Four Key Elements of Service Design

Service design, as described within the ITIL framework, takes a holistic view of what is required to design and deliver a service. A frequent error in service design is that this view, encompassing all aspects, is replaced with a narrow, technical view of the design. Such a design may work well in theory but fail to deliver in practice because of the lack of attention given to changes to processes that may be required, the skills required for users and those providing support of the service, or the poor choice of third-party suppliers.

Successful service design must therefore consider the four key elements, sometimes known as the four p’s:

• People
• Processes
• Products
• Partners

People

The best technical design will fail if the people who need to use it or support it are not adequately prepared. The people element of service design ensures that the human aspect is not forgotten. In Chapter 2, we covered resources and capabilities; Figure 2.4 describing resources and capabilities showed “people” as both a resource (you need the right number of people) and a capability (you need the right people, with the right skills). Service designers must consider how many people will be required to support the new service (resource) and what skill set they will require to do so effectively (capability). Training in the specific processes required to support the service will also be necessary. The people who will be using the service will also need training in its use in order to gain the full benefit of the service.

If existing staff members are to be used, a training needs analysis will be required, and adequate time and money need to be budgeted for training. A communications plan that ensures the right information is given to the right people at the right time by the most appropriate method will also be needed in order to ensure that the staff members understand what is required of them. If new staff members are to be recruited, consideration must be given to drawing up job descriptions, assessing job grades, and defining the required skills and experience that candidates must have. An induction into the organization will also be required. Recruiting staff can be time-consuming, so it is essential that adequate time is allocated to this task if the delivery of the service is not to be delayed.

Processes

The second element to be considered is that of processes. In addition to the service design processes described in the ITIL framework, the new service may require additional processes to be designed, such as an authorization or procurement process. Some IT service providers may ignore the need to design either of these groups of processes in order to shorten the “speed to market” time; this is a false economy. Failure to consider the future capacity requirements of the service—for example, because the design appears to be adequate—could cause problems later when the service is unable to support increased demand without a major redesign. If the new service becomes business-critical, failure to design sufficient resilience may mean that poor availability impacts the business.

As part of service design, processes should be documented, together with the interfaces between them and other processes. All existing processes across the lifecycle should be assessed to identify whether any changes to them are required to enable this new or changed service to become operational and be supportable. Each process should be examined to ensure that the activities described are measurable so that they can be assessed for effectiveness and efficiency and be improved as required.

Products

Products are not only the services that result from the service design stage itself but also the technology and tools that are chosen to assist in the design or to support the service later. So, for example, the service design may be for an online shopping service, and the other products may include a credit-card processing application, an automatic stock reordering service when stock levels reach a threshold, monitoring tools to alert the service provider if user response time exceeds a set time, and so on.

Partners

Partners are those specialist suppliers—usually external third-party suppliers, manufacturers, and vendors—that provide part of the overall service. Ensuring the correct supplier is chosen is essential, because failure by a supplier may cause the IT service provider to breach an agreed service level (we examine the importance of supplier performance in achieving service level targets in more detail in Chapter 5). External suppliers are managed through the supplier management process, which ensures that the necessary contracts are put in place and monitors the delivery by the supplier against the contract terms. Supplier management is covered in Chapter 6.