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" HP product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions help manufacturers integrate and collaborate with key business stakeholders - including partners, suppliers and customers - through an adaptive environment. "
Source : Hewlett-Packard
How to Maximize Your IT Services with Lifecycle Management
Lifecycle Management is also known as :
Product Management,
New Product Development,
Software Product Management,
Technology Lifecycle,
Extending Product Life Cycle,
Application Lifecycle Management,
Product Management ,
Product Life Cycle,
IT Lifecycle Management,
Lifecycle Management,
Lifecycle Management Platform,
Information Lifecycle Management,
PLM Software ,
Systems Lifecycle Management,
Information Lifecycle Management Solution ,
Information Lifecycle Management Resources.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- What is service lifecycle management?
- SLcM is an effective organizational tool
- SLcM delivers significant benefits to IT
- SLcM is based on ITIL v3 best practices
- ITIL's five service lifecycle stages
- HP is an ITIL leader
- How service lifecycle management works
- Taking SLcM from theory to practice
- HP Service Manager software increases the value of Service Lifecycle Management
- Revisiting the previous example using Service Manager
- Summary
- Resources
Introduction
Services are the new "currency" of the IT organization-
the irreducible element that allows IT to structure and
streamline its operations, transact business with its users,
and demonstrate its value to the enterprise as a whole.
As businesses become more dependent on technology
(80 percent of the average company's practices are now
carried out by IT), the traditional capability-centric IT
model has proven woefully inadequate. This form-followsfunction
approach-where the structure of IT is driven by
the hardware, software and systems it must support-
forces IT to use almost all its resources simply to keep
things running from day to day. Users are dissatisfied, IT
staff feels pressured and overworked, and the executive
suite wonders why IT isn't delivering better value for the
money being spent.
Add to all this the need for IT to satisfy corporate gov -
ernance objectives, leverage technology to provide a
competitive advantage and meet ever-increasing user
demands, and it's easy to see why most corporate IT
shops are struggling these days.
With so much riding on IT's performance, a new servicecentric
model has emerged. This function-follows-form
model takes a more businesslike approach to IT, using
services as building blocks. These services become, in
effect, the "products" IT offers its "customers"-complete,
standardized packages designed to meet specific user
needs and to which a specific monetary value can be
assigned. By transacting business using these services, IT
can reinvent itself as a value-oriented driver of corporate
objectives: reducing operational complexity, improving
customer satisfaction and positioning itself for longterm
success.
If services are the building blocks on which IT builds its
new structure and operations, then those services had
better be good. The practice of service lifecycle manage -
ment (SLcM) offers IT a comprehensive and effective
methodology for increasing the quality, performance and
value of each service, from design through to retire -
ment. SLcM is built upon best practices of ITIL v3, which
reflects the industry trend toward an end-to-end lifecycle
approach to the services IT offers.
This paper provides an introduction to and overview of
SLcM and the ITIL v3 principles on which it is based. It
shows how SLcM provides the framework for organi -
zations to optimize business outcomes and facilitates
continual service improvement.
As a leader in the movement to apply ITIL best practices
to the operation of IT organizations, HP helped design
and write the standards set forth in ITIL v3, which embodies
the lifecycle approach discussed above. HP Service
Manager 7.0 software, the HP comprehensive service
desk solution, supports ITIL best practices and processes,
and therefore is an ideal solution for IT organizations
using SLcM to make the transition from a capabilitycentric
to a service-centric model.
What is service lifecycle management?
For our purposes, a service is defined as anything pro -
vided by IT to satisfy a business need. A service may
be delivered to individuals, departments or an entire
company. Examples of services include enterprise
systems such as e-mail; line-of-business applications
such as a billing system; or fulfillment of employee
requests such as personal workstation backup or an
office automation bundle.
