I am currently training a group in ITIL Foundation Program.  What’s particularly interesting about this group is that their company is in essence an External Supplier, supplying Service desk support, desktop support, and application development and support through an outsourcing arrangement.  The participants’ roles was more of an external support role for their customers.

What was really interesting was the challenge in trying to help them understand the concept of SLM and the use of SLA’s, OLA;s and UC’s…

What was clear was that what they saw as SLA’s with their customers their customers saw as UC’s.  This was working fine until we tried to “internalise” this concept into their own Internal IT dep’t.  Because their roles dealt mostly with external customers, it was easy for them to confuse the SLA/UC concept. 

It is interesting that this is where ITIL can be “unclear”/ambiguous – as outsourcing is becoming more and more the norm these days, I believe that this world of Supplier Mgt is becoming exponentially more complex.  As I ponder this it is seeming like for every “ego” of ITIL, there is an “ID” … a mirrored, yet opposingly different concept of ITSM for these growing number of outsourcing/cosourcing arrangements..

Maybe something else for v4???

Till next time from the Team at The Art of Service

Michael