ITIL: Service Operation

Service Operation is one of the five new ITIL® Service Lifecycle books published on 30th May 2007.

Service Operation is responsible for all aspects of managing the day-to-day operation of IT services, ensuring that processes and activities are operated (and continue to be operated) on a ‘business as usual’ basis. Its key purpose is to coordinate and perform the processes and activities that support the delivery of the IT services at the levels defined in the relevant Service Level Agreements.

The scope of Service Operation covers the IT services, the service management processes, the underpinning technology used to deliver those services - and the people used to manage all of these aspects.

Service Operation can be optimised in two different ways:

• Long term incremental improvement - monitoring performance over a period of time, analysing whether improvement actions are required, and then implementing those improvements via the Continual Service Improvement book
• Short term improvement activities - these are smaller actions, such as tuning, workload balancing, training, etc.

Service Operation is supported by a number of processes and functions:

• Processes: Access Management, Event Management, Incident Management, Problem Management and Request Fulfilment
• Functions: Service Desk, Technical Management, IT Operations Management, Application Management.

This list includes three new functions critical for executing process activities and managing service components. These are:

• Technical Management, which is the custodian of expertise related to all service components. Technical Management typically manages the infrastructure from Design through to Operation.
• Applications Management, which plays a similar role for software applications. Of particular importance is how this function interfaces with Application Development teams throughout the Software Management Lifecycle.
• IT Operations Management, which may be performed by the previous two functions, but is often centralized into a dedicated unit. This function executes routine activities, and monitors and controls the health of the infrastructure.

The Service Lifecycle