IT services are never static. They are in constant motion
along a continuum of being born, being implemented,
being delivered, being adjusted and updated, and being
retired. They do not exist in a vacuum-each service is
an integral part of a much larger picture of IT and its
role in driving the business forward. This means that
every service, no matter how small, has an important role
to play in facilitating the processes, transactions and
day-to-day work performance required for the business
to achieve its financial objectives.
The value the enterprise perceives in the IT organization,
then, is directly related to how well IT designs, manufactures
and delivers these services to its end users across
the enterprise.
SLcM is an effective organizational
tool.
SLcM is the most effective way for IT to organize itself
around the delivery of services. SLcM is the process of
applying best practices to every phase of the service
lifecycle. These phases are:
- Define: Identify a business need and create a service
to meet that need.
- Deliver: Make the service available to its target
end-users.
- Monitor: Use relevant metrics to gauge performance.
- Support: Enable end users to get the greatest benefit
from the service.
- Analyze: Watch for trends and problem areas.
- Optimize: Adjust as necessary.
Therefore, SLcM enables IT to manage every service
effectively throughout its lifecycle, making certain that
each service is playing its proper role in the larger effort
to deliver increased IT value to the business.
SLcM delivers significant benefits to IT.
The ability to better manage each service at each stage
in its lifecycle gives IT the power to make itself better at
every level. By implementing SLcM, IT can:
- Optimize business outcomes: IT can establish Demingstyle
"PDCA" (Plan-Do-Check-Act) quality cycles, which
provide the service performance data needed to
measure and analyze the performance of each service.
- Facilitate continual service improvement: Using the
same PDCA model, IT can foster improvements using
a number of factors, including user requests, incidents,
changes and performance data.
- Increase efficiency: IT can make faster and smarter
personnel and resource allocation decisions.
- Optimize service delivery and support: IT can see a
direct connection between specific tasks and specific
services, so it can easily prioritize service-related
activities (e.g., working on an incident or fulfilling
a request) in terms of relative importance, cost or
SLA requirements.
- Meet increasing customer demand: With resources
better allocated and services optimized, IT is in the
best possible position to meet user needs and exceed
user expectations.
- Facilitate regulatory compliance: IT has at its disposal
the granular-level data necessary to meet reporting
requirements at every level.
SLcMis based on ITIL v3 best practices.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
is the world's most widely accepted approach to IT
service management. ITIL provides a customizable
best-practices framework for managing IT services at
every phase of their lifecycle.
The evolution of ITIL mirrors the evolution of the corporate
IT organization itself. ITIL v1 dealt with stability and
control of the infrastructure, reducing business disruption,
and linking IT budgets with external benchmarks. ITIL v2
provided a pathway for moving IT to the next level, concentrating
on the quality and efficiency of IT processes.
ITIL v3 reflects another significant step forward in the
evolution of IT. With IT now playing a important role in
driving business results, ITIL v3 focuses for the first time
on how IT can provide increased value to the business,
emphasizing the importance of leveraging technology to
enhance that value. ITIL v3 recognizes that managing IT
requires more than just a set of processes-it requires the
ability to manage the complete service lifecycle. It also
requires tighter integration of IT's people, processes and
tools with a company's overall strategy and objectives.
ITIL v3 brings service management in line with changing
business priorities, advancing technology and new
governance models. Its principal objective is to speed
and simplify the implementation, adoption and appli -
cation of service management processes to optimize
business outcomes. Six fundamental strategies are utilized
for achieving those objectives:
- Evolve from process management to lifecycle
management.
- Design services based on value.
- Use lifecycles as the basis for investment decisions.
- Recognize that functionality and manageability are
basically the same thing.
- Enable services using knowledge.
- Treat infrastructure and service as a single entity.
ITIL's five service lifecycle stages
ITIL v3 also articulates five principal stages of the
service lifecycle:
- Service strategy stage: IT determines the unique value
it can deliver to help differentiate the business in
the marketplace. IT then works with the business to
manage demand, determine markets, track finances,
resolve resource trade-off issues and ultimately decide
what services to provide.
