What is Service Management?
IT Service Management (ITSM) refers to all the activities involved in designing, creating, delivering, supporting, and managing the lifecycle of IT services. There are a number of established frameworks that provide best practices for these activities, of which ITIL is the most popular. ServiceNow is the cloud-based service management tool that University IT (UIT) has selected to manage our services, and it closely aligns with the ITIL framework.
What is a Service?
A frequently asked question is, what exactly is a service? The ITIL 4 definition of a service is as follows: "A (service) is a means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks." One of the key sections of this new definition is "value co-creation" – this is a recognition that good service design and development is a partnership between clients who will use the service and the service provider.
Another frequently asked question is, do you have to charge clients in order for it to be called a service? Emphatically – NO! We offer many services at no cost to our clients, such as email, network services, Zoom, etc. In fact, the majority of the services we provide are offered at no cost to our clients.
Identifying the members of your Service Team
Each member of the service team plays a specific role that comes with identified responsibilities. Review the following definitions to help you identify the members of your service team.
About this toolkit
The information you will find in this toolkit is UIT best practices based on the ITIL framework and refined to meet our specific needs. These needs are defined by the experts in each of the functional areas. For example, the UIT Finance team was involved in validating and approving the process and documentation for the Finance module. Other UIT teams helped validate and approve other service activities.
Information in the toolkit tracks the three major components of the service life-cycle:
- Develop and Launch Your Service
- Manage and Improve your Service
- Retire Your Service
