Service Desk Organizational Integration
The ITIL v2 specification, represented in the pyramid above, defined 10 processes and 1 function.
They were presented in two volumes, Service Support ('the blue book') and Service Delivery ('the red book').
The 5 Service Support processes (and 1 function) can be further broken down into two triads. Notice how they are positioned on the pyramid. This is significant.
The first triad is the Service Desk, Incident Mgt. and Problem Management. This triad is called Support and Restore.
The Problem process is the controlling process for the Support and Restore triad.
Incident and Problem Management are processes. When learning processes it is helpful to keep the goals of the processes in mind:
- The goal of Incident Management is to restore service as quickly as possible, even if root cause is not known.
- The goal of Problem Management is to seek and determine root cause.
And, just for good measure- the Service Desk is the single point of contact for end-users.
So- the Service Desk is the face of Incident Management to the end-users. When something goes wrong- the end users deal with the Service Desk.
It is important to understand that this does NOT mean that the Service Desk is the only organizational unit that deals with Incidents. Incident Management is the process that seeks to restore service as quickly as possible. A quick review:
- An Incident is an interruption or degradation of service.
- Incident Management seeks to restore service as quickly as possible, even if root cause is unknown.
- Therefore, there are some Incidents that may be resolved without the Service Desk ever being aware of them.
Nevertheless, much of what the Service Desk will deal with will be Incidents of one sort or another. Some Desks will not deal with either Problems or Service Requests at all, though most will (at least Service Requests).
This triad of ITIL v2 Support and Restore processes sit at the customer facing edge of the value Chain- firmly in the ‘Run’ portion of the Chain.
Of course, in a strategically managed IT organization, the Service Desk and supporting processes would have a strong feedback connection to the Plan and Build frameworks, governance and processes. The more mature the organization, the stronger this feedback connection would be.
Another indication of proper Support and Restore integration is the presence of a common Incident Management process, including common tool to record and manage Incidents, used consistently across the organization.