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Chapter 5 ■ Service Design
Some examples of IT services include:
• Internet
• Cellular phone (calling, texting, data, etc.)
• E-mail
• Web hosting
• Text messaging
These are basic examples of IT services, but there are a number of other complex IT
services that could be added to the list.
The purpose of the service design phase is to develop designs for the IT services
that were envisioned in the service strategy phase, along with the policy and process
documents that are necessary to control and govern the designed IT services. The designs
must fit into the environment the customer is looking to deal with, ensuring maximum
customer satisfaction and minimum costs while meeting all the quality requirements.
5.2 Objectives of Service Design
From the mall example, the underlying principle for the designs is to ensure that minimal
improvements are foreseen in the future. So too, IT designers must ensure that they
foresee the future of the IT services in play and design them with an eye to the future.
If the designs are robust and can stand the test of time, then you can expect minimum
improvements to be made over the course of time.
Let’s say that the designers are tasked with designing a dynamic web site. The
designers must be judicious in choosing the content management system (CMS) that is
going to help them in the long run. They must opt for a popular CMS such as Wordpress
rather than Drupal, which has a diminishing support base. The reason to choose
Wordpress is to ensure that further updates that come about from the CMS developers
will ensure that the web site will stay current, secure, and relevant. If Drupal is chosen,
there is a possibility that development might stagger in a couple of years, or even come
to a standstill, which will force the designers to transition to a different CMS and lead to
major design changes, risks, and unwanted expenses.
The objective of service design is to ensure that IT services require minimal
improvements during the course of its lifecycle. I am not implying that improvements
are bad, but improvements must be grounded on changing requirements or triggered by
unforeseeable events, rather than enhancing the drawbacks in the service. You don’t want
to have to build a restroom in the mall after it goes live, because the architect overlooked
providing one.
Also, the services designed must be scalable, customizable, and resilient to internal
and external conditions. The policies, processes, standards, guidelines, metrics, Key
Performance Indicators (KPI), and SLAs are defined during this phase.
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