become-itil-foundation-certified-abhinav-kaiser(www.ebook-dl.com)

Chapter 7 ■ Service Operations
I have worked in service operations for a good portion of my career, and it is not
something that I would like to focus my memory cells on. The usual run-of-the-mill day
included taking calls on the fly, sleeping when the customer is sleeping, and juggling
vacation plans in sync with peers. Now the good part. Service operations hires the most
people in the IT service management industry. ITIL professionals have job security in the
next decade or so, thanks to service operations, and I don’t see this changing. And most
importantly, service operations brings about challenges that were previously unheard of.
Service operations can often cause service architects much frustration in trying to find
the root cause of new issues and problems. This phase has its ups and downs. It depends
on how you accept it, and which part of your career you decide to jump into. The earlier
the better.
7.1 Objectives of Service Operations
The service strategy phase has decided which IT services to offer, and there is a strategic
direction in the decision. Based on the strategy, the service design phase prepares the
blueprints and various designs for these services. The service transition phase uses these
designs and builds the service. After developing it, these services are tested, piloted, and
implemented in the production environment. After successful deployment, the service
transition’s scope ceases and service operations takes over. The objective of the service
operations phase is to maintain the services and to ensure that the services operate as
they were designed to.
It is important to get a sound design for the services and then to implement them
fully, complying to the designs. It is equally important that the service operations
process be designed using rugged process principles and optimized to ensure that the
service operations are optimally staffed (to keep costs in check) and are scalable. Note
that service operations provides value to the customer, but not to the service. Service
operations provides inputs and pointers for improving services and the problem
management process (discussed later in this chapter), especially in looking at services
holistically and minimizing incidents.
The list of objectives of service operations is rather short, although this is the longest
running phase. They are:
• Deliver service operations effectively and efficiently as per the
agreed terms
• Build and maintain business satisfaction in IT through delivery
of services
• Minimize the impact to the business caused by an outage of services
• Optimize service costs and improve the quality of service
• Provide access to users (to servers, switches, applications,
physical locations) who have received valid authorization
156