What is IT Service Management?

Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services. These “specialized organizational capabilities” are described in this pocket guide. They include all of the processes, methods, functions, roles and activities that a Service Provider uses to enable them to deliver services to their customers.

Service management is concerned with more than just delivering services. Each service, process or infrastructure component has a lifecycle, and service management considers the entire lifecycle from strategy through design and transition to operation and continual improvement. The inputs to service management are the resources and capabilities that represent the assets of the service provider. The outputs are the services that provide value to the customers.

Effective service management is itself a strategic asset of the service provider, providing them with the ability to carry out their core business of providing services that deliver value to customers by facilitating the outcomes customers want to achieve.

Adopting good practice can help a service provider to create an effective service management system. Good practice is simply doing things that have been shown to work and to be effective. Good practice can come from many different sources, including public frameworks (such as ITIL, COBIT and CMMI), standards (such as ISO/IEC 20000 and ISO 9000), and proprietary knowledge of people and organizations.