| Call
Centre |
A
business/customer interface
where the emphasis is on
handling large call volumes or
telephone based transactions,
perhaps for commodity telesales
services, queries or complaints. |
|
|
| Call
Type |
Calls
to a Service Desk may be a
number of types; end users
reporting Incidents are one,
Service Requests another.
Compliments and complaints are
further examples of call
types. Calls to the
Service Desk are considered to
be operational events that
require managing. Other
events will occur and may also
be brought to the attention of
Service Desk staff, e.g. through
the automatic detection of an
operational event that needs to
be recorded as an Incident. |
|
|
| Capability
Maturity Model |
Developed
and maintained by the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI),
part of the Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, CMM
provides an arrangement into
five maturity levels for
software development: initial,
repeatable, defined, managed,
and optimising. Each
maturity level indicates process
capability and contains a number
of key processes directed at
achieving goals and organised by
common features, which address
implementation and themselves
contain key practices that
describe activities or
infrastructure. The CMM
thus enables the software
development organisation to
consciously choose a certain
target level of maturity, and
then to work towards that level. |
|
|
| Capacity |
The
maximum power, performance,
content or output of a system or
component. |
|
|
| Capacity
Management |
The
Service Management process
tasked with defining the business's
requirements for IT capacity, in
both business and technical
terms, and understanding and
presenting the consequences of
delivering those volumes of
activities through the IT
infrastructure at the right time
and at optimal cost. |
|
|
| Capacity
Management Database |
The
database(s) used by all
activities in Capacity
Management, which contains
technical, business, financial,
service and utilisation data. |
|
|
| Capacity
Plan |
An
output of the Capacity
Management process. The
Capacity Plan predicts demand
for IT services and outlines the
resources needed to meet
this. It will contain
costed possible scenarios for IT
services together with a
recommended option. |
|
|
| Capacity
Planning |
The
task of providing plans and
reports to meet current and
future business workloads. |
|
|
| Capital Cost |
The
cost of purchasing any major
item that will be viewed and
recorded as an asset of the
organisation, e.g. a building,
hardware or software. The
initial value of the asset is
depreciated over a period of
time (which may represent the
perceived useful life of the
asset) and the depreciation is
charged against more than one
accounting period. Capital
Costs are usually a fixed cost
and may also be referred to as
'one-off costs'. It is
also possible for the market
value of the asset to increase
over time. |
|
|
| Capital
Investment Appraisal |
The
process of evaluating proposed
investment in specific fixed
assets and the benefits to be
obtained from their
acquisition. The
techniques used in the
evaluation can be summarised as
non-discounting methods (i.e.
simple pay-back), return on
capital employed and discounted
cash flow methods (i.e. yield,
net present value and discounted
pay-back). See also
Investment Appraisal. |
|
|
| Capital
Item |
An
item maintained on an
organisation's asset register
and depreciated over more than
one accounting period. |
|
|
| Capitalisation |
Many
organisations choose to identify
major expenditure as Capital,
whether there is a substantial
asset or not, in order to reduce
the impact of such expenditure
on the current financial
year. This is referred to
as 'Capitalisation'. The
most common item for this to be
applied to is software, whether
developed in-house or purchased. |
|
|
| Categorisation |
See
Incident Categorisation. |
|
|
| Category |
Classification
of a group of CIs e.g. hardware,
Changes, Problems. |
|
|
| Cause
/ Effect Diagram (Fishbone /
Ishikawa) |
A
technique used by Problem
Management to organise and
display various theories about
what may be the root cause of
the Problem. It focuses
attention on one specific
Problem (having made sure that
everyone agrees what the Problem
is), encourages innovative
thinking (but not solutions,
only possible causes) and
provides a graphic
representation of relationships
(if too many, Multivote!) |
|
|
| CCTA
Risk Analysis & Management
Method |
CRAMM®
is a tool for analysis and
management of IT security risks,
suitable for use by the IT
Service Continuity and
Availability Management
processes. It provides an
insight into the risks to which
an organisation is exposed and
its use is often considered an
essential first step towards
attaining ISO 17799, the
international standard for
information security management. |
|
|
| Central
Computer and Telecommunications
