Service Design – Architecting the Future

Service Design architects innovative services to integrate and effectively support the business.

“When we build, let us think that we build for ever.” – John Ruskin

When we want to build forever as expressed by John Ruskin, we must provide a holistic approach to service design. Good service design will require the synergistic combination of the following four quintessential elements of design:

1. People – provide knowledge, wisdom, and skills to effectively build innovative services to support and meet business needs

2. Process – core to the efficient and effective execution of services to support the business in a scalable and repeatable manner

3. Products – provide appropriate technology and tools to enable and automate services and processes to support and meet business needs

4. Partners – provide third-party expertise to assist in execution of services to support and meet business needs

Service Design is comprised of the following seven wonders:

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

Service Level Management provides the core process and activities in building the relationship and agreement between IT and the business. This process is pivotal to the entire service design domain since this process gathers and negotiates service level requirements with the business. The design of the service must meet the service level agreements that are based on the agreed and negotiated service level requirements.

Service Catalog Management is a vital integration point with service level management since this process creates and develops services that will best integrate and support the business requirements. A service catalog is the master brochure of services with detailed descriptions, pricing and request mechanisms for obtaining services from IT.

Capacity Management is a critical aspect that needs to be considered for service design. IT must make sure that the services it is delivering to the business are properly sized and scaled to effectively support the business demands and outcomes.

Availability Management is all about making sure the service is up and available to the business when needed. More importantly, the service needs to be accessible in a secure manner by authorized individuals, and that information needs to be protected from being altered from its original state.

IT Service Continuity Management provides core processes in recovery of services in the event of a major outage.  It is the critical process that ensures the IT components and dependent services are properly recovered to best support the vital business functions.

Information Security Management’s purpose is to make sure IT security aligns with business security to support all service activities from an availability, confidentiality and integrity standpoint. This is maintained and enforced through an overall security policy, accompanied with a set of supporting controls and an integrated security management information system, which supports and integrates with the strategies and policies of the business.

Supplier Management ensures business is getting value for the money for the services being provided by the third-party suppliers. It is critical that the underpinning contracts established with the third-party suppliers support the business service level agreements and IT’s operational level agreements when delivering the end service to the business.

Optimum Service Design in Action: Hypothetical ExampleTo understand how these seven wonders integrate and work together to effectively create an optimum design for service, consider the case of critical patient information systems in a hospital.  Hospital employees and physicians rely on these kinds of systems to access patient information 24×7, 365 days a year – and the ready availability of vital information like medical histories could literally mean the difference between a patient’s life and death.  Without careful consideration of design requirements in each of these seven areas, an improperly designed service could have potentially serious shortcomings.  Here are some examples of questions that a project team might address at the outset of the design process:

Service Level Management & Availability Does the service design address these high availability requirements and are the service agreements negotiated at proper levels?

Service Catalog is the list of medical services available to the patient recorded in the medical systems?  Is there adequate flexibility to support changes in service offerings?

Capacity Do the medical systems have the capacity to support all required patient information and do they have the sufficient capacity to support current physician and patient demands and requirements?

IT Service Continuity Management Are critical processes in place to effect recovery of the service in the event of a major outage?

Information Security Management Are all mandatory requirements for compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)¹ included in the design?  Does the service meet national standards for transaction information? Does it appropriately address security requirements for patient data?

Supplier Management Many hospitals rely on numerous external suppliers such as suppliers for the proper disposal of medical waste, and the backup and recovery of patient information from the medical systems. Does the service address potential supplier management and monitoring requirements to ensure these vendors are supporting the best interests of the patients, physicians and the hospital? 

From this example we can see that even a service that sounds straightforward –keeping track of patient/customer data – can have very complex requirements.  Taking a little extra time to assess requirements in each of these seven areas and applying a little extra effort will help your organization properly architect a future that is built to last.

Alex Hernandez is a qualified ISO/IEC 20000 certified consultant and ITIL service manager at Plexent, an IT service management (ITSM) company and leading provider of ITSM-focused intellectual property.  www.plexent.com

Sources:

¹ Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when they change or lose their jobs. Title II of HIPAA, the Administrative Simplification (AS) provisions, requires the establishment of national standards for electronic health care transactions and national identifiers for providers, health insurance plans, and employers. HIPAA also addresses the security aspects of patient information by requiring strong security requirements to protect patient health data and the privacy of patient information.