other IT service management processes.

The risk of service disruption must be considered during the production and selection of the preferred solution to ensure that any adverse impact to operational services is minimized.

This assessment of risk should then be considered in detail in the service transition activities as part of the implementation process.

Implementing Service Design

In order to ensure that the services delivered meet the current and future business requirements, we need to document and use the process, policy, and architecture for service design and implement the other service management processes described in the ITIL service design core volume.

One of the most basic questions is, “So where do we start?”

Organizations often ask, “Which process should we implement first?” Ideally, all of the processes should be implemented, because each process adds to the effectiveness of the others—some processes are dependent on others. Ultimately, organizations require a single, integrated set of processes, providing management and control of a set of IT services throughout their entire lifecycle.

Realistically, organizations cannot do everything at once, and attempting to do so may increase the risk of none of the processes working effectively. The areas of greatest need should be addressed first, and this will vary between organizations.

Ascertaining which areas should be addressed first will require a detailed assessment. This may include conducting customer satisfaction surveys, talking to customers, talking to IT staff, and analyzing the processes in action. If required, formal, process, and organizational maturity can also be assessed using established maturity scales.

From the detailed assessment, short-, medium-, and long-term strategies can be developed.

Quick wins may be needed to improve the current situation, although they may be replaced later with a longer-term solution. Quick wins can be useful in showing the principles in action and may help to build momentum. Improvements always require an element of personal change for those involved, and seeing the result of a quick win is often important for staff morale in changing times.

Every organization’s starting point will depend on the maturity of its current service management activities. Implementation priorities should be set against the goals of a service improvement plan (SIP). Throughout the implementation process, key players (both receivers and providers of the service) should be involved in the decision-making process. This will ensure that the correct focus is given to the improvements that will make the most positive impact on the business.

Workshops or focus groups will be beneficial in understanding the requirements and the most suitable process for implementation.

Improving Service Design

The first action is to establish a formal process and method of implementation and improvement of service design, with the appropriate governance in place. This formal process should be based around the six-stage approach illustrated in Figure 19.1.

This approach should be familiar to you from the Foundation qualification, as part of the ITIL Continual Service Improvement core volume. It is also important to use a structured project management method when implementing or improving processes.

Stage 1 What is the vision? Understand the vision by ascertaining the high-level business objectives. Doing so should set and align business and IT strategies.

Stage 2 Where are we now? Assess the current situation to identify strengths and weaknesses in terms of the business, organization, people, and process.

Stage 3 Where do we want to be? This builds on the agreed vision, priorities for improvement, and objective targets.

Stage 4 How do we get there? Document the agreed improvement actions in a service improvement plan and carry out the actions.

Stage 5 Did we get there? Measurements and metrics are required to show whether the objective targets have been met.

Stage 6 How do we keep the momentum going? The process starts again by identifying new goals to be achieved to deliver the business vision.

What Is the Vision?

There are some key elements for ensuring that IT is aligned with business objectives.

Vision and leadership are required, with clearly understood goals. IT staff must be open-minded regarding new tools and methods, and IT as a whole must have a thorough understanding of the business, its needs, and its stakeholders, with time set aside for gaining this knowledge. The business, for its part, needs to understand the potential of IT and how it can help the achievement of business objectives. Information should be made available and accessible to everyone who needs it through a communications plan. IT should be continuously tracking technical developments to identify opportunities for the business.

The starting point for all of these activities is the culture and environment of the service provider organization. The people and the culture have to be open to improvement and change. Therefore, before anything else is attempted, the culture within the service provider needs to be reviewed to ensure that it will accept and support the required changes and improvements.

The following key steps need to be completed to achieve this stage of the cycle:

• Establish a vision aligned with the business vision and objectives, and establish the scope of the project/program with a set of high-level objectives.
• Ensure that the necessary governance, senior management commitment, sponsorship, and budget are in place.
• Establish a culture focused on quality, with a focus on the needs of the customer and the business. Develop a learning environment rather than a blame culture, so lessons learned can be fed into the next cycle. Ensure commitment to continual improvement and the improvement cycle. Most important, ensure that ownership and accountability are clearly defined.

Where Are We Now?

