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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential for SLM Practitioners, 19 Oct 2002
This book is divided into ten sections, and is one of the most complete collections of IT service management papers to be found in a single book. It includes papers from Gartner and Meta Group (among other industry analysis firms), descriptions of vendor approaches (Hewlett-Packard's Service Management Reference Model, Microsoft's Operations Framework), and the internationally recognized standard - ITIL - that is at the core of the International Service Management Forum's vendor-independent approach to service management.Organization of the book is as follows: I. Models for managing information systems, II. Sourcing and procurement, III. Metrics, IV. Maturity, V. Processes, VI. Organizational aspects, VII. Practical guidance, VIII. E-management, IX. Tools and instruments, and X. IT management glossary. In other words, this book covers every facet of service management. Among what I like most about this book (and there is much more than these highlights, but I want to share my favorites): the complete list of models from section I, which gives you ample information to compare and contrast approaches, Section III's metrics articles, especially the paper on applying Goals-Questions-Metrics to service management (a good way to clarify service level objectives), Section IV's discussion of Test Process Improvement (TPI)as it relates to service management, and all of Section V, which is devoted to processes. Another aspect of this book is I was able to read a large body of word that was only previously available in Dutch (like a good deal of some of the more interesting software testing approaches such as TPI, much of the service management literature is published only in Dutch - this book allowed me to tap into information that I knew existed that was written in a language that I cannot read). If you are serious about IT service management this book is one of the best investments you can make. I also strongly recommend the editor's (Jan Van Bon) introductory book titled "IT Service Management: An Introduction" ISBN 9080671347. In addition, if you are interested in Section IX (Tools and Instruments), I recommend that you consider "SLM Solutions: A Buyer's Guide" by Rick Sturm, Lisa Erickson-Harris and David St. Onge (ISBN 097208360X), which is among the most thoroughly researched books on tools and vendors.
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