| Absorbed
Overhead |
Overhead
which, by means of absorption
rates, is included in the costs
of specific products or services. Under or
over-absorbed overhead - the
difference between the overhead
cost incurred and overhead cost
absorbed: it may be split into
its two constituent parts for
control purposes. |
|
|
| Absorption
Costing |
An
accounting practice whereby
fixed and variable costs are
allocated and apportioned to
cost units and total overheads
are absorbed according to
activity level. The term
may be applied where production
costs only, or costs of all
functions are so allocated. |
|
|
| Account
Manager |
An
IT manager whose primary
function is to maintain a close
relationship with individual
business representatives in
order to promote the services IT
can offer, to ensure that IT is
satisfying the business needs of
the customer and to explore new
services that IT might offer the
customer.
Organisationally, Account
Management responsibilities are
often separated from Service
Level Management
responsibilities when individual
customers receive multiple
services from IT which do not
have a common owner, or when
Service Level Management is
perceived as purely operational
responsibility, without
authority or responsibility for
service development. |
|
|
| Accounting |
The
process of accounting fully for
the way the IT organisation
spends its money, particularly
the ability to identify costs by
service,
Customer and activity. |
|
|
| Accounting
Centre |
A
type of IT organisation that
identifies the costs of
providing service, and may do
some budgeting. The focus
is on measuring performance and
conducting investment
assessment. |
|
|
| Action
Lists |
A
specific IT Service Continuity
Management term referring to
defined actions, allocated to
recovery teams and individuals,
within a phase of a plan.
These are supported by reference
data. |
|
|
| Affinity
/ KJ Diagram (Jiro Kawakita) |
A
special form of brainstorming
used to gather large amounts of
ideas, opinions or issues, group
those items that are naturally
related and identify for a each
grouping a single concept that
ties the group together. A
useful technique when chaos
exists, the team is drowning in
a large volume of ideas,
breakthrough thinking is
required or broad issues or
themes must be identified.
This is a creative rather than
logical process that encourages
true participation because
everyone's ideas find their way
into the exercise. |
|
|
| Agreed
Service Time |
The
time during which a particular
IT service is agreed to be fully
available, ideally as defined in
the Service Level
Agreement. Different
levels of service might apply
within the agreed service time,
for instance the Service Desk
might not be available for all
the hours that users can access
their services. |
|
|
| Agreement |
In
ITSM terms, the use of the word
'agreement' rather than contract
signifies less the legal
differences between the two and
more a difference in approach
and style. 'Agreement' is
used exclusively for an
understanding, normally written,
between internal parties (though
it may be appended to and
therefore form part of an
external contract). An
agreement is likely to register
an aspiration for a particular
service level whereas a contract
will usually record the minimum
service level permissible.
The wording in a contract must
represent its legally binding
nature but the wording of an
ITSM agreement reflects much
more the nature of the (aimed
for) relationship between the
parties involved. See also
Contract. |
|
|
| Alert |
A
warning that a threshold has
been reached or that a failure
has occurred, or is likely to
occur. Typically
propagated by a system
management tool. |
|
|
| Alert
Phase |
The
first phase of a Business
Continuity Plan in which the
initial emergency procedures and
damage assessments are
activated. |
|
|
| Allies |
Persons
or organisations joined together
for a period of time for a
particular purpose or mutual
benefit. |
|
|
| Allocated
Cost |
A cost that can be directly identified with
and assigned to a particular Customer,
service, activity,
etc. See also Apportioned
Cost. |
|
|
| Analytical
Modelling |
A
software or other service
component modelling technique
using tools based on
mathematical models. See
also Modelling. |
|
|
| Application
Service Provider |
An
organisation that hosts software
applications on its own servers
within its own facilities.
Customers access the
applications via private lines
or the Internet. Also
referred to as a Commercial
Service Provider. |
|
|
| Application
Sizing |
The
process of determining the
service level, resource and cost
implications of any new
application or any major
addition or enhancement to an
existing application. |
|
|
| Apportioned
Cost |
A
(overhead) cost that is shared by a number of
Customers,
services, etc. This cost must be shared
out between units on an equitable basis.
