Managing the IT Services Process

243 Pages·2004·1.684 MB·English

by  Noel Bruton

Managing the IT Services Process
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Managing the IT Services
Process
Noel Bruton
AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD
PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO
Butterworth-Heinemann
An imprint of Elsevier
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
200 Wheeler Road, Burlington, MA01803
First published 2004
Copyright © 2004 Noel Bruton. All rights reserved
The right of Noel Bruton to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including
photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not
transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written
permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the
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of this publication should be addressed to the publisher
Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science and Technology Rights
Department in Oxford, UK:
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7506 57235
For information on all Butterworth-Heinemann publications visit
our website at: www.bh.com
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Printed and bound in Great Britain
Contents
Computer WeeklyProfessional Series ix
About the author xi
About this book xii
Preface xiii
List of figures xix
List of case studies xix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Why this book: causal factors 1
1.2 Purpose and scope 2
1.3 Special disclaimer 3
1.4 Electronic version 3
2 Identifying IT services 4
2.1 The service culture 4
IT services as a technology group 4
IT services as a business 5
The consequence of competition 5
2.2 Who is responsible? 11
2.3 Astructural basis 12
2.4 The IT delivery process 12
Market understanding 12
Affordability 13
Demand assessment 15
Services design 16
v
Contents
Staffing 17
Service publishing 18
Point of service availability 21
Operational procedures/service delivery 21
Measurement 22
2.5 The difference between a service and a process 22
2.6 Principles of service identification and design 24
2.7 Going into detail – types of services 25
3 The services 33
3.1 The specifics of individual service design 33
3.2 The service list 39
3.3 Applying service levels 44
3.4 Wasted service levels 45
3.5 Differentiated service levels 47
3.6 Why we must formalize service levels 50
3.7 Client categorization 52
3.8 Service level examples 53
4 The processes 56
4.1 Designing processes 59
Extended service process identification 59
method
Abridged service process identification 62
method
4.2 Process/procedure design – management 63
or staff responsibility?
4.3 Interfaces 67
Common (GND) 68
Data terminal ready/data set ready (DTR/DSR) 70
Transmit (TXD) 70
Receive/acknowledge (RXD/ACK) 71
Receive/non-acknowledge (RX/NAK) 71
4.4 Processes in practice 72
4.5 The change management process 75
Standard change 76
Non-standard change 77
4.6 Some IT services procedures 79
4.7 Procedures in the non-standard change process 84
5 IT services organization 85
5.1 Relating to the business 85
5.2 Adichotomy of structure 86
5.3 Towards a basic IT structure 88
5.4 IT structure – the present–future split 91
5.5 The ITSC – The core of IT management 95
vi
Contents
5.6 Functions in the IT department 96
5.7 IT development 97
5.8 IT administration 99
5.9 IT services 104
5.10 IT services geography 105
Central IT functions 110
Regional IT functions 113
Local IT functions 114
6 Staffing 116
6.1 We’ll always need people 116
6.2 Management causation of staff requirements 117
6.3 The right people 120
6.4 Hierarchy 123
6.5 Career path 125
6.6 Performance and motivation 127
6.7 Managing skillsets 133
6.8 How many people? 134
6.9 Mixing responsibilities 136
6.10 The extended day 136
6.11 Managing small-scale projects 138
7 Client relationships 140
7.1 Who is the IT services client? 140
The implications of ‘customerhood’ 140
Who consumes what 141
7.2 Corporate responsibility 142
7.3 User competence 143
7.4 The user as a corporate asset 143
7.5 The question of affordability 145
7.6 The decline of customer service 147
7.7 Client roles in the service process 150
7.8 Formal user roles 156
The ‘key user’ 156
IT co-ordinator 157
Client-side manager 157
7.9 The service level agreement 158
8 Managing service delivery 162
8.1 The service level agreement (revisited) 162
8.2 The service catalogue 166
8.3 Financing IT services 166
‘Market approach’ 166
‘Micro-economy approach’ 168
8.4 Cost justification 170
vii
Contents
9. Measuring IT services 173
9.1 Tactical view of measurement 173
9.2 Strategic view of measurement 176
9.3 The ‘big four’ statistics 179
9.4 Quantifying the unquantifiable 182
10 Reporting 187
10.1 Data for data’s sake? 187
10.2 Data-centric and decision-centric reporting 189
10.3 Snapshot reporting 190
10.4 Reporting in isolation 191
10.5 Reporting as a customer interaction 193
SLAreviews 193
Reporting as a service 195
Reporting as public relations 195
10.6 Operational reporting 196
11 Tools 197
11.1 Outline of IT services tools 197
11.2 Why no purpose-built IT services tools? 201
11.3 The ‘point of commonality’ 203
11.4 One concept to link all IT services operations 203
11.5 Projects and tasks 205
11.6 Match the tool to the process 209
12 Conclusions 211
12.1 Greenfield site? 211
12.2 Subsuming the helpdesk 211
12.3 Taking mature IT services back to basics 213
12.4 Power and authority to act 214
12.5 IT industry events encourage service change 216
12.6 Last words 217
Index 219
viii
Computer Weekly Professional Series
There are few professions which require as much continuous
updating as that of the IS executive. Not only does the hardware
and software scene change relentlessly, but also ideas about the
actual management of the IS function are being continuously
modified, updated and changed. Thus keeping abreast of what
is going on is really a major task.
The Butterworth-Heinemann – Computer Weekly Professional
Series has been created to assist IS executives keep up-to-date
with the management ideas and issues of which they need to
be aware.
One of the key objectives of the series is to reduce the time it
takes for leading edge management ideas to move from the aca-
demic and consulting environments into the hands of the IT
practitioner. Thus this series employs appropriate technology
to speed up the publishing process. Where appropriate some
books are supported by CD-ROM or by additional information
or templates located on the Web.
This series provides IT professionals with an opportunity to
build up a bookcase of easily accessible, but detailed informa-
tion on the important issues that they need to be aware of to suc-
cessfully perform their jobs.
Aspiring or already established authors are invited to get in
touch with me directly if they would like to be published in this
series.
Dr Dan Remenyi
Series Editor
[email protected]
ix