ITSM Service Delivery | Difference Between IT Service Delivery & IT Service Support
Service Delivery
Service delivery has a specific definition and prominence in ITSM v2, focusing on the long-term aspects of IT services like Financial Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Service Level Management, and IT Service Continuity Management.
Be it any IT organization; no management would create budgets every day.
Be it any IT organization; no team would define availability plans for an IT service every day.
Be it any IT organization; no team would define capacity plans for an IT service every day.
Be it any IT organization; no teams would define continuity plans for an IT service every day.
Be it any IT organization; no teams would define SLAs for an IT service every day.
You do the above-mentioned activities once in a month or quarter or half a year; hence these activities are focused on the long term. Thus the processes Financial Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Service Level Management, and IT Service Continuity Management are categorized under Service Delivery.
Service Support
On the other side, there was Service support, which focused on the day-to-day operations. The processes and functions covered in in-service support are Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management, and one-function Service Desk.
Incidents, problems, changes, releases, configurations, and interactions with the service desk happen regularly in day-to-day operations. Hence these processes and functions are categorized as in-service support.
IT v3 Service Delivery.
ITSM v3 has no specific definition for IT service delivery. ITSM v3 is a lifecycle-based approach that runs on the five process areas service strategy, service design, service transition, service operations, and continual service improvement.
IT Service Delivery means delivering IT services in a practical IT environment, defining the strategy, designing the service, transitioning the service, performing operations, and improving the service.
Some of the prime activities involved in IT Service delivery are:
- Formulate and plan, design, schedule, and monitor the strategy, design, transition, operations, and continuous improvement activities to meet time and targets.
- Providing training to the IT workforce appropriately on the respective processes, tools, and technologies to provide reasonable support on incidents, service requests, problems, and change requests in the pre-defined SLA targets.
- Understanding the ticket volumes and backlog.
- Leading, executing structured governance, and managing the escalations, communications, relationship with the customer, etc.
- Developing, negotiating, and managing the SLAs as per the business unit needs
- Managing services within budget guidelines and providing progress, issues, and improvements reports for top, mid, and low-level management.
- Identifying all possible risks that can affect IT services concerning time, cost, scope, and quality.
- Reviewing and monitoring the IT operations performance reactively and proactively to meet SLAs and customer requirements.
- Defining and evolving the support models/plans for new services.
- Managing compliance with the defined SOP’s and policies associated with the IT operations and process.
Difference between ITSM Service Support and ITSM Service Delivery
| IT Service Support | IT Service Delivery |
| IT Service support focuses on providing day-to-day support in the IT operational environment. | IT Service delivery focuses on planning and designing IT infrastructure services. |
| Processes involved in service support are Incident management, problem management, change management, release management, configuration management. Has one function – Service Desk. |
Processes involved in service delivery are Financial Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, Service Level Management, and IT Service Continuity Management. |