- Service design stage: IT develops a pragmatic service
blueprint that balances functionality, performance and
cost, while also making key sourcing decisions. Much
of the previous service delivery processes from ITIL
v2 remain in ITIL v3, including designing for avail -
ability, service continuity, continual improvement and
gathering feedback.
- Service transition stage: IT tests services and introduces
them into the infrastructure in a controlled manner,
according to clearly defined processes for change
management, asset and configuration management,
and knowledge management.
- Service operation stage: IT delivers and supports the
services it has developed, preserving stability and
uptime while maintaining flexibility and responsiveness
to variations in the business and IT environments.
- Continual service improvement stage: IT monitors
service performance and identifies ways to improve
quality and reduce costs while staying aligned with
changing business requirements.
HP is an ITIL leader.
As both the IT organization and the IT function itself
continue to mature, industry acceptance of the lifecycle
view of service management (indeed, of IT management
as a whole) continues to grow. This lifecycle view-
which SLcM exemplifies-uses ITIL V3 as its foundation.
HP is one of the industry's leading proponents of ITIL,
and was asked to assist in the writing and review of
ITIL v3. HP is at the forefront of ITIL v3 support, and
offers a comprehensive solution that includes software,
services and education. The unique service management
framework of HP makes it easy to take ITIL from theory
to operational reality.
How service lifecycle management
works
To understand the practice of SLcM, let's use a real-world
example of a common service- provisioning for a
new employee.
As previously stated, the lifecycle of this service has six
phases:
- Define
- Deliver
- Monitor
- Support
- Analyze
- Optimize
Let's look at each phase to see how SLcM best
practices-as defined by ITIL v3-enable IT to deliver
increased value.
Define
Create, maintain and visualize all components and
relationships within the service.
In the service-centric IT organization, delivering value
begins by creating a set of repeatable, standardized
services which are offered as products to the end users
of IT. So, long before our new employee is hired, the
New Employee Provisioning "product" has been carefully
designed and defined.
ITIL v3 covers this process in its Service Strategy and
Service Design stages. Defining the how, what and when
of the service starts with understanding how it affects the
business as a whole (e.g., standardizing the things a
new employee gets reduces costs and improves effi -
ciency; the faster new employees get what they need,
the sooner they become productive).
Any new employee will need hardware (a laptop),
software (Microsoft® Office suite, connectivity software,
business applications) and installation services, plus a
user ID, e-mail address and application log-in. A blueprint
for the service can then be created that sets the standard
and delivers the proper results in terms of functionality,
cost and performance.
Following this, ITIL v3 provides (in its Service Transition
stage) for the testing and controlled introduction of the
service into the IT environment, using defined processes
for change management, asset and configuration man -
agement, and knowledge management.
Once fully vetted, the complete package is made avail -
able to all relevant departments for use when a new
hire is brought on.
Deliver
- Publish service definitions, along with supported
service level options, in the Service Catalog.
- Manage requests from inception through fulfillment
for both individuals and departments.
- Track subscriptions to services from request to
fulfillment to renewal and then to cancellation or
retirement.
The New Employee Provisioning product is published
in the IT service catalog, along with its associated cost.
Prior to the new employee's start date, his/her manager
selects the product from the catalog and the delivery
process begins. On day one, everything the employee
needs is ready and waiting.
ITIL v3 provides best practices for delivering the service in
its Service Design stage. Many of these were originally
developed and specified in ITIL v2. Best practices cover
every phase of service delivery and fulfillment, including
what happens when the delivery process is interrupted.
For example, if the new laptop is not currently in IT's
stock, a workflow is activated that orders the laptop via
the SAP system.
Subscriptions to services such as e-mail, user ID and
application log-in are fulfilled and tracked over time.
When the ordered laptop arrives and is configured, IT
verifies that it is running properly.
Monitor/support
Check and maintain the service using incident
management, change management, problem
management and service level management
capabilities.
