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11.17.09 Understanding And Addressing Current IT Service Management Discussions  By Charles Betz Twitter is increasingly useful lately, for pointers to current IT Service Management (ITSM) discussion & many other topics. A couple lines of inquiry have me feeling contrarian, or at least desiring more clarity: 1. There is a basic distinction between the lifecycle of a service, and the end to end performance of that service. I still do not understand whether the concept of service "delivery" applies to either, or both. 2. Despite all the inkbytes spilled on how "service" is different from "system" (or application) I continue to find the distinction problematic. Service lifecycle versus performance The lifecycle of an IT service extends from someone's bright idea ("Hey, maybe a computer can help me!") to retirement. It can run years. It goes through the systems development lifecycle into "production," "operations," or even "value exploitation" (depending on how trendy you are). I equate that lifecycle to product development in industry. CMM notwithstanding, it is non-deterministic, risky, "Eureka"-driven, and right up there with sausage and laws as something you often don't want to see being made. But when it is complete, like a product going into full manufacturing, the finalized service is a template for execution. Transactions - which can be viewed as discrete deliveries of value - start to flow across the infrastructure, often at high volume and across complex layers of technology, each with its own operational profile. *This* flow needs to be highly repeatable and deterministic.
The recognition that the value consumer cares little for the operational technology silos underpinning their value-add transaction is an essential ITSM theme. But this insight is no deeper than recognizing that the buyer of a car cares nothing for the problems of the sub-assembly line that delivered the engine. In reading much ITSM discussion, I find myself confused about which perspective a given author is taking. The ITIL Service Lifecycle is clearly about the service as product, not as particular transactional instance. But much of the Business Service Management (BSM) discourse is about the individual transactions and attempting to better manage across the technology silos. And when I see a generic picture (as I did tonight on IT Skeptic, here) about "IT" coming out of "the pipe," I have no idea what is being discussed. The transaction? The service? Both? The interesting thing is that either can have bottlenecks. In the service lifecycle, bottlenecks equate to failed projects or operational systems that are no longer fit for purpose (utility). In the operational realm, bottlenecks equate to availability & performance issues (warranty). For the first, you call in high powered program managers, smoke jumping project crisis managers, or enterprise architects. For the second, you call in your application and systems engineers, and deploy your end to end transactional probes & BSM monitoring. So, let's just be clear about which we are talking please? Service vs. system redux "Don't confuse applications with systems! Don't confuse systems with services! Don't confuse applications with services!" I've heard this message time and again for years now. From both the ITSM and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) crowds, who are still not talking to each other about what exactly a "service" is. (The latest installment in IEEE Computer now talks of "commitment-based SOA," an interesting article, but one more in a long line of trying to reach "business"-relevant abstraction.) Continue reading this article. About the Author: Charles Betz is a Senior Enterprise Architect, and chief architect for IT Service Management strategy for a US-based Fortune 50 enterprise. He is author of the forthcoming Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children (Morgan Kaufman/Elsevier, 2006, ISBN 0123705932). He is the sole author of the popular www.erp4it.com weblog. |
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