Once the vision and high-level objectives have been defined, the service provider needs to review the current situation in terms of what processes are in place and the maturity of the organization. The activities that need to be completed here are a review, an assessment, or a more formal audit of the current situation, using a preferred technique such as an internal review or audit, a maturity assessment, an external assessment, or an audit against a benchmark such as ISO/IEC 20000 or COBIT. A strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis will highlight areas for attention and improvement. Remember, any change carries a potential risk, so a risk assessment and management methodology should be put in place.

The review should include the following:

• The culture and maturity of the service provider and an assessment of the four Ps (people, processes, products, and partners): the processes in place and their capability, maturity, and adoption; the skills and competence of the people; the services and technology; and the capability of the supplier
• A review of current measurements to ensure that metrics and KPIs are aligned with business goals and objectives
• Finally, a report detailing the findings and recommendations

Baseline measurements are essential. They provide objectivity in assessing the best opportunities for improvement, inform the development of measurable targets for improvement, and provide a basis for later comparison after improvement efforts have been undertaken. Even if the quality of the metrics is poor, they provide a starting point and can be improved later.

When starting out on the implementation or improvement of service design, or any set of processes, it is important to build on the strengths of the existing cultures and processes and rapidly identify and improve the weaknesses.

Where Do We Want to Be?

Based on an assessment of the current state and the vision and high-level objectives, we can define a future desired state, expressed in terms of planned outcomes, including some or all of the following items:

• Improved IT service provision alignment with total business requirements
• Improved quality of service design, achievement of service levels, and quality
• Increases in customer satisfaction and process performance

The future desired state should be defined as specifically as possible to ensure success. The use of SMART objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) is valuable in building clear and unambiguous expectations for the improvement.

How Do We Get There?

This step requires that we define the improvements required and build an improvement plan, including transition and operation. It should include the improvement actions and the methods to be used, the activities to be undertaken, and the timescales involved. It is important to ensure that risks are managed and identify the resources and budgets required. Another key element is to allocate roles and responsibilities. Part of the plan should be the definition of how monitoring, measurement, and review will be carried out. Improvement plans should also take into consideration challenges, critical success factors, and risks.

Did We Get There?

Often organizations start an improvement initiative without an end goal in mind. It is then difficult to measure its success. The measurement system should be clear from the outset. A defined set of metrics should be used in order to ensure that the desired future state is achieved. This desired future state must be expressed in measurable terms (a central aspect of SMART objectives) such as these:

• X% reduction in service design nonconformances
• X% increase in customer satisfaction
• X% increase in the service availability of critical services

Once the improvement actions and plans have been completed, checks against these measures can be carried out to determine whether the objectives were met, whether lessons were learned, and whether it could be done better next time. It should also be determined whether any other improvement actions have been identified.

How Do We Keep the Momentum Going?

Following the implementation of a successful improvement plan, it is important to consolidate the resulting improvements into business as usual and to move on to the next improvements. As part of continual service improvement, the vision and objectives should be reviewed and more improvement actions identified and logged into the continual service improvement (CSI) register.

The six-stage approach can then be repeated so that the cycle of improvement continues. Establishing a culture of continual service improvement requires a desire to improve throughout the organization, with an appreciation that improvement and a willingness to learn is part of everybody’s job.

Measurement of Service Design

It is necessary to ensure that improvements have a baseline and agreed measurable targets if they are to be successful. The success of the service design and the success of the improvement to the processes around the service design must be measured.

Summary

This chapter covered implementing and improving service design. We explored the following topics:

• The service design issues relating to business impact analysis, service level requirements, and risks
• The six-stage implementation approach
• Measurements of service design as a prerequisite for success

Exam Essentials

Understand the issues related to business impact analysis, service level requirements, and risks. All lifecycle stages will be impacted by the results of service design, and it is important to ensure that you understand these critical elements.

Be able to explain and expand on the six-stage implementation approach. Although this is a continual service improvement approach, it is applicable for all lifecycle stages. It is important to understand how this is applied within service design.

Understand and expand on the measurements used for service design. Service design, as a whole, needs to be measured for success because this is where we are preparing the blueprints for new or changed services. Poor design will have significant impacts in service operation.