DEVELOPING STRATEGY FOR SPECIFIC SERVICES
In terms of the development of a strategy for a specific service offering, the key
elements are concerned with a series of activities that involve:
• understanding the customer and the ways IT can deliver value to them;
• understanding the outcomes the customer wants from the service and how the service will deliver benefit;
• defining critical success factors for the service;
• developing a specification based on the outcomes required by the customer,
including the utility and warranty required;
• developing through demand management an understanding of the customer’s priorities in relation to patterns of business activity (PBAs).
It is important to remember that individual services have to operate in a broader context. New services must fit into the framework of existing services and any other new services with which they will likely share common services and compete for resources. The development of a service strategy has to take this fully into account.
At an early stage in the development of the service strategy, the initial,
conceptual details of the new service will be captured in the service portfolio and the new service will begin its journey through its lifecycle. Through service portfolio management, the new service offering will be put into the broader context of other services, business trends, regulation, the developing marketplace, emerging technologies, competition, risks and so on. The business case, developed in conjunction with financial management, will reflect these factors and explain why the service strategy developed represents the best way forward as well as describing how and to what extent it will deliver value.
The outcome of the service strategy process is a decision to continue with the service
or not. Approved services are ‘chartered’ at which point they are ready to move forward to service design. The transfer into service design requires the production of a service package, which describes in detail the IT service to be delivered to the customer, including the service levels to be achieved and the supporting services that will underpin its delivery.