Service Management for Dummies®

Chapter 25. Ten Service Management Dos and Don'ts

In This Chapter

• Balancing business objectives with service performance

• Understanding business processes

• Recognizing the importance of standards

• Choosing the right starting point

This chapter carves out a few dos and don'ts. We want you to benefit from the mistakes of other people — including us.

Do Remember Business Objectives

If you want to deliver high-quality service, you need to satisfy your customers' expectations. Sometimes, these expectations conflict with the policies and performance objectives of your business. Service management must find the right balance between optimizing performance/service delivery and meeting business objectives.

Service management needs to account for both customer satisfaction and business stakeholder requirements. You may spend too much money making customers very happy and lose money in the process, for example, so customer satisfaction needs to be balanced against costs to the company.

Don't Stop Optimizing after a Single Process

IT service management requires continuous process improvement. Although improving a single process may be satisfying, it won't be enough. You have to look at the overall processes that make the business operate efficiently.

Do Remember Business Processes

You have to understand the processes for all things IT, from application management, system management, and performance management to service desk, network management, and database management. When you know how to optimize service ...