remainder of this chapter will look into how to apply Agile principles to the Integral Service Management Framework .
Applying Agile Principles to Service Management
First of all , using practices from Agile methodologies such as Scrum in the context of Service Management does not necessarily make Service Management Agile . I have for instance seen examples where people have set up a support team using an issue backlog similar to the sprint backlog from Scrum , are doing daily stand-up meetings with that team to review progress and impediments to progress , as well as a number of other practices similar to Scrum . I am , however , not convinced if those activities make their service management practices any better . Doing Agile is not the same as being Agile , after all : the practices themselves don ’ t necessarily lead to a more agile way of dealing with service management . What I am after is to actually improve Service Management practices by applying Agile principles . Practices can be defined later based on the implementation of the principles in the SMS .
One can also wonder if there is a purpose for applying Agile principles to Service Management in the first place : isn ’ t CSI with its cyclical nature not already Agile ? Does Agile contribute anything essential to Service Management or is it just a fashion statement ? These questions need to be cleared up as well in order to determine the value of Agile for Service Management .
Therefore in this section I want to take a principles-based approach to applying Agile to Service Management , not a practice-based approach . The difference is that the principles give guidance on how to do things in a better way , whereas the practices will eventually follow from these principles in the specific context of the services you provide .
Agile principles , as per the Manifesto and Principles discussed earlier , come down to a number of core ones when applied to Service Management :
1 . Focus on value creation for the customer – this is the outside-in view on service management that needs to be kept in mind at all times : what is the benefit of what we do in service management for the parties that ultimately should reap its fruits , viz . the customer and end-users ?
2 . Close collaboration between the customer and the service provider – following logically from the previous item , the more the customer is involved in the service lifecycle , the more likely actual value will be created .
3 . Focus on people – this is the internal view on service management , which puts the people and teams performing all the activities to make sure services are delivered , in the centre of attention .
4 . Flexibility in dealing with changing requirements in a changing environment .
5 . Incremental and iterative service design , implementation and improvement . 6 . Simplicity and efficiency in service design and operation .
I will be discussing these principles in turn , applying them to several aspects of service management .
Focus on Value Creation All basic training in service management teaches that services should be supportive of the customer ’ s business outcomes . Also , the very definition of a service is something that delivers value to the customer . It should therefore be self-evident that value creation is the primary objective of setting up a service management system ( Agile Principle : Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continual delivery of valuable services ). However , one of the complaints I hear frequently is that service management systems are often too much internally-focused , meaning that by focussing on the internal workings of the processes and other aspects of the SMS , the focus on the customer is lost .
Taking an outside-in approach to service management rather than the traditional inside-out approach , we should start looking at service management from the perspective of the customer rather than start looking from the service provider ’ s internal perspective . The former approach has the benefit that value creation for the customer is always the first priority and that the services and the
management thereof need to adapt to that priority primarily and not only be based on the needs of the service provider itself .
What does this mean in practice ? We can identify many areas where this moves the focus of existing practices into a new light . Take for instance Capacity Management : usually , with the inside-out approach , the design of this process is focused on measuring the usage of resources ( e . g . network links , CPU , Memory , disk space ) and making sure they don ’ t cross certain thresholds . This results in often plain default reports about generic capacity use in many locations and on many service elements . Additional capacity can then be sold to the customer in case they have a continuous need of more capacity than they have today – clearly an internal focus of the service provider . However , with an outside-in approach , you first need to ask yourself what the customer expects from a Capacity Management process . Perhaps they expect an ability to dynamically adjust their needed capacity themselves where needed or even have this automatically done by the service provider when capacity is over- or underused . Or perhaps they ’ d rather have specific information about what causes a high use of capacity ( e . g . a specific application or process ) so they can make adjustments on their side if needed . In short , at a process-level , value creation consists of making sure that you offer the customer value using processes that are adapted to what they want to receive . This is different from offering fixed service offerings that provide features nobody is interested in , but are there because they are convenient for the service provider .
In service management , every aspect of what we do needs to be done with the aim of providing value for the customer and end-users . This needs to happen in the design , planning , implementation , operation and continual improvements of the services and of the SMS . Traditional Service Management implementations ( and frameworks and standards ) are often very much focused on the internal aspects of service management , as if the customer does not exist . Value is there to remind us of and let us focus on what it is exactly that we provide services for in the first place : generating value for the customers and end-users .
Customer Collaboration The focus that Agile has on value creation leads automatically to a focus on the customer , as the customer is , after all , the receiver of the value created by the services . A service provider therefore is not a cookie factory that produces the same product every time . Instead , the service provider needs to listen carefully to the customer and take feedback about the provided services to heart , with the aim of improving them ( Agile Manifesto : Customer
12 itSMFI Forum Focus — June 2017