Service Management for Dummies®

Chapter 8. The Service Management Universe

In This Chapter

• Seeing how service management fits into a business model

• Discovering the six layers of service management

• Coping with changes in the six layers

• Setting the value of service management

In earlier chapters, we mention that service management is a big field that covers information technology of every conceivable kind and also involves understanding how to organize staff to manage that technology, not just to make it run, but also to make it run effectively and (ideally) in highly optimized fashion. Service management also embraces the governance of IT, best practices, the alignment of IT with the business, the integration of all the technology, and the monitoring of both business key performance indicators (KPIs) and IT KPIs.

We confess right now that this book doesn't give a detailed explanation of every service management process, underlying technology, and tactic that you can adopt to provide effective services. Luckily, that isn't the goal of this book. What we intend to do is give you an all-round appreciation of what service management is and how to deliver it successfully in the context of a living, breathing organization.

In this chapter, we present service management in overview, making the link between service management at the business level and at the IT level. We provide a way of looking at the whole service management process and also tackle the question of the value of service management within an organization.

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