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Representative POMs are described for Service Life Cycle at each level of maturity.

2Basic

• Practice

  Ensure communication takes place when significant service changes have occurred.

  Outcome

  Stakeholders are kept aware of key services changes.

  Metric

  % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.

• Practice

  Define service life cycles, their governance, and decision rights.

  Outcome

  Service life cycle management activities can be allocated to various roles.

  Metric

  % of service life cycle management activities with formally assigned ownership.

• Practice

  Manage service introduction in an effective manner, and include a piloting and testing phase for large projects.

  Outcome

  Services are more stable when they are released.

  Metric

  % of service introductions that include a pilot and testing phase.

• Practice

  Identify key underutilized or redundant services to be decommissioned.

  Outcome

  Key underutilized or redundant services are no longer a drain on resources.

  Metrics

  • % of service decommissioning opportunities that are identified by customer-facing processes.
  • % of redundant services decommissioned.

3Intermediate

• Practice

  Proactively notify key stakeholders of changes to the service catalogue, in line with agreed service levels.

  Outcome

  Most stakeholders are consistently communicated with and are aware of upcoming changes to the service catalogue and the rationale behind the changes.

  Metric

  % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.

• Practice

  Train staff on the service life cycle procedures such as change authorization and end-of-life processes, and on service interdependencies.

  Outcome

  Service life cycle procedures and interdependencies are understood and change impact analysis can be conducted.

  Metric

  % of staff trained in service life cycle procedures.

• Practices

  • Introduce services according to business needs and as part of a formal release management process.
  • Ensure a rollback procedure is set up and tested before a service is introduced.

  Outcome

  An effective process for introduction and rollback of changes exists.

  Metrics

  • % of services introduced using formal release management procedures.
  • % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.

• Practices

  • Establish well-defined decommissioning processes (including roles and responsibilities), and align decommissioning activities with business priorities.
  • Assess the impact on all related services before a service is decommissioned, and identify and retire any redundant components.

  Outcomes

  • Underutilized or redundant services and hardware are formally identified and decommissioned.
  • Ownership of all related data, documentation, and system components, and arrangements for archiving, disposal, or transfer can be agreed.

  Metrics

  • % of redundant services decommissioned.
  • Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.

4Advanced

• Practice

  Proactively communicate all service changes to all stakeholders — using targeted communication that identifies the improvements or other potential impacts the changes might have.

  Outcome

  All stakeholders are personally informed about pending service changes that might be of interest to them.

  Metric

  % of service changes that are proactively communicated to stakeholders.

• Practices

  • Employ advanced service life cycle techniques to test state transitions.
  • Include automation, scripting, and version control.

  Outcomes

  • Advanced life cycle techniques allow state transitions to be tested before live system changes.
  • Automation and scripting enable agility and result in a reduced number of errors.
  • Version control allows changes to be reversed in many cases.

  Metrics

  • % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.
  • % of requests that result from service changes.

• Practices

  • Couple service introduction release management with wider organizational change management processes.
  • Inform and train customers and IT staff before a service is changed or introduced.

  Outcome

  Service introduction causes minimal disruption to the business.

  Metrics

  • % of services introduced using formal release management procedures.
  • % of attempted rollbacks that are successfully completed.
  • Mean time taken to introduce a service.
  • % of requests that result from service introduction.

• Practices

  • Extend decommissioning processes across the entire organization, with a focus on reusability of components and automated decommissioning when appropriate (e.g. virtualized servers).
  • Encourage active engagement to identify and assess potential services to be decommissioned and clearly articulate the impact of decommissioning — both in terms of costs and service levels.

  Outcome

  Resource utilization is optimized and unnecessary redundancy is minimized.

  Metrics

  • % of redundant services decommissioned.
  • Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.
  • Cost savings resulting from component reuse.
  • % of decommissioning activities that are automated.
  • Total person-hours required to support decommissioning activities.

5Optimized

• Practice

  Continually review the service provisioning communication process using methods such as small group feedback forums, surveys, or inviting staff suggestions, and improve practices as appropriate.

  Outcome

  The service provisioning communication process, and resultant visibility of the service catalogue and changes to it, are maintained at a high standard and meet or exceed the targets set out in SLAs.

  Metric

  Satisfaction ratings in relation to stakeholder communications.

• Practice

  Look to industry best practice and emerging research concepts for continuous improvement opportunities in service provisioning life cycle management.

  Outcome

  Service disruptions are rare and are nearly always flagged ahead of the disruption.

  Metric

  # of (unnotified) service disruptions per month.

• Practice

  Align release management, including service introduction, with business needs and schedules.

  Outcomes

  • Services are introduced into operation smoothly and disruption to the business is rare.
  • Service introduction takes a lead in organizational capability improvement and is recognized (both internally and externally) as a key differentiator.

  Metrics

  • Mean time taken to introduce a service.
  • % of requests that result from service introduction.
  • Amount of service time lost due to release activity.
  • Resource costs per release.

• Practices

  • Assess decommissioning of services and components as part of all change projects and programmes across the business ecosystem.
  • Articulate the impact of decommissioning — both in terms of service improvement and cost.

  Outcomes

  • Services that are not strategically valuable or operationally essential are effectively decommissioned.
  • Service provisioning operation costs are optimized.

  Metrics

  • Total cost of non-strategic services in the portfolio.
  • % of redundant services decommissioned.
  • Cost savings resulting from service decommissioning.
  • Total person-hours required to support decommissioning activities.