See also Allocated
Cost. |
|
|
| Assembly
CI |
A
CI comprising other CIs.
See also Component
CI. |
|
|
| Asset |
Literally
a valuable person or thing that
is 'owned', assets will often
appear on a balance sheet as
items to be set against an
organisation liabilities.
In ITSCM and in Security Audit
and Management, an asset is
thought of as an item against
which threats and
vulnerabilities are identified
and calculated in order to carry
out a risk assessment. In
this sense, it is the asset's
importance in underpinning
services that matters rather
than its cost. |
|
|
| Asset
Management |
A
standard accountancy process
concerned with maintaining
details of assets above a
certain value and their
depreciation. Asset
management systems may include
information on the values,
current ownership and location
of assets in an Asset Register
but, unlike Configuration
Management, will not record the
relationships between
assets. IT organisations
that do not have a fully fledged
CMDB
will probably still have one or
more Asset Registers,
describing, in part, the IT
infrastructure. |
|
|
| Asset
Register |
See
Asset Management. |
|
|
| Assurance |
The
IT
Service Continuity Management
processes by which an
organisation can verify the
accuracy and completeness of its
Business Continuity Plans. |
|
|
| Asynchronous
/ Synchronous Transfer |
Asynchronous
in a telecommunications sense is
the ability to transmit each character
as a self-contained unit of
information, without additional
timing information. This
method of transmitting data is
sometimes called start /
stop. Synchronous working
involves the use of timing
information during transmission,
which is normally done in
blocks. Synchronous
transmission is usually more
efficient than the asynchronous
method. |
|
|
| Attribute |
Descriptive
characteristic of a CI,
such as make/model number,
version number, supplier,
purchase contract number,
release number, data format,
role or relationship, held in
the CMDB. |
|
|
| Audit |
A
process of inspection,
correction and
verification. Apart from
their obvious financial
application, audits are used to
check the economy,
efficiency,
effectiveness and equity of an
activity or process and to
confirm (or otherwise) that an
activity is being carried out to
a common standard or in
accordance with recognised best
practice. In this sense,
audits will recommend, rather
than implement, corrective
action. See also Auditing
for Compliance. |
|
|
| Auditing
for Compliance |
Checking
that a process is being carried
out in the planned manner, i.e.
in accordance with its agreed procedures. |
|
|
| Automatic
Call Distribution |
Use
of computing and telephony
resources to direct a call to
the most appropriate call
handler in the shortest possible
time, attempting to ensure that
the caller is satisfied, that
incoming call queues are managed
effectively and that the call
handling resources are
efficiently and effectively
employed. |
|
|
| Availability |
An
umbrella term that includes
reliability (including
resilience), maintainability,
serviceability and security. A common
definition of availability is
'the ability of a component or
IT service (under combined
aspects of its reliability,
maintainability and security) to
perform its required function at
a stated instant or over a
stated period of time'.
Service availability is
sometimes expressed as an
availability percentage, i.e.
the proportion of time that the
service is actually available
for use by the customers within
the agreed service time:
(Agreed
Service Time - Downtime)
x 100
Agreed Service Time
However
this definition of service
availability is generally
considered to be archaic and immeasurable
to any party's real satisfaction
in a modern IT
environment. Current best
practice suggests that availability
should be expressed in business
centric terms, focussing on the
impact of unavailability on
business processes.
|
|
|
| Availability
Management |
A
Service Management process that
helps to define the Customers'
requirements for IT service
availability, understanding the
capabilities of the IT
infrastructure to deliver those
levels of availability, and
takes action to improve
availability. Although
there is a strong technical
element to this process it is
important that the overriding
concern is to understand
availability (and particularly
the impact of non-availability)
in business terms. |
|
|
| Availability
Management Database |
A
database used by Availability
Management for information
needed to support report
generation, statistical analysis
and availability forecasting. |
|
|
| Availability
Plan |
A
long-term plan for the
improvement of IT availability
within an agreed cost. |
