ITIL Service Operation

Finally! Service Operation is a real man's book. This is where it happens. Here we make money. All we do in Strategy, Design and Transition makes sense here. Service Provider does day-to-day activities of keeping the service available and customer happy.
If you are going to read any of the five books, my bet is that this will be the one. Since in the beginning we are all interested in consequences more than causes. 

Purpose
To do everything necessary for service delivery at agreed levels.

Objectives

• Minimizing the adverse impact of service outages on business activities
• Delivering and supporting the agreed services effectively and efficiently
• Maintaining access to services for authorized customers (and no one else)

Scope

• People
• Processes (Service Management)
• Technology
• Services

Value

• Reduced outage duration and frequency
• Operational results and data provided
• Enforcement of security policy

ITIL Service Operation Mind Map

Service Operation Processes:

Incident Management
Key process, one of the oldest Service Support processes. If you know anything about ITIL, odds are that you know Incident Management. It is in charge of restoring disrupted service as soon as possible.

Event Management
This process was added in V3 to address emerging use of monitoring tools in IT and describe the relation to Incident Management from V2.

Request Fulfilment
This is another offspring of the holly Incident Management, cause of many an internet forum discussion 'What is Request Fulfilment?" or likes.  Definition is simple: Request Fulfilment manages customer requests. Which by definition can be: requests for info or advice; for a Standard Change or for access to an IT Service. Simple. Have a look at article about password reset.

Problem Management
As opposed to Incident Management, Problem Management seeks underlying causes of one or more incidents and through lifecycle of known error-workaround-permanent fix,  strives to minimize the adverse impact of problems to the business process. Problem Management can be reactive and proactive.

Access Management
Another new one in V3. This is actually a process which spends a lot of Operations time - handling customer access rights . New users, approvals, identity statuses, logging and tracking, removal of rights.


Service Operation Functions:

Service Desk
The only function in V2, Service Desk is the single point of contact (SPOC) and an interface to a user for all communication with service support, all Operation and most of Transition processes. With accent to Incident Management, Request Fulfilment and Event Management.

Technical Management
Technical Management takes care of technology competencies. It identifies, develops and refines the knowledge needed to design, test, manage and improve the service. It also manages trainings and deployment of resources.

IT Operations Management
Operations Management does daily operational activities needed for IT Infrastructure management. It consists of Operations Control which performs routine operational tasks, and Facilities Management which manages physical environment.

Application Management
Application Management was a separate book in V2. It is responsible for managing Applications across their lifecycle (Requirements-Design-Build-Deploy-Operate-Optimize).