Unlearning and Relearning ITSM
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Unlearning and Re-learning ITSM Service Management as Product Management
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Transcript of Unlearning and Relearning ITSM
Unlearning and Re-learning ITSM
Service Management as Product Management
Service Management, and its sub-area IT Service Management, is changing in an evolutionary fashion, and faster.
The changes create interesting challenges. For example, the best practices library, ITIL, represents the leading thinking on operationalizing ITSM. But when it was mapped to an official standard (ISO), it then continued to change while the published standard did not.
Additionally, the “commonplace” terminology used in ITSM has increasingly reflected ITIL’s own dictionary, but in some key situations the terminology does not work outside of ITIL contexts in the way the terms would work across management disciplines not focused on IT or on services yet possibly governing them.
The following exploration at no time relies on, nor refers to, terms from the point-of-view of ITIL. Readers are cautioned to note the generic stance of this discussion’s key words, which have established common meanings outside of any requirement to consult ITIL.
Services are Products
It is increasingly evident that a Service is a go-to-market Product.We see it reflected in many ways:
• XaaS• BYOD• Open Source• MSPs• IoT
Probably, the more important current distinction is between the internal markets of the business and its external markets.
Either way, the provision of IT-based capability is seen from the Demand-side as a combination of packaging, availability and assurances.
Concepts of effective utility are not about the construction of the service. Instead they are about fit-to-need: the relevance, impacts and control of the on-demand employment of the service.
From the demand-side, the adoption of, and adaptation to, services is essentially about managing choice.
This highlights the position of the service in a market-orientation.
Demand-based service management does not look like engineering. It looks like product management.
As more and more service utilization begins with a selection of packaged or managed services, a product-management paradigm is a more logical perspective for the business view of I.T.
We will use a famous product management framework as a device to continue this discussion. Our use is an analysis, not an endorsement; however we use the device with thanks to its author. Our discussion introduces an original re-interpretation of the existing work.
The most common error in viewing the Pragmatic Marketing framework is in forgetting that the framework’s organization is about markets, not about products.
The products have to exist within (and because of) markets.
MarketDESIGN
MarketDEVELOPMENT
Market REQUIREMENTS
MarketOPERATION
Framework logic: Revisited
MarketDESIGN
(Technical product management)
MarketDEVELOPMENT
(Product marketing management)
Market REQUIREMENTS
(Strategic product management)
MarketOPERATION
(Product marketing management)
The framework’s typical coverage of market management focus is typically modeledthis way. However, the distribution is, on the X-axis, called “product” management.
Because of “product” focus, big chunks of “designing” the market (bottom left) and “operating” the market (top right) are conspicuously blank areas.
MarketDEVELOPMENT
(Product marketing management)
Market REQUIREMENTS
(Strategic product management)
MarketDESIGN
(Technical product management)
MarketOPERATION
(Product marketing management)
To further see through the product perspective into the market perspective, we decoded the framework by showing new parameters that are normally not published with the diagram.
The parameters model the distinctions that describe what visible market conditions can correlate types of service with types of success.• Environment, opportunity, probability, and performance of use• Definition, cultivation, position, and validation of deliverable
These parameters account for what it is about market management that becomes a factor in the decisions about what products should become available and how.
Also, at this point going forward, we consistently read the term “Product” as an umbrella term that covers a type of product known as “Services” (as well as other types such as “Goods”).
What is called “Strategic” Product Management is almost entirely about market Requirements in four areas.(Environment, opportunity, probability, performance)
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY
What is included in Product “Marketing Management” is about market Operation within the same four areas.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY
What is called “Technical” Product Management is entirely about market Design in two of four key aspects. HOWEVER…
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
CRITICAL NOTE: We believe that both Technology Assessment and Innovation are in the wrong position within market Design. So we made an adjustment (see next)…
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
Technology Assessment and Innovation are logically relocated here within the market Design area. What is then must be covered is a responsibility for business definition and strategy cultivation, which are both internal research-based decisions guiding the product’s potential relevance prior to market development (especially, decisions involving strategic technology impacts).
