alignability process model
Bridging the gap between ITIL and a supporting application
- Is it not possible for you to deal with the fast pace of change within your industry?
- Are you so involved in the day-to-day operations that you have not enough time to add new services?
- Don’t you have enough time to improve existing services?
Index
About the Alignability Process Model
The Alignability Process Model provides field-proven IT Service Management processes for the BMC Service Desk Express application suite. Alignability is defined as "The ability of a service provider organization to align the functionality of its services, and the levels at which these services are provided, with the needs of its customers." The alignability processes are based on a combination of the best-practice ITIL methodology and the Total Quality Management (TQM) principle of continuous improvement. Where ITIL provides the theory and guidelines, the Alignability Process Model provides the processes, procedures and detailed work instructions. It even comes with a set of configuration files that automatically configure the BMC Service Desk Express application suite for the support of the alignability processes. The processes and the configuration files of this service management application dramatically reduce the time required for, and the risks associated with, service management implementation projects. The Alignability Process Model is available in English, German and Dutch.
The Alignability Process Model is split into two modules (or products): the "Service support" module and the "Service delivery" module.
Service support
The Service support module provides the processes required for a solid IT Service Management foundation. The six service support processes are:
- Configuration Management
- Event Management
- Incident Management
- Problem Management
- Change Management
- Release Management
Service delivery
The Service delivery module is targeted at mature service provider organizations. This module contains the following advanced IT Service Management processes:
- Service Level Management
- Availability Management
- Capacity Management
- Continuity Management
- Financial Management
Objective of the Alignability Process Model
The Alignability Process Model has been developed for Information Technology (IT) service providers to enable them to deal with the fast pace of change within their industry. Most service providers are so involved in the day-to-day operations that they have little time left to add new services or to improve existing ones. Because of their limited ability to improve their service offering, service providers often have trouble competing with new organizations that provide similar services. It does not matter whether the service provider is the IT department of a larger organization, or a company which core business is the provision of IT services. Both types of organizations need to provide advanced functionality at a competitive service level and price. By implementing and integrating the Alignability processes, service providers can shift their focus from keeping their current services up and running to improving their service offering. This shift from day-to-day support towards improvement is imperative if a service provider wants to continue to meet the ever-changing requirements of its customers.
ITIL and the Alignability Process Model
The ITIL guidelines, along with a healthy dose of common sense, were used to define the Alignability processes. The Alignability Process Model also provides detailed procedures and work instructions for the people who are expected to follow the processes. This
eliminates the need for service provider organizations to work through the ITIL guidelines to define their service management processes. It saves a service provider organization approximately one month per process that has to be defined.
The Alignability products also come with a set of configuration files for BMC Service Desk Express. These tool settings (thousands of them) ensure that the IT Service Management application provides optimum support for the alignability processes.
This allows the service provider organizations to get started without first having to configure an IT Service Management application. This is how alignability takes service provider organizations from the ITIL theory to a fully configured IT Service Management application that optimally supports its employees. And whenever an employee has questions, the detailed instructions of the model are there to answer them.
Alignability Process Model and BMC Service Desk Express
BMC Service Desk Express is a browser-based IT Service Management application suite. The preconfigured database that is provided with the alignability for BMC Service Desk Express, service support product ensures that customers get the most out of BMC Service Desk Express. With the alignability configuration, BMC Service Desk Express is optimally configured for organizations that have mature IT Service Management process requirements (e.g. in the areas of Service Level Management and/or Release Management).
The work instructions within the Alignability Process Model explain in detail how the functionality of this tool have to be used when completing the different steps of the procedures. The alignability for BMC Service Desk Express product was released on October 09, 2007.
Key Benefits of the Alignability Process Model
The key benefits of the Alignability Process Model are:
- Reduce the time needed to implement BMC Service Desk Express by more than 50 percent.
- Improve adherence to best-practice frameworks, such as ITIL
- Lower training costs
- Ensure superior quality of service by continuously optimizing processes
History of the Alignability Process Model
- It all started in 1998 when two seasoned IT Service Management consultants incorporated Service Management Partners (SMP). They combined TQM principles with ITIL modules to form a process model for service provider organizations. Each of the model’s processes was documented in great detail. Thus, the model and the underlying process definitions became the standards that SMP used to speed up service management implementations for its customers.
- These standards were used during SMP’s first engagement. The customer liked the processes, but required numerous changes. After this engagement, SMP reviewed the changes that were made, and decided to update its standard process definitions with all changes that were likely to benefit future customers.
- The updated standards were used as a starting point for the next engagement. Again, the customer wanted to change the processes, but not as much as the first customer. Having completed the second implementation project, the requested changes were reviewed. A few were found to be customer-specific, but the rest were incorporated in the standards.
- It went on like this, until one evening in 1999 at an airport in Spain. There the idea was born to convert the standards to the HTML format. This would provide much faster access to the detailed work instructions than the documents were able to offer.
- In March 2001, version 1.0 was made available on the internet under the name Alignability. It was published there for potential customers to review the processes and the approach before they contracted SMP.
More information? Contact us..