Agency |
The
CCTA was the UK Government
Centre for Information Systems
responsible for producing and
maintaining ITIL. Now
subsumed within the OGC. |
|
|
| Certification |
The
formal evaluation of an
organisation's processes by an
independent and accredited body
against a defined standard and
the issuing of a certificate
indicating conformance. |
|
|
| Change |
Any
deliberate action that alters
the form, fit or function of CIs
- typically, an addition,
modification, movement or
deletion that impacts on the IT
infrastructure. |
|
|
| Change
Advisory Board |
An
authoritative and representative
group of people who are
responsible for assessing, from
both a business and a technical
viewpoint, all high impact
Requests for Change
(RFCs). They advise Change
Management on the priorities of
RFCs and propose allocations of
resources to implement those Changes. The Change
Advisory Board (CAB) will be
made up of Customer,
User and IT
representatives and may also
include, depending upon the
nature of the Changes being
considered, 3rd party
and other administrative
business representatives.
The CAB is chaired by the Change
Manager. |
|
|
| Change
Advisory Board / Emergency
Committee |
An
emergency meeting of the CAB,
usually with a reduced number of
members, to consider urgent,
high impact Changes. Its
membership, which may change
from occasion to occasion,
therefore needs to represent the
knowledge and authority required
in these exceptional
circumstances. In
practice, members may take their
decisions without a physical
meeting. |
|
|
| Change
Authority |
In
project management terms, a
sub-group given the authority to
approve change within the
project and sometimes referred
to as the Configuration
Board. If there were
service implications, the Change
Authority would need to refer
the proposed Change to the
Change Manager. |
|
|
| Change
Control |
The
procedures to ensure that all
Changes are controlled,
including the submission,
recording, analysis, decision
making, approval, implementation
and post-implementation review
of the change. |
|
|
| Change
Document |
Request
for Change, Change
control form, Change order, Change
record. |
|
|
| Change
History |
Auditable
information that records, for
example, what was done, when it
was done, by whom and why. |
|
|
| Change
Log |
A
log of Requests for Change
raised during a project, for
example, showing information on
each Change, its evaluation,
what decisions have been made
and its current status, e.g.
raised, reviewed, approved,
implemented, closed. |
|
|
| Change
Management |
The
Service Management process
responsible for controlling and
managing requests to effect
changes (RFCs) to the
IT
infrastructure or any aspect of
IT services to promote business
benefit while minimising the
risk of disruption to
services. Change
Management also controls and
manages the implementation of
those changes that are
subsequently given approval. |
|
|
| Change
Model |
A
standard way of dealing with
Changes of a specific type or
complexity; consisting of a
pre-selected and sequenced set
of activities and roles through
which a Change will proceed in
order to ensure the consistent
implementation of similar types
of Changes. Change models
may be built for major (project
based) or minor (desktop move)
type of Changes. The aim
of a Change Model is to
facilitate the accurate and
timely assessment of Changes by
the appropriate groups of
people. It also allows the
definition of workflows and
responsibilities for the
building and testing of Changes. |
|
|
| Change
Record |
A
record containing details of
which CIs are affected by an
authorised Change (planned or
implemented) and how. The
Change Record is created from an
accepted RFC. |
|
|
| Change
Schedule |
See
Forward Schedule of Change. |
|
|
| Change
Slot |
A
regular, agreed time when Changes
can be introduced with minimum
impact on services. |
|
|
| Channel |
A
Channel is the physical
connection from the CPU to an
I/O device, usually a
controller, or indeed another
CPU. |
|
|
| Charging |
The
process of establishing charges
and raising bills/invoices for
the recovery of costs from customers. Charges need to
be seen as simple,
understandable, fair and
realistic. |
|
|
| Charging
Policy |
The
strategic role of charging, the
level and style of recovery and
the way in which charging will
be introduced and maintained. |
|
|
| Charging
System |
A
set if inter-related policies,
activities and tools that enable
an IT service provider to
recover its costs from Customers. |
|
|
| CI
Type |
CIs
classified according to their
common attributes or
purpose. This is different
from a baseline in that it is a
high level classification and
does not specify a
configuration. |
|
|
| Classification |
The
process of formally grouping CIs
by type, e.g. hardware,
software, accommodation, people,
documents, business processes,
external services.
