Pragmatic Application of Service Management

The Five Anchor Approach

Suzanne Van Hove, Mark Thomas

• Publisher: ITGP
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781849288774
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Computer Science

Create a more robust service management system using the best of ITIL ®, ISO 20000-1, COBIT ® and CMMI ® -SVC.

Although ITIL's popularity as a framework for IT service management (ITSM) continues to increase, a number of organisations have realised that its approach is sometimes not quite enough on its own. Many are already working towards compliance with ISO 20000-1 — the international standard for ITSM — but, with the likes of COBIT 5 and CMMI-SVC to consider as well, it can be difficult to determine the best route to take.

Until now, there has been little guidance on how to merge these frameworks in order to produce a robust enterprise philosophy for service delivery. Pragmatic Application of Service Management – The Five Anchor Approach provides that guidance.

Product overview

Completely updated by service management gurus Suzanne D. Van Hove and Mark Thomas, the second edition of Pragmatic Application of Service Management – The Five Anchor Approach provides comprehensive guidance on creating an integrated system based on COBIT 5, ISO 20000, ITIL and CMMI-SVC. This practical book enables service managers to immediately adapt and deploy the guidance, and quickly improve their ITSM function.

It now features a short chapter on applying the 'five anchors' approach to integrating service management frameworks in very small enterprises (VSEs), and contains four new 'caselets' (short case studies).

Packed with instructive illustrations, helpful tables and the authors' very own five anchor approach, this book is ideal for anyone considering adopting, adapting or merging COBIT5, ISO/IEC 20000, ITIL and CMMI-SVC.

Better ITSM through integrated best practice

Written by service management gurus Suzanne D. Van Hove and Mark Thomas, Pragmatic Application of Service Management – The Five Anchors Approach presents a holistic view of service management, and provides a unique mapping to assist service management practitioners in their information gathering.

Contents

1. Why This Book
2. COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, ITIL and CMMI-SVC
3. Addressing VSEs

4. The Five Anchors
5. Caselet #1 – Governance
6. Caselet #2 – Resource Optimization
7. Caselet #3 – Risk Management
8. Caselet #4 – Achieve Business Outcomes
9. Caselet #5 – Compliance & Improvement

10. Caselet #6 - Strategic Alignment

11. Caselet #7 – Security, Compliance & Risk

12. Caselet #8 - Value-based Portfolio

13. Caselet #9 – Strategy Choice & Market Conditions

14. Caselet #10 – Plan & Use Resources

Appendix A– The Map

About the authors

Dr Suzanne D. Van Hove owns and manages SED-IT, a small service management consulting and training company. She has worked in multiple professional verticals leading or coaching service management initiatives. She has also written and delivered accredited courseware for ITIL ® and ISO/IEC 20000, as well as multiple workshops and seminars, both nationally and internationally. She is the current chair for INCITS GIT1 – the US national mirror of JTC1/SC40, the Special Committee for Service Management. She also leads the US mirror for JTC1/SC7/WG24. Dr Van Hove is an adjunct professor at Indiana University, Kelley School of Business and has served on the board of directors of itSMF USA as the knowledge management director. In recognition of her contributions to the service management community, Dr Van Hove was the 2013 recipient of the itSMF USA Lifetime Achievement Award. An opera aficionado and avid rosebush gardener, Dr Van Hove resides in Louisville, KY, USA.

Mark Thomas is the founder and president of Escoute Consulting, an IT governance consultancy focusing on helping enterprises realisebenefits through risk and resource optimisation. As a nationally known ITIL and COBIT expert with more than 20 years of professional experience, Mark's background spans leadership roles from data centre chief information officer (CIO) to management and IT consulting. Mark has led large teams in outsourced IT arrangements, conducted project management office (PMO), service management and governance activities for major project teams, and managed enterprise applications implementations across multiple industries.

Mark has an array of industry experience in the healthcare, finance, manufacturing, services, high technologyand government verticals. When he's not travelling, Mark lives with his family in the Kansas City, MO, area and claims to be a 'certified' barbeque judge in his spare time.

ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the PeopleCert group. Used under licence from PeopleCert. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1: WHY THIS BOOK

As independent consultants, we are constantly asked the same set of questions:

 

• “Aren’t these frameworks for big companies only?”
• “Where do we start? What do we have to do?”
• “What do we measure?”
• “Is there a difference between ‘prescriptive’ and ‘suggestive’ when it comes to frameworks?”
• “Isn’t ITIL (insert any other service management framework/standard/methodology³) better than COBIT (insert any other service management framework)?”
• “ITIL (insert any other service management framework) doesn’t work. What else ya got?”
• “If we use multiple frameworks, how do we fit them together?”

 

What consistently surprises us is the prevalent “one service management body of knowledge is better than the others” debate. The service management community seems to have polarized to a specific framework and developed a bit of “tunnel vision.” Currently, ITIL is the “most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world.”⁴ As robust as ITIL is, there are areas where the information provided is either lacking or incomplete (e.g. governance, risk, implementing a working service management system, etc.). Of course, this shouldn’t create a negative impression but it is an opportunity for the Service Manager to explore the other frameworks.

