Towards an IT Service Lifecycle Management (ITSLM) Concept

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) usage in enterprises has evolved over the last years. This led to today's complex, heterogeneous, and dynamic IT system landscapes that support business processes in enterprises. To manage these landscapes, the IT Service Management (ITSM) concept is gaining more importance in today's business and research. Studies demonstrate that introducing ITSM standards lead to positive effects, such as improved customer-orientation as well as efficiency and transparency of IT support, which justify the costs of implementation. However, companies still face difficulties in deciding which processes to be implement (first), and to which extent. Questions like: "How can the currently applied ITSM be adapted or extended when new business-related or technological challenges appear?" arise. Goods producing companies started early relying on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). PLM delivers a solid means to define, discuss, analyze, and better standardize value creation processes. With PLM in mind, we propose a concept to adopt and further develop it towards IT Service Lifecycle Management (ITSLM) suitable for the IT services provider environment. After introducing ITSLM, analyzing its processes, and its correlation to PLM, we design ITSLM as a model-driven process support. The selection of appropriate models with different complexity can be used to implement and adapt standard supporting tasks with minimum effort. Two use cases are detailed: fault-tolerance design optimization as well as automation of IT service provisioning. In these areas, suitable model complexity levels, computer-aided task support as well as the knowledge transfer among these models are discussed.