Three weeks after starting, the new employee is having
computer issues. There seems to be a problem interacting
with the Accounts Payable application-things are
running very slowly. He/she opens a ticket with IT
support and the request is easily handled and managed
using IT's service dashboards and service level
monitoring. A memory upgrade is ordered to address the
speed issue, and upon installation the ticket is closed.
The Service Operation stage of ITIL v3 provides the
processes and best practices necessary to properly
implement SLcM at this phase.
Analyze
Use metrics to create a picture of how well the
service is being delivered and is working in relation
to its stated goals.
A report is generated and prepared for IT management
that looks at how many instances of the New Employee
Provisioning service were ordered and how well IT did
in delivering what it promised in the Service Catalog.
ITIL v3 lays out the processes and best practices for
choosing and implementing these metrics in its Continual
Service Improvement stage.
Analysis shows that the issue with the Accounts Payable
application was reported by other users, resulting in a
number of memory upgrades.
Optimize
Update and improve the service based on what has
been learned from the previous phases.
Using the analysis, IT redefines the New Employee
Provisioning service to include the more powerful laptop.
Changes are also made to the Accounts Payable appli -
cation. The revised service is implemented and the
lifecycle begins again.
Once again, the Continual Service Improvement stage
of ITIL v3 provides the framework for IT's optimization
process.
Taking SLcM from theory to practice
SLcM offers IT a proven and well-defined path for transi -
tioning from a capability-centric to a service-centric
operating model. But the lifecycle journey we've just
been through is really still theoretical. In order to take
the actions outlined in each phase of the lifecycle-
actions delineated by ITIL v3 best practices-IT must
have a comprehensive technology solution in place
that fully supports the practice of SLcM and embodies
ITIL principles.
HP offers such a solution.
HP Service Manager
software increases the
value of service
lifecycle management.
HP Service Manager software is the next-generation
IT service desk. HP Service Manager enables IT to
implement and realize the benefits of service lifecycle
management. The complete lifecycle support of HP
Service Manager is aligned with the ITIL v3 emphasis
on business value, continual improvement and the
building of a service-oriented IT organization. HP
Service Manager provides a "single source of truth"
that enables more effective orga nizational collabo -
ration and enhances management across the entire
service lifecycle.
The HP Service Manager suite of modules and integra -
tions to other HP software solutions provides a complete
set of integrated lifecycle processes that support business
and IT services from inception to retirement.
These processes include:
- Configuration Management
- Service Catalog
- Fulfillment
- Workflow
- Change Management
- Request Management
- IT Asset Management
- Identity Management
- Service Desk
- Incident, Problem, and Change Management
- Service Level Management
HP Service Manager automates key IT processes to
facilitate successful outcomes. It offers fully integrated
Service Catalog and Service Level Management func -
tionality, tracks service subscriptions to better understand
service impact, enables IT to mine and incorporate new
sources of knowledge, and offers unparalleled ease-ofuse
at every level.
Revisiting the previous example using
HP Service Manager
Returning to our example of new employee provisioning,
we can see how HP Service Manager brings the
principles and best practices of SLcM and ITIL v3 into
every phase of the service lifecycle.
Define
HP discovery technology provides both details about new
or upgraded service components, and comprehensive
information about the various relationships between and
among those components.
Once this information is loaded into HP Service Manager,
it can be further refined (using service modeling
capabilities) to include additional related information
such as organizational data, related service level
agreements, related request definitions and more.
HP Service Manager visualization tools support the
process of building a service model, which can then
be published to selected sections of the business user
community through the Service Catalog.
Deliver
As previously noted, prior to the our new employee's first
day on the job, the manager accesses the HP Service
Manager Self Service Portal from his/her desktop and
selects "New Employee" from the appropriate page of
the HP Service Manager Service Catalog module. This
populates the manager's shopping basket. The request
is submitted-and the manager stops thinking about it,
knowing that the fulfillment process has taken over. On
day one, everything the new employee needs is in place.
