Service Delivery Management and Service Level Management

[philk4you]

Hello,
why the function of Service Delivery Management does not appear in the content of Service Level Management ?
Where can i find information in ITIL books about SDM ?
What is the difference between a SDM and a SLM ?

Phil from France

[itilimp]

Service Delivery and Service Support form the 2 core areas of ITIL.
Service Level Management is just one process within the Service Delivery area.

Service Delivery consists of the following processes:
Availability Management
Capacity Management
Financial Management
Service Level Management
IT Service Continuity

So if you want to know about Service Delivery in ITIL terms - then you'd need to familiarise yourself with all the processes above.

[rjp]

There are some aspects of the ITIL that are not very clearly presented.

Particularly with relation to the organisational 'positioning' of the practices described in the Service Support and Delivery books. The processes in these books represent a comprehensive approach to IT management, but don't provide any guidance about how they can be co-ordinated 'one level up'.

There is definitely some murkiness in the Service Level Management chapter. On one hand it presents Service Level Management as primarily concerned with performance monitoring, measurement and reporting - hence the term 'level' which implies a quantitative approach. On the other hand it represents the process as the one responsible for negotiating and defining services. This is a qualitative process and to be effective, requires SLM to have quite a lot of authority over the practice of all the other ITIL processes.

In response to this, industry trends have seen some of the Service Level Management practices developed beyond the explicit scope of the ITIL chapter, but to what may be considered their 'logical' conclusions. This particularly true of the Catalogue of Services - which has been moved to one side by many sites as just one output of a broader Service Portfolio Management with quite senior ownership.

I think this is at least indicated by the announced 'working titles' for the V3 refresh of ITIL now under way:

• service strategies
  
• service design
  
• service introduction
  
• service operation
  
• continuing service improvement
  

...which, to my mind, indicates that the Service Portfolio is no longer going to be represented as one practice along side others, but as the 'context' within which all the other processes take place.

I'm guessing here, but I would say that there will be a pretty clear need for senior management functions that take clear ownership of the Service Portfolio and guide the conduct of all the other management processes. I would expect this to be 'E-level'. (In large organisations at least. And there is also the issue that financial management is presented 'along side' the other practices - when in fact, in larger organisations, it has a more vertical relationship to the whole framework.)

So yes there are Service Level Management tasks and responsibilities that are commensurate in importance, responsibility, and authority to other tasks in other chapters (and books). But there are also management tasks currently included in the Service Level Management chapter that need a higher level of authority and control than the other tasks. Which is why you often hear references to a 'Services Director' in IT service management discussions.

So no, at the moment their is no clearly defined distinction between what you are calling 'Service Delivery Management' and 'Service Level Management'. (Though it is probably correct to say that while Service Level Management is an explicitly defined practice, Service Delivery Management is simply the outcome of other practices _ the grammatical vagary of the word 'Management').

I think it just 'assumed' that IT organisations will have in place senior E-level management that will take responsibility for the overall coordination of all the practises, under the guidance of other resources such as ISO 20K, Cobit, etc.

This is perfectly reasonable assumption. The only 'unfortunate' aspect of it is that some of the practices E-level management should be directly involved in is bundled into the Service Level Management chapter of the ITIL.

Though as I indicated, I think some of this may be better addressed by the new structure proposed for ITIL V3.

[query]

[rjp]

Actually not so much 'more a case of missunderstanding...' but almost totally a case of misunderstanding...and as much by IT as the business.

The role/reporting/accountability/management confusions are already there in most cases, as you pointed out. Very few of these originate in ITIL implementations. Rather they simply compound the difficulty of ITIL implentations.

My point is that by intentionally restricting itself to abstracted roles the ITIL presents its practices in a manner that can cause confusion on some of the critical issues of line-management - particularly some of the practices in the SLM chapter.

It is an issue worth addressing because it can save 'new comers' a few headaches. The most common disconnect being that someone placed in a newly created 'Service Level Manager's' position or role will not have the status, authoirity and control to actually be effective in the 'Service Architecture' phases of the SLM cycle.