Utility and Warranty come handy when characterizing and checking the value of a IT Service as it progresses throughout its lifecycle.
Utility – Functionality offered by a Product or a Service to meet a particular need. Utility is often summarized as “what it does”.
Warranty – A promise or guarantee that a Product or a Service will meet its agreed requirements (“how it is done”).
Service Strategy introduces an interesting pair of complementar concepts: Resources and Capabilities.
Straight from the book we have:
Resource: A generic term that includes IT Infrastructure, people, money or anything else that might help to deliver an IT Service. Resources are considered to be Assets of an Organization.
Capability: The ability of an organization, person, Process, Application, Configuration Item or IT Service to carry out an Activity. Capabilities are intangible Assets of an Organization.
People are at the same time a Resource (in the sense that people are frequently instrumental in delivering an IT Service) and a Capability (people carry out Activities…).
After a comment from IT Skeptic for the previous Service Catalogue – ITIL v3 post, I’ve drawn this diagram hoping it will give a clearer picture on this topic (it is heavily based upon Figure 3.7 from the Service Design core book) .
Michael Nieves – co-author with Majid Iqbal of the Service Strategy ITIL v3 core book – did a short interview for CIO.com with quite interesting observations regarding the new ITIL v3 approach for IT managers.
Service Strategy is the “central hub” where the whole service lifecycle is underpinned so it’s sensible to know what Michael has to say about it. Here goes an analysis drawing from Michael words.
ITIL Blues 