ITIL Service Strategy provides guidance on the importance for all organizations of a well defined business strategy, underpinned by an effective IT strategy. ITIL Service Strategy is the starting point in the ITIL service lifecycle, setting the vision, direction and many of the goals, objectives, policies, requirements and targets for the other lifecycle stages and the processes and functions within them.
Put simply, the strategy will ultimately decide and justify what services will be provided to whom, when, in what way and at what cost - easy to say, but a lot more complex to achieve!
When ITIL was first introduced in the late 1980s it rightly concentrated on the operational areas where focus was needed at that time. The scope was later widened and when the lifecycle approach was introduced it broke new ground by including guidance for the first time, regarding the vital area of service strategy. The aim of this updated version has been to provide greater clarity regarding the practical activities involved with the development, introduction and ongoing management of an effective strategy.
A clearer definition has been drawn between an organization's business strategy and its IT strategy - the business strategy (amongst other things) defines the IT strategy and the IT strategy supports the business strategy.
The processes within service strategy have now been more clearly named and defined: strategy management for IT services; service portfolio management; financial management for IT services; demand management; business relationship management.
Greater clarification has been provided around value creation with a sharper differentiation between value added and value realized, including a new table to give better examples of utility and warranty. Financial management guidance has been re-instated regarding budgeting, accounting and charging.
Business relationship management is now covered as a process as well as a role. The differentiation between business relationship management for a Type I, II and III service provider is better explained and clarified. Greater detail of how customers differ from users and consumers is provided and internal and external customers are more clearly defined and explained. The role of business units and other IT departments as customers has also been clarified; IT as an external service provider has been expanded and clarified.
More detail has been included regarding governance, including a fuller definition of what governance means, the difference between governance and management, a governance framework and how service management relates to governance.
By way of an update, some coverage has been added on how IT service management is impacted by the prevalence of cloud computing, and a new appendix has been added specifically covering service strategy and the cloud; characteristics, types, types of services, components of cloud architecture.
In summary, an effective IT strategy is essential for all IT service management organizations. It is hoped that this book now gives improved, more practical guidance on how such as strategy can be assessed, planned, implemented and managed.