ITIL/Foundation/Service Management/Service composition

This lesson introduces the main definitions used to define a service components in Information Technology Infrastructure Library 2011.

Objectives and Skills
Objectives and skills for this service composition section of ITIL Foundation include:
 * Define the various components of a service

Activities

 * 1) Review the key terms, then the questions below.
 * 2) Use the  Discuss page to post comments and questions regarding this lesson.

Key Terms
When setting up a new service, all of its components should be evaluated in order to ensure they will fulfil the current and potential future customer needs.

Business process
"A process that is owned and carried out by the business. A business process contributes to the delivery of a product or service to a business customer. For example, a retailer may have a purchasing process that helps to deliver services to its business customers. Many business processes rely on IT services."

A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal) for a particular customer or customers. It often can be visualized with a flowchart as a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or with a Process Matrix as a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on data in the process.

It could be defined as how to raise all the service functional needs.

Core service
As already stated, the core service is what the customer has asked to his provider.

Service design package
"Document(s) defining all aspects of an IT service and its requirements through each stage of its lifecycle. A service design package is produced for each new IT service, major change or IT service retirement."

The purpose of Service Design Package, also called SDP, is to document each service requirements at all stages of its lifecycle.

Business case
"Justification for a significant item of expenditure. The business case includes information about costs, benefits, options, issues, risks and possible problems."

A business case captures the reasoning for initiating a project or task. It is often presented in a well-structured written document, but may also sometimes come in the form of a short verbal argument or presentation. The logic of the business case is that, whenever resources such as money or effort are consumed, they should be in support of a specific business need. An example could be that a software upgrade might improve system performance, but the "business case" is that better performance would improve customer satisfaction, require less task processing time, or reduce system maintenance costs. A compelling business case adequately captures both the quantifiable and unquantifiable characteristics of a proposed project.

The business cases provide what could be expected by the service in term of Return on Investment.

Service level agreement
"An agreement between an IT service provider and a customer. A service level agreement describes the IT service, documents service level targets, and specifies the responsibilities of the IT service provider and the customer. A single agreement may cover multiple IT services or multiple customers."

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a part of a service contract where a service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service or performance). As an example, Internet service providers will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms. In this case the SLA will typically have a technical definition in terms of mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair or mean time to recovery (MTTR); various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details.

By other words, it is a formal understanding with customer about the scope and the level of quality to provide.

Service level requirement
"A customer requirement for an aspect of an IT service. Service level requirements are based on business objectives and used to negotiate agreed service level targets."

A Service Level Requirement (SLR) is a broad statement from a customer to a service provider describing their service expectations. A service provider prepares a service level agreement (SLA) based on the requirements from the customer. For example: A customer may require a server be operational (uptime) for 99.95% of the year excluding maintenance.

It depicts the level required by the customer and that will be used to define the SLA.

Infrastructure
Infrastructure is defined in ITIL as a combined set of hardware, software, networks, facilities, etc. (including all of the information technology), in order to develop, test, deliver, monitor, control or support IT services. Associated people, processes and documentation are not part of IT Infrastructure.

It covers all IT equipment (Servers, network, personal computers …); most of the services related to this are supporting services as they are not seen by the customer but needed to deliver the core service.

Environment
"A subset of the IT infrastructure that is used for a particular purpose – for example, live environment, test environment, build environment. Also used in the term ‘physical environment’ to mean the accommodation, air conditioning, power system etc. Environment is used as a generic term to mean the external conditions that influence or affect something."

The environment is what to be set up to let infrastructure provides the required level of service in a reasonable manner.

Data
The data domain covers what needs to be collected or transferred in order to provide the core service.

Application
"Software that provides functions which are required by an IT service. Each application may be part of more than one IT service. An application runs on one or more servers or clients."

Applications are all pieces of software used by the infrastructure to deliver the core service.

Integration
Integration refers to the interaction between the various applications and the data they will need to carry in order, at the end, to deliver the core service in a level expected by the customer.

Operational level agreement
"An agreement between an IT service provider and another part of the same organization. It supports the IT service provider’s delivery of IT services to customers and defines the goods or services to be provided and the responsibilities of both parties."

An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines the interdependent relationships among the internal support groups of an organization working to support a service-level agreement (SLA). The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.

Supporting service
As previously stated, the supporting services are all the services not firmly required by the customer but that will be anyway needed to properly deliver the core service.

IT process
IT processes are needed by the IT service provider to deliver successfully the core service as defined in the SLA.

Function
"A team or group of people and the tools or other resources they use to carry out one or more processes or activities."

As it will be described more in details further, the functions cover all internal teams in charge of supporting the various IT components.

Roles
"A set of responsibilities, activities and authorities assigned to a person or team. A role is defined in a process or function. Role is also used to describe the purpose of something or what it is used for."

The role is the activity or responsibility provided to a team in order to control that resources are properly delivered to a service.

Suppliers
"A third party responsible for supplying goods or services that are required to deliver IT services. Examples of suppliers include commodity hardware and software vendors, network and telecom providers, and outsourcing organizations."

The supplier is an external third party who will have to deliver support to any of the service component.

Review Questions
{What is a service level package? - A set of documents that define all service levels a customer has to agree. + It is a service package where components are changed at service level to meet customer requirements. - This is a list of all service requirements at all stages of its lifecycle.
 * type=""}
 * This is in the scope of the Service Level Agreement.
 * This is a service design package that has also to document all of these requirements.

{In which of the following components the various tasks needed to deliver a service are detailed? - The Application design. + The business process. - The service level package. - The SLA.
 * type=""}
 * What is it?
 * It lists the service requirements, not how to achieve them.
 * As it is called, the Service level agreement refers to service level instead of tasks to perform.

{Which component documents all service requirements at all lifecycle stage? - The business process. - The OLA. + The service level package. - The SLR.
 * type=""}
 * This lists the tasks needed to deliver the service, not the requirements.
 * It refers only to the requirements inside the service.
 * This refers to the customer requirements and except if the customer is asking for it does not focus on the enabling services requirements.

{Where a provider could see what it could expect to earn against what a service will cost to it? + In the business case. - In the OLA. - In the service value. - In the SLA.
 * type=""}
 * The Operational Level Agreement refers on how enabling services will help to deliver the core service and does not talk about money.
 * The value is focused on the worth a customer could expect from the service compared to what will have to be paid for it.
 * The Service Level Agreement does not care on what a provider will have to pay to deliver the service.

{To which service level refer the following acronyms? -+- the level of service agreed by both customer and provider. --+ the level of service required by the customer. +-- the enabling services level of service needed to fulfil the core service agreed level of service.
 * type=""}
 * OLA | SLA | SLR
 * SLA stands for Service Level Agreement.
 * SLR means Service Level Requirement.
 * OLA means Operational Level Agreement.

{Which of the following items are parts of an ITIL infrastructure? + Application. - Data. + Environment. - Process. - Utility.
 * type="[]"}
 * This is what needs to be carried on.
 * This is a set of activities.
 * This is functionality.

{Which of the following statement best fits for an ITIL Environment? + The external conditions that will influence or affect a service. - The full collection of supporting services needed to deliver a core service. - The part of the process that has to ensure a full compliance with local health and green regulations.
 * type=""}

{When we are referring to integration in ITIL world, what are we integrating? - A function into an application. - A process into a core service. - A Service Design Package in a process. + Data into applications. - Supporting services into a core service.
 * type=""}
 * A function is in the scope of a department, group of person or individual, not of an application.
 * The process, as a set of activities will more have to be defined to deliver the Core service than integrated into it.
 * The SDP is a set of documentations while the process is a set of activities.