So, let’s level set. First, all service management frameworks support the goal of delivering quality services that benefit the business efficiently, effectively and economically. This is not an unknown to anyone in the service management field. It’s why they (and their organization) have adopted and adapted the framework of their choice. However, the quandary is this: no matter what framework has been chosen, there are gaps. These gaps become more and more noticeable as one explores all available frameworks.

Second, if we agree there are gaps, we also must agree the various frameworks all have specific strengths – there is a reason why there are so many frameworks – they were developed because what was available had gaps! This is just simple logic. Service managers then need to recognize the gaps and then exploit the strengths found in the service management frameworks. As in life, there is no time or place for bigotry!

Third, most service managers have taken one or more certification classes. Well done. As good as most training is, it is not a substitute for experience. The academic deployment of framework guidance is typically doomed from the start; often creating greater disruption than the original situation which was supposed to improve with the deployment of best practice. Knowledge does not equate success.

We also recognize there will be controversy around what we have written. That is the beauty of applying frameworks – there never is an absolute. As long as one can justify, document and demonstrate the benefit sought has been achieved, there is no “wrong.” Can the system improve? Absolutely and always – we are firm believers in continual improvement knowing the only constant in life is change. Thus, we encourage you to look for and communicate those improvements.

The Focus

This book focuses on four of the many available frameworks – we’d love to include “all” of them but we do have to define a scope or we would never be done. Therefore, we chose (in no particular order) COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000-1, ITIL and CMMI-SVC. We felt these four would adequately support the intent of this book and offer a solid foundation on which to build. We will offer other frameworks for consideration where appropriate and encourage you to explore them to continually improve your service management initiative.

We chose these four for the following reasons:

 

• Availability of information
• Pervasiveness of deployment
• International acceptance
• A business need to create value
• Process orientation.

 

Please don’t interpret the inclusion or omission of any of the many service management frameworks as a value-based decision. Each framework has a purpose and benefit. The four we’ve chosen creates a manageable level of information for this book which is to show how to deploy an amalgamated solution using the strengths of each. We will use caselets (mini case studies) to provide context – each caselet is fictitious but based on real events from our consulting careers. We’ve chosen some rather generic and common events to demonstrate how to combine the best practices.

Strengths

While each of the frameworks is described in the next chapter, we thought it appropriate to list the strengths as we see them for these four frameworks.

 

• COBIT
• Ability to conduct process capability assessment
• Metrics
• RACI diagrams to show interrelationships
• ISO/IEC 20000-1
• Concise listing of what MUST be achieved
• Service Management System (SMS)
• ITIL
• Well-described processes
• Generic information around lifecycle activities.
• CMMI-SVC
• Organizational supports for improvement
• Defines an evolutionary path for improvement

 

Combining these strengths, you can readily see the following benefits:

 

• An overall management system for the service management activities (SMS)
• Business-based philosophy based on Deming’s PCDA
• Processes to support the lifecycle service delivery
• Interrelationships of processes for efficiency
• Descriptions of the various maturity levels within the processes (drives improvements)
• Measuring process performance
• Organizational support of the portfolio of services from the enterprise perspective
• Integrated management of multiple services

 

The Five Anchors and Caselets

Chapter 4 will hold the main content –an analysis structure, which we call the Five Anchors, developed to ensure an enterprise-wide assessment. The Five Anchors are applied to five caselets to show how to not only analyse the situations but also apply multiple frameworks towards a common goal.

When used, this analysis structure, based on practical experience as well as guidance from the service management frameworks, is a consistent view into any scenario. We’ve then applied various frameworks to provide information and best practices that an organization can adopt/adapt creating a solution to benefit the business.

To assist in your learning, a comprehensive mapping between COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000-1, ITIL and CMMI-SVC, can be found in Appendix A. We recognize the 37 processes described in COBIT do not necessarily create a one-to-one relationship with the processes in ISO/IEC 20000-1, ITIL and CMMI-SVC. We used each framework’s numbering scheme to point to specific references rather than regurgitate the information held within these frameworks. For full comprehension and to compare the information, you will need to view the full references.

 

³ We recognize the many service management frameworks, standards, methodologies as well as the particular nature of those terms. For ease of reading, we will use the term “framework” to represent all unless we are specifically speaking to an international standard.

⁴ www.axelos.com/best-practice-solutions/itil

CHAPTER 2: COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, ITIL AND CMMI-SVC

While most will recognize and have in-depth knowledge of one or two of these service management philosophies, we thought it necessary to level-set not only the core structural information, but to also describe the improvement models that are integral to each framework.

O...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Foreword
• About The Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Why This Book
• Chapter 2: COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, ITIL and CMMI-SVC
• Chapter 3: Addressing VSEs
• Chapter 4: The Five Anchors
• Chapter 5: Caselet #1 - Governance
• Chapter 6: Caselet #2 - Resource Optimization
• Chapter 7: Caselet #3 - Risk Management
• Chapter 8: Caselet #4 – Achieve Business Outcomes
• Chapter 9: Caselet #5 – Compliance & Improvement
• Chapter 10: Caselet #6 – Strategic Alignment
• Chapter 11: Caselet #7 – Security, Compliance & Risk
• Chapter 12: Caselet #8 – Value-based Portfolio
• Chapter 13: Caselet #9 – Strategic Choice & Market Conditions
• Chapter 14: Caselet #10 – Plan & Use Resources
• Appendix A: The Map
• ITG Resources