• by Vikram Gajjala

ITIL Service Design

Today, the functionality of products and services is one of the most crucial aspects that consumers watch out for. However, with rapid advancement in technology, the design, the appeal, and the look of various products have soared in importance too. People have become very critical of how the different products being launched today look, and they use this to gauge whether the products are worth buying and how these products compare with those of similar competing brands.
 

Poor product design can affect a company's bottom line massively. Therefore, the customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) have become essential ingredients that motivate firms to produce products and services of the highest quality. However, designing IT services that effectively satisfy customer expectations and a business’s needs is not easy. Managing competing costs, risks, and priorities needs seamless collaboration across all the business units.
 

This is where ITIL service design comes in! ITIL service design refers to the second stage of the ITIL service management lifecycle. The ITIL service design provides the necessary guidelines that will help firms easily design new IT processes and services and prepare them for a live environment. This is made possible by the service management team that leverages the strategy outlined in the first stage of the service management lifecycle. Here, this strategy will guide the service management team into adopting the best design decisions. Consequently, these optimal design decisions will guarantee that services are properly aligned with the objectives of the organization.
 

The service design process can therefore deliver measurable business value through aspects such as:

• Improved service quality and consistency.
• Improved processes and performance
• Improved decision-making

What Are the Four “P’s” In Service Design?

The four fundamental components of service design include:

• People.
• Products.
• Partners.
• Processes.

Your services will not effectively satisfy your business’s needs and your users’ expectations if any of the above elements are missing.

People
The service design team should possess the knowledge, skills, and resources to effortlessly design and implement quality services. This is because people represent the foundation of good service design and management. In addition, the service management team needs to know the needs of end-users to enable them to design services that are tailored to satisfy these needs effectively.

Products

Products refer to the tools and technology that the team uses to successfully deliver and support newly-launched services. The best products are the ones that will streamline the design process.

Processes

Processes refer to all the activities and management controls that will guarantee the team is more ready to implement and support a new process as well as provide new IT services.

Partners

Partners refer to any third-party companies like manufacturers, suppliers, and vendors who collaborate with you and support your IT services.

Processes of the ITIL service design stage

1. Design coordination

The ITIL design coordination process ensures all design processes, activities, and resources are properly coordinated in the entire service design stage. This process also produces the service design package (SDP) that determines how a new service is supposed to be designed, tested, and operated.  

2. Service catalog management (SCM)

The main role of the SCM is to ensure that the catalog is created, updated, and maintained with accurate information related to all IT services. It documents data on all live IT services and those being prepared for delivery as well. A service catalog contains information like prices, contacts, deliverables, service owner, availability, service name, and description.

3. Service level management (SLM)

Service level management provides a framework where service-level agreements (SLAs) are defined and developed to ensure that all the IT services are properly delivered as agreed and expected. Service level management is crucial in improving the communication between a business and its customers.  

4. Supplier management

This process mainly focuses on effectively managing supplier contracts to guarantee that the contracts meet all the business’s requirements and service-level agreements (SLAs) in the most cost-effective way possible.

5. Capacity management

The capacity management process ensures that both existing and IT services possess the capacity to satisfy SLA requirements. Any variances between the expected or needed capacity and that which is actually used may lead to wastage of resources and make a business incur unnecessary costs.

6. Availability management

Availability management refers to the ability of a service to function properly as designed and as required. Some of the activities involved in availability management include availability testing (diagnosing potential availability problems) and availability monitoring and reporting (tracking availability performance and reporting risks to allow efficient mitigation).

7. Information security management

The main role of this activity is to properly align IT and business security to allow more efficient management of IT services throughout the entire service lifecycle. A security manager is usually the one in charge of overseeing the end-to-end ITIL security management process. Here, they create, share, and approve effective security measures while managing the overall security operations of IT services.

Final Take Away

ITIL service design guides the design and development of services. It allows businesses to come up with products and services that meet the business's objectives as well as their users' expectations!