The process of
formally identifying Changes by
type, e.g. project scope change
request, corrective change
request, innovative function
change request, technical
infrastructure change request.
The process of
formally identifying Incidents,
Problems and Known Errors by
origin, symptoms and
cause. The classification
data strings, which are likely
to include information on
business impact and urgency, are
essentially part of the Incident
Record for automated matching of
new Incidents against the
Problems/Known Errors
database. A distinction is
normally made between the
initial, or opening,
classification (the symptoms)
and the final, or closing
classification (the cause). |
|
|
| Clerical
Backup |
In
case of contingency, delivering
some part of the required
services without the IT
infrastructure. Nowadays,
as well as some manual
processes, this is likely to be
via standalone PCs and
commercial office systems
software. |
|
|
| Client |
The
client part of Client-Server
Architecture.
Typically, a client is an
application that runs on a PC or
workstation and relies on a
server to perform some
operations. For example,
an e-mail client is an
application that enables you to
send and receive e-mails. |
|
|
| Client-Server
Architecture |
A
network architecture in which
each computer or processor on
the network is either a Client
or a Server. Servers are
powerful computers or processors
dedicated to managing disk
drives (file servers), printers
(print servers) or network
traffic (network servers).
Clients are PCs or
Workstations
on which users run
applications. Clients rely
on servers for resources such as
files, devices and even
processing power.
Client-server architectures are
sometime called two-tier
architectures. |
|
|
| Closure |
When
a Customer or
User is satisfied
that an Incident or
Problem has
been resolved. |
|
|
| Closure
Code |
The
classification of an Incident or
Problem after it has been
resolved and the true impact,
cause or resolution is
understood. |
|
|
| Code
of Practice |
Refers
to the BSI publication DISC
PD0005 - Code of Practice for IT
Service Management. |
|
|
| Cold
Stand-by/Start/Site (portable or
fixed) |
An
empty computer room, either in
portable accommodation or on a
fixed site, with power,
environmental control and
telecommunications, but no IT
equipment or software for use in
an emergency. See also
Gradual Recovery. |
|
|
| Command
Bridge |
See
Operations Bridge. |
|
|
| Commercial
Service Provider |
See
Application
Service Provider. |
|
|
| Compliance |
See
Auditing
for Compliance. |
|
|
| Component
CI |
One
of the CIs forming an Assembly
CI. |
|
|
| Component
Failure Impact Analysis |
A
technique developed by IBM which
uses a matrix to identify areas
of risk in IT service provision
by linking the failure of
individual CIs to their impact
on the overall level of service
provided. |
|
|
| Computer
Aided Systems Engineering |
A
software tool for programmers.
