The Service Design (SD) volume[6] provides good-practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Significantly, design within ITIL is understood to encompass all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself. As such, service design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service. Within ITIL, design work for an IT service is aggregated into a single Service Design Package (SDP). Service design packages, along with other information about services, are managed within the service catalogues.
List of covered processes:
Design coordination
Service Catalogue management
Service level management
Availability management
Capacity Management
IT service continuity management
Information security management system
Supplier management
A model used to help define roles and responsibilities in Service Design is a RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) matrix.
Service Catalogue management
Service Catalogue management maintains and produces the Service Catalogue and ensures that it contains accurate details, dependencies and interfaces of all services made available to customers. Service Catalog information includes:
ordering and requesting processes
prices
deliverables
contract points
Service-level management
Service-level management provides for continual identification, monitoring and review of the levels of IT services specified in the Service-level agreements (SLAs). Service-level management ensures that arrangements are in place with internal IT support-providers and external suppliers in the form of Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and Underpinning Contracts (UCs), respectively. The process involves assessing the impact of change on service quality and SLAs. The service-level management process is in close relation with the operational processes to control their activities. The central role of Service-level management makes it the natural place for metrics to be established and monitored against a benchmark.
Service-level management is the primary interface with the customer (as opposed to the user serviced by the service desk). Service-level management is responsible for:
ensuring that the agreed IT services are delivered when and where they are supposed to be
liaising with availability management, capacity management, incident management and problem management to ensure that the required levels and quality of service are achieved within the resources agreed with financial management
ensuring that appropriate IT service continuity plans exist to support the business and its continuity requirements.
The service-level manager relies on the other areas of the service delivery process to provide the necessary support which ensures the agreed services are provided in a cost-effective, secure and efficient manner.