ITIL Service Delivery is one of two disciplines that make up ITIL Service Management and is covered as part of the ITIL Foundation course.
ITIL Service Delivery assists the smooth delivery of an IT service to a customer. Service Delivery brings business and IT management together to benefit the company as a whole, eliminating the siloed communication and management structures of old.
Effective Service Delivery processes should:
- Define the scope of IT services
- Define the roles and responsibilities of customer, users, and service providers
- Set expectations of service quality and deadlines
Services need to be tailored to meet the specific business needs of the customer. Establishing clear Service Delivery processes is important to determine how best to provide services with the right mix of internal staff/resources and external vendors.
Measuring the results of services is key to Service Delivery. Meaningful metrics can be used to drive continuous service improvement.
Effective Service Delivery strategy is comprised of 5 key components:
- Service level management
- Financial management for IT services
- Capacity management
- Availability management
- IT service continuity management
1. Service Level Management
Service level Management processes define business roles and responsibilities. This is important for establishing clear goals for Service Delivery – clear goals make it easy to measure and report on success factors or KPI’s.
Measuring success factors guarantees business receive appropriate levels of service at a reasonable cost.
Service Level Management is responsible for:
- Defining services
- Providing levels of service needed to support the agreed-upon processes
- Developing and satisfy service level agreements (SLAs) and operational level agreements (OLAs)
- Outlining costs for the services developed.
Performance data helps the SLM team set the expected levels of service that the business is currently experiencing. With this data, the SLM team can work with the customer to ensure services are efficient and cost-effective.
2. Financial Management for IT Services
While Service Level Management manages services, Financial Management determines the costs of those services and provides accounting support. In short, they ensure costs fall within approved tolerances and that funds are spent well.
Depending on the role of IT in an organization, there are different best practices for financial management.
Some businesses may see IT as an expense to be managed, other businesses may see IT as an avenue for generating profit etc.
3. Capacity Management
Capacity management (CM) ensures IT infrastructure resources are in place to satisfy planned business needs. It also makes sure those infrastructure assets are effectively used.
The right CM strategy ensures that IT service is proactive, rather than reactive. Instead of reacting to issues, you can take corrective actions before any users experience a service issue.
CM can be sued to build an annual infrastructure growth plan. It can also be used to optimize the application lifecycle by determining the implementation and predicting the ongoing costs of new applications or releases.
4. Availability Management
Availability Management ensures that your application systems are always up and available for use. This is especially critical when it comes to meeting the conditions of your service level agreements (SLAs).
To make sure that you have the most cost-effective contingency plans in place, you’ll need to follow availability management processes. Testing those contingency plans on a regular basis is advisable to ensure your business needs are met.
Use of software should shorten the diagnosis process to reduce downtime, improve staff productivity, and reduce the time that customers are inconvenienced.
5. IT Service Continuity Management
IT service continuity management (ITSCM helps develop IT infrastructure recovery plans in the case of an emergency. ITSCM provides the framework needed to support business continuity, management plans and timeframes.
Because every enterprise worldwide may face different disaster risks—earthquakes, floods or tornados — ITSCM plans vary. It’s important to consider the risks your region is prone to prior to developing your plan.