Service Descriptions in Higher Ed IT organizations Susan Reese 2013 Enterprise IT Leadership Conference

ITIL Official ITIL Web site defines ITIL: ITIL is the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. ITIL provides a cohesive set of best practice, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally. http://www.itil-officialsite.com

What are service descriptions? Service Summary Features and Options Service Provisioning Operating Procedures Platform Description Financial Characteristics

Why IT departments don’t have service descriptions? Time consuming to create. Organization may not be “customer” or “business” oriented. Are not tying IT objectives to business objectives. IT is managing technical components instead of integrated services.

Benefits of developing service descriptions Develop common language for defining services. Helps identify what is standard and what is custom for a service. Develop a deeper understanding internally of what IT services are offered by the entire organization (not just your part of IT). Mechanism for thinking thru where there is shared support for a service and who owns responsibility for which pieces. Clarifies what is really needed (resource wise) to support a service. Describes the system architecture, including things not readily known like security practices and continuity plans with regards to the service

Benefits of developing service descriptions (continued) Good basis for developing Service Level Agreements. Foundation for making informed decisions about services (make or buy?; keep, change or stop?). Focus on services that are most valuable to the organization. Foundation for effective service management.

Benefits of sharing Service Descriptions Defines a given service for the users. Helps sets expectations. Explains how to get support for a service. Lets the users know who runs a given service. Communicates characteristics of a service, clarifies who the services is intended for, standard vs custom parts of a services, etc.… and costs, if any, associated with the service. Communicates the portfolio of services provided so the community is aware of all services that are readily available.

Director of Projects and Services Questions Susan Reese Director of Projects and Services Cal Poly Pomona slreese@csupomona.edu