Service Design - Service Design Package

ITIL defines the SDP as a document which defines all aspects of an IT service and its requirements through each stage of its lifecycle. An SDP is produced for each new IT service, major change, or IT service retirement. Service Design Packages, along with other information about services, are managed within the Service Catalogue.

The Service Design package is one of the key outputs of the Service Design phase. It's the plan where we capture all of the requirements; systems and functions. This contains a whole mix of items which also includes environmental, outsourcing, processes, incident management, problem management and change management. Within the package we're also going to have a short strategy and plan for transition (the next phase after Service Design). However, we're probably going to attach that strategy to all the other plans that come out of the work we've done.

So as you can see, SDP is one of the key deliverables at the end of the Service Design phase. There are some interesting things to think about. We're really trying to create proactive behaviours and managed behaviours. We should be anticipating business needs and requirements. We've really got to influence those outcomes, ask the right questions and work with the business.

The package is usually split into different sections for each service:

• 1. Header - usually containing the name of the service
• 2. Detailed Requirements - specifies in more detail what conditions the new service and its underlying applications and infrastructure must fulfil. Also specifying all the information which is needed for building the new service.
• 3. Technical and Organizational Implementation Blueprint - contains the Transition strategy, details on technical changes required to build, test, deploy and operate the service, organizational changes required to implement and operate the service, and lastly the operational concept.
• 4. Planning Information - specifies the intended time frame for the service implementation and estimates the required resources

One step further

At this stage, we want to ask questions about the utility and what we're going to get out of this procedure. How's it going to improve productivity and business value. You wouldn't want to do every business evaluation for every particular instance, but consider things that are qualitative as a guide to ROI. We need to consider the underlying data that will be used to help us improve our decision making.

We have the user and customers experience to think about when working on Service Design. The design process is typically completed by people who are architect technologists who understand the customer and user experience. We may be involving new users in this process as well.