The IT Service Part 1 - The Essentials / Best Practice (Haren Van Publishing) (PDF)

Make it Simple and Keep it Simple
Since the early 2000s numerous external scenarios and drivers have added significant pressures upon the IT organisations. Among many, these include:
Regulatory compliance: data privacy requirements and corporate scandals have focused a requirement for transparency - with high impact on IT organisations
Economic pressures: require IT organisations to more closely align with business imperatives.
The outcome has been an explosion of 'standards' and 'frameworks' each designed to support the IT organisation as it demonstrates to the world that they are the 'rock' of an organisation: strong, reliable, effective and efficient. Most of these standards and frameworks have great elements but no organisation can adopt them all - and many were created without sufficient considerations for interoperability.

The IT Service (in 2 parts) looks at the key and very simple goals of an IT organisation and clearly and succinctly presents to the reader the best 'rock solid' elements in the Industry. It then shows how all the key elements can easily 'crystallise' together -with great templates and check-lists.

In Part 1 (this book) the reader is presented with the simple objectives that the IT organisation really must address. The author uses his extensive expertise to present to the reader they key themes and processes that apply. In order to keep it simple the author strips down what appears to be complex standards into their basic components and demonstrates to the reader that these components are actually common sense. The author's independence means that the reader doesn't get one view of one or two approaches - every aspect of the IT service is considered and presented to create a unique holistic view of the basic building blocks of a 'rock solid' IT department. Topics included are:

Designing The Service
Management Of Risks
Transitioning The Service
Managing The Service Day-To-Day
Improvement Efforts
Upcoming Trends

N.B.: In Part 2 (another book) the reader gains expert advice on how the components of IT Service are 'crystallised' in a real environment.