Overview of ITIL Service Design

ITIL Service Design is more or less known as the blue print phase. Well as we know the ultimate end product of Service Strategy is business case and this will be the input to the Service Design. The main purpose of Service Design is to design IT services together with the governing IT processes, practices and policies to realize the service providers strategy and then to facilitate the introduction of these services into supportive environments ensuring customer satisfaction, quality service delivery and cost effective service provision.

In Service Design we come across eight processes which are:

1. Service Catalog Management
2. Service Level Management
3. Capacity Management
4. Availability Management
5. IT Service Continuity Management
6. Information Security Management
7. Supplier Management
8. Design Coordination

Out of these eight processes Design Coordination is the new process added to the new syllabus. The main objective of Design Coordination is to coordinate between different processes with the Service Design stage to produce a Service Design Package.

By adopting and implementing standard and consistent approaches for Service Design will – Reduce total cost of ownership, – Improve Consistency of service, – Improve quality of service, – Improve service alignment, – Ease the implementation of new or changed service and Improve service performance. In Service Design we also come across the four P’s which are:

1. People {Includes Employees, Stakeholders}
2. Processes
3. Products {Includes Technology, Service and tools}
4. Partners {Manufactures, Vendors and Suppliers}

In Service Design we come across terms like Service level requirement (SLR), Service level agreement (SLA), Operational level agreement (OLA), Contract and Underpinning contract (UP/UPC). At times people get confused between Operational level agreement (OLA) and Underpinning contract (UP/UPC), Please understand that it’s in the Underpinning contract (UP/UPC) where the third party would be involved. Say for example you buy a mobile from AT&T on a contract and you have an issue with the actual mobile itself you will not contact the mobile manufacturer regarding the issue you will still get in touch with AT&T because the contract is through AT&T.

We also will look at the different Supplier categories which are:

1. Strategic: Normally these relationships would be managed by the senior management level within the service provider organization
2. Tactical: These relation would be managed by the middle management level
3. Operational: These relation would be managed by the junior management level
4. Commodity: If not from this place from another place which could be easily available (Example- Stationary).