Achieving balance in Service Operation
Managing an effective Service Operation is tricky in nature. Service Operation is orientated around tasks that monitor and manage the various functions within an IT Services Organization, and in these challenging financial times - this is not an easy feat.
As various functions are formed
and built primarily to work for different purposes and processes within the
company, it is now the Service Operation primary goal to efficiently work out a
scheme that helps in successfully delivering their goals without nagitvely impacting the quality of IT Service delivered to the business.
ITIL Service Operation provides us with core guidance in how to set about the planning, coordination and management of complex, multi-regional and diverse systems and services. ITIL Version 3 Design Guidelines are available to help. What's paramount is achieving a healthy balance across cost, time, effort and results achieved.
IT View V’s External
Business View
It has been a
struggle over time, on which view to choose when it
comes to weighing up the importance of the business’ IT infrastructure. It’s
always been a battle between what the customers require and what the business
owners think is really necessary.
As customers point out
the importance of IT as a set of services (external view) and the business
owners scrutinize the importance of IT and their components (internal view),
the intelligent IT Service Provider must find rapid and effective ways of understanding the gaps and closing them.
Here’s a quick look
at the different modes of the two views:
Primry Focus
-
extreme
internal focus
-
extreme
external focus
Metrics
-
extreme
internal focus
-
extreme
external focus
The metrics usually
used with this kind of view focuses heavily on the external processes of the
organization without providing any tips on how to improve such faults.
The IT staff usually
gathers their own mode of measurement for their internal processes.
Customer/user experience
-
extreme
internal focus
The customer
experiences a high consistency of deliveries; however the services delivered
are less of what is expected from the company.
This view uses a
push approach, in terms of service delivery.
-
extreme
external focus
The customer
experiences a poor consistency of deliveries, and because of their chosen
reactive mode of service delivery only a few services are delivered to its
users.
Operations Strategy
-
extreme
internal focus
-
extreme
external focus
Procedures and manuals
-
extreme
internal focus
The procedures and
manuals for this kind of view usually focuses on how to manage the IT
infrastructure, however without the correlation of the technology to service
deliveries.
-
extreme
external focus
The procedures and
manuals for this kind of view usually focuses on what should be done, however
failing to describe how it should come into realization.
Cost strategy
-
extreme
internal focus
The cost reduction
for this view is usually done through consolidation of technology and
optimization of operational procedures.
The business impact
of such cost reduction would only be realized later.
-
extreme
external focus
Budget is usually
reserved for those business units that are most in need, and those who fail to
address their needs are left with little or no financial aid.
Training
-
extreme
internal focus
In this view,
training is done as apprentices, where they are shown how things should be done
without imparting with them the reason why.
-
extreme
external focus
In this view,
training is done per project, as technology is viewed as ever changing.
Operations Staff
-
extreme
internal focus
In this view, the
staff is trained on various skill set and they are led to believe that good
technical achievement is similar to good customer service.
-
extreme
external focus
In this view, the
organization is filled with generalized staff that is organized based on their
technical capability and they often encounter problems as they suffer from poor
management of internal processes.
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