HP Service Manager Request Management module
subsequently establishes that there is no laptop in the
Virtual Stockroom, and pushes an order out to SAP
Material Management®. When the laptop arrives in the
warehouse and the receiving process is complete, Request
Management automatically adds a Configuration Item
(CI) record for the laptop and activates a work order to
install and commission the laptop.
Once the laptop is set up on the network, integration
with HP Configuration Management software triggers
the appropriate software installation. Our employee's
user ID and e-mail address are set up through HP
Identity Center software.
HP Service Manager subscription capabilities support
the user (both at individual or departmental level) beyond
simple purchase transactions:
- Requests for support against specific services
- Requests for service cancellations
- Provisioning of departmental services for new or
transferred employees
- Notification of service disruptions
- Visibility into the types and levels of services that a
particular user or department is consuming
Now at his/her desk, the employee checks the Service
Manager Portal and Service Catalog to confirm he/she
has access to the all necessary services, applications
and subscriptions. These items are fully documented in
the system.
Monitor/support
The regular discovery sweep of HP Service Manager
(using HP discovery technologies) detects the new device
and the installed software. In this case, everything is as
expected. Had there been any discrepancy-for example,
less onboard memory than expected-an incident would
be raised automatically and routed to management
for investigation.
When, three weeks later, the employee starts having
laptop issues, he/she accesses HP Service Manager
Self Service Ticketing and opens a ticket. The portal
displays a drop-down list of the services to which the
employee subscribes. The Accounts Payable system
is the one giving the most trouble, so the employee
selects it from the drop-down. This automatically invokes
the correct SLA and assigns the ticket to the correct group.
HP Service Desk Service Level Management module
enables the proper support to be given for the request.
A service agent looks at the CI record and notices that
there have been some events (logged automatically by
the HP Business Availability Center software) for the new
employee's device that are currently under investigation.
The visualization capabilities of HP Service Manager
make it easier and faster to assess the impact of this
incident. The agent decides that the employee could use
more memory and recommends that he/she order more.
The employee returns to the Self Service Portal and
selects an available upgrade for the laptop-which the
system already knows about. Using the Service Catalog
interface, the manager approves the request online,
and the appropriate ordering and workflow activities
are triggered.
Analyze
Using HP Service Manager dashboards and HP
DecisionCenter software reports, IT management
analyzes detailed historical data and notices that the
Accounts Payable application has been the cause of
a number of performance issues on the standard client
build. Further investigation shows that some minor
modifications to the application will solve this problem,
prevent further costly memory upgrades and make IT
perform better in relation to its SLAs.
Optimize
Changes to the Accounts Payable application are made.
The service is re-launched and the lifecycle begins again.
Summary
With services taking such an important role in the way
IT operates, the practice of service lifecycle management
has emerged as a best practice-based approach to
making each service the best it can be. SLcM helps IT
demonstrate its value to the business, and enables IT to
increase efficiency, optimize service delivery and
support, and meet growing customer demands.
The principles of ITIL v3 form the basis of SLcM. This
latest iteration of ITIL reflects the changing nature of
the IT organization, and its new role as a key driver
of long-term business success. ITIL also recognizes the
importance of effective management across the entire
service lifecycle, and therefore provides a path for the
proper implementation of SLcM.
HP Service Manager is a key component in any
successful SLcM implementation. Service Manager
embodies the principles of ITIL v3, and its suite of
modules provides the functionality needed to bring
SLcM to every lifecycle phase of every service. A longterm
leader in bringing ITIL best practices to corporate
IT organizations, HP offers a comprehensive solution,
including services and education in addition to HP
Service Manager software.
Resources
To learn more about HP software solutions, contact
your local representative or go to
www.hp.com/go/software.
For more information on HP Service Manager
software, please visit
www.hp.com/go/servicemanagementsoftware.
For information on HP software and ITIL, please visit
www.hp.com/us/go/hpsoftwareanditil.