The Service Management System

Many organisations worldwide are adopting the ITIL best practice guidelines and some, also the ISO20000 standard to guide their Service Management effort.

ITIL Best Practice Guidelines

The ITIL best practice guidelines address over 25 process areas that add significant value to managing a Service over its lifetime. When these processes have been implemented they effectively constitute a Service Management System (SMS).

A Service Management System represents the way your organisation has agreed to manage its Services.

This "System" is not a computer or IT system although it may contain one or more computer systems (automated processes). It is a generic business system consisting of many inter-related processes, both manual and automated and the assets and resources required to deliver the desired results.

It is not a computer system, although it may use several computer systems.

Creating a usable Service Management System (SMS)

Not all the ITIL processes need to be implemented at once to create a usable Service Management System, but there are a number of foundation-level processes that should be implemented to a minimum level.

For example, an initial Service Management System may consist only of the following ITIL processes in a Development-orientated environment:

• Service Asset and Configuration Management
• Change Management
• Release Management.

In an Operating-orientated environment it may consist only of:

• Service Catalogue Management
• Service Level Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Request Fulfilment.

Once an initial Service Management System has been established it can be improved over time and as required.

Your Service Management System can start small and grow over time.

More importantly, the Service Management System will be used to manage your organisation’s Services on a consistent and proficient basis over their lifetime, especially through the ITIL stages of Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and finally Continual Service Improvement.