Paul Allen

SERVICE-ORIENTED MANAGEMENT

Management of services is commonly treated as an entirely separate subject from topics such as business improvement, business process redesign, software architecture, and software development. Worse still, both the management of run-time software and the management of SLAs, are traditionally dealt with as separate IT concerns that have little to do with each other. In part 4 we examine the imperative for this situation to change and introduce a new discipline, SOM, to bring together the areas of SEM, SLAs, and SLM in a cohesive fashion. We show how this approach integrates with both SOA and BA to round off an effective execution strategy for service orientation. Chapter 11 paints the “big picture” of SOM. We explore the major gear shifts that are required to move from traditional management of software operations to execution management of software services. In particular, we explore the connection points between the various disciplines and examine their relationship to ITIL. Chapter 12 describes a streamlined yet rigorous approach to the key topic of SLAs that is in tune with the ITIL guidelines on service support and delivery. We set out an approach that is integrated with both BA and SOA, and that is designed to cater as easily as possible for the migration of business processes toward composition from services.

Service Orientation: Service-oriented process redesign

A stepwise approach The great majority of organizations are not in a situation where they have the luxury of designing their processes from scratch. These companies must adjust and develop their existing processes to meet the challenges of service orientation described in chapter 3. For example, with a service-oriented approach, the emphasis is much less on decomposition and value chain flow, much more on collaboration and reuse of business capability. In addition, the business models of these organizations, whether explicitly stated in the form of a business process model or whether implicit in the way the company operates, are dominated by the notion of the end-to-end value chain . However, it is unrealistic to expect that these business models and modes of operation can be replaced overnight. As we have repeatedly said, service orientation is much more a matter of evolution of best practices . For all but a few companies, able to start out with brand new business models, the need is for stepwise process redesign . The need here is for delivering “quick wins” that increase return on investment in terms of increased business value or reduced business costs. At the same time, the idea is to evolve a set of services which are offered to the processes, as part of the longer-term goal of business agility. This evolutionary approach is a keynote of both our case studies: Queensland Transport (detailed in chapter 14) and Credit Suisse (detailed in chapter 15). So a balance is needed.

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