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
What also gets called Product “Marketing Management” is heavily about four areas of market Development.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
Framework logic: Reset
Any provider of a service is concerned with whether the end user will be satisfied based on expectations.
The importance of expectations is due to the fact that the provider has only a certain amount of influence on what the user will actually do.
A provider whose business is based on benefiting predictably and repeatedly from multiple services or multiple independent users is required to manage demand. Otherwise, expectations cannot be the basis of satisfaction, and satisfaction cannot be the provider’s basis of gaining a sufficient level of benefit.
Since the single most important point of the service is to meet demand, service management must be based in demand management.
Demand management is exercised through managing markets. Service management must synchronize with market management.
Services are a type of product that are managed within the internal and external markets of the business organization. The markets are managed, themselves. Market
management aspects predispose service management aspects.
MarketDESIGN
(=> service strategy)
MarketDEVELOPMENT
(=> service design)
Market REQUIREMENTS
(=> service evaluation)
MarketOPERATION
(=> service delivery)
MarketDESIGN
(=> service strategy)
MarketDEVELOPMENT
(=> service design)
Market REQUIREMENTS
(=> service evaluation)
MarketOPERATION
(=> service delivery)
SERVICE EVALUATION is managed in the context of market requirements, whether the market is internal or external to the business organization. Evaluation signals change or acceptance.
SERVICE DELIVERY is managed as operating a market, with access and influence on the market through using the services catalog and portfolio.
SERVICE STRATEGY is developed and conducted to leverage the design of the market. The service strategy organizes opportunities promoted by the market design.
SERVICE DESIGN aligns with market development by generating and supporting options to connect opportunities and customers.
Market/Service Synchronicity
SERVICE EVALUATION is managed in the context of market requirements, whether the market is internal or external to the business organization. Evaluation signals beneficial acceptance or change.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY
SERVICE DELIVERY is managed as operating a market, with access and influence on the market through using the service catalog and service portfolio.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY
SERVICE STRATEGY is developed and conducted to leverage the design of the market. The market design promotes opportunities and the service strategy organizes them.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
SERVICE DESIGN aligns with market development by generating and supporting options to connect opportunities and customers.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION
Management logic: remapped
Business capabilities are built with goods and services – in other words, with products.
Increasingly, services are sourced from a wide variety of internal, external and even unauthorized providers.
Said differently, the primary business perspective on services now is not about how they are made but how the right ones are obtained.
Business management of services derives from that perspective, to represent and assure their business alignment.
A business is a market for services; therefore, we are re-mapping service management to market management.
The re-mapping helps to recognize that some notable problems occur when the demand-driven associations are missing.• The classic issue of a “solution looking for a problem” quickly comes to
mind. • Additionally, there is the struggle to understand if, or how, “innovations”
will play out and whether they require costly management-by-exception.• And the increasing frequency and diversity of business change puts risk
into the lifespan of every deliverable and related development project.
The re-mapping allows the framework to prevent such problems through clarifying management goals versus Demand, which is an obviously logical approach to developing customer satisfaction.
Demand view of Service (as a product)
Relevant Focus Effects of Management
Evaluation Business opportunities Detect acceptance and change
Strategy Value propositions Organize opportunities
Design Capability options Create connections of customers to options
Delivery Return on investment Leverage markets
A work in progress
This discussion’s framework study does not argue for any change to the work we referenced from Pragmatic Marketing.
Our objective has been to show that critical demand-oriented perspectives are already in use for managing products, whether explicitly or implicitly.
By exposing the inherent logic in place with those perspectives, an opportunity is offered to make conceptual associations that are meaningful and relevant in recognizing the product-nature of services.
The abstraction obtained from the study can promote new development of a similar framework that is extending or re-contextualizing cases and lessons learned from management in a well-practiced precedent.
