Management of ‘Live’ Services

Over the years the ITIL standard has continually evolved the processes and procedures for providing optimal service delivery to end users. As part of this goal, there is increased emphasis on services, rather than physical components. This is particularly important when designing an organization’s CMDB. This service-focused approach is more natural to end users, and allows organizations to wrap many underpinning components under a single umbrella with related dependencies. This dependency tree can then include the physical hardware and software required to assist with the diagnosis and root cause analysis, as well as the impact on the organization.

The goal of Service Catalog Management is to define and manage the active or ‘Live’ services offered to the end users of an organization. Service Catalog Management in LiveTime Service Manager is a sub-component of Service Portfolio Management. As such, the implementation of these processes within the Service Management tool is common, however the scope of each process is quite different.

LiveTime Service Manager is ‘Service Catalog Management Capable’ out-of-the-box, however, the system will function equally well if the feature is never enabled. Should an organization feel they are ready to undertake active management of the Service Catalog, they need only define a ‘Service Portfolio’ team, and define the responsible groups or entities within that team.

Targeted Life Cycle Management Segregation of duties within a team allows for more targeted management of services by persons who actually participate in the phases of a service life cycle. As an example, a service may be taken offline, due to maintenance or repair needs. The people responsible for managing the maintenance or repair are likely to be different to the operational technicians working on the project. Assignment of responsibility ensures that people who are involved at the various life cycle phases are responsible for managing the representation of the item in the CMDB. Request Fulfillment Underpinnings Request Fulfillment directly relates to services within the service catalog, be it a request for a service, a question about a service or request for access to a service. Organizations implementing Request Fulfillment Management are strongly encouraged to implement Service Catalog Management to ensure requests raised by end users are based on accurate information and the appropriate service life cycle.