It provides help in the
planning, analysis, design and
documentation of computer
software. Often
abbreviated to CASE. |
|
|
| Computer
Telephony Integration |
An
industry term for the
integration of computer systems
and telephones, CTI first became
available in the 1980s as
organisations started using
Voicemail, Fax-on-Demand, IVR,
ACD
for inbound calls and Predictive
Diallers for outbound
telemarketing. |
|
|
| Concurrency |
A
measure of the number of users
engaged in the same operation at
the same time - a critical Capacity
Planning issue. |
|
|
| Confidentiality |
Protection
of data from unauthorised
access. |
|
|
| Configuration |
Any
group of CIs that need to be
controlled in order to deliver
IT services. |
|
|
| Configuration
and Change Management |
An
approach that considers
integrating Configuration,
Change and certain aspects of
Release Management into a single
function. |
|
|
| Configuration
and Change Management Plan |
A
document describing the combined
Configuration and Change
Management function, including
the organisational roles and
responsibilities, the
architecture and design of the CMDB,
DSL
and DHS,
and the policies and procedures. |
|
|
| Configuration
Audit |
A
physical check on the
infrastructure to determine
whether the CMDB
and the physical CIs
correspond. This could be
anything from detecting
unauthorised or unlicensed items
to checking on the status of an
item. |
|
|
| Configuration
Baseline |
See
Baseline. |
|
|
| Configuration
Board |
See
Change
Authority. |
|
|
| Configuration
Control |
Activities
concerned with ensuring that
only authorised and identifiable
CIs
are recorded throughout their
life-cycle and that no CI is
added, modified, replaced or
removed without appropriate
controlling documentation, e.g.
an approved RFC.
Configuration control also
includes controlling access to
the information held on CIs. |
|
|
| Configuration
Documentation |
Documents
that define requirements, system
design, build, production, and
verification for a Configuration
Item. |
|
|
| Configuration
Identification |
The
selection, unique
identification, description and
labelling of assembly and
component CIs,
and the relationships between
them. |
|
|
| Configuration
Item |
A
CI is any
component of an IT
Infrastructure, including a
documentary item such as SLA
or an RFC,
which is (or is to be) under the
control of Configuration
Management and therefore subject
to formal Change control.
The lowest level CI is normally
the smallest unit that will be
changed independently of other
components. CIs may vary
widely in complexity, size and
type, from an entire service
(including all its hardware,
software, documentation, etc.)
to a single program module or a
minor hardware component.
All existing or potential
service Problems will be capable
of being linked to one or more
CIs. |
|
|
| Configuration
Management |
The
process of planning for,
identifying, controlling,
maintaining and
verifying the CIs
within a service, recording and
reporting their status and, in
support of Change Management,
assessing the potential IT
impact of changing those
items. See also Configuration
Identification, Configuration
Control, Configuration
Status Accounting, Configuration
Verification. |
|
|
| Configuration
Management Database |
A
database (CMDB) that contains
details about the attributes and
history of each CI and details
of the important relationships
between CIs.
The information held may be in a
variety of formats, textual,
diagrammatic, photographic,
etc.; effectively a data map of
the physical reality of the IT
infrastructure. |
|
|
| Configuration
Management Plan |
A
document describing the
organisation and procedures for
the Configuration Management of
a specific product, activity or
service. |
|
|
| Configuration
Management System |
A
software tool that provides
support for Configuration,
Change and Release
Management. See the products
page for details of such
tools. |
|
|
| Configuration
Set |
A
term sometimes used to describe
a group of CIs
that normally belong
together. See also Assembly
CI, Baseline. |
|
|
| Configuration
Status Accounting |
A
task of Configuration Management
concerned with recording the
state of a CI
at any point in time, past,
present or future. |
|
|
| Configuration
Structure |
A
hierarchy of all the CI’s that
comprise a configuration. |
|
|
| Configuration
Verification |
A
task of Configuration Management
concerned with ensuring that
information held on CIs
in the CMDB
is accurate. |
|
|
| Contingency
Plan |
See
IT Service Continuity Plan. |
|
|
| Contingency
Planning |
See
IT Service Continuity Planning. |
|
|
| Continuous
Availability |
A
characteristic of an IT service
that masks from the users the
effects of losses of service,
planned or unplanned. See
also Continuous
Operation. |
|
|
| Continuous
Improvement |
A
cornerstone of IT Service
Management best practice,
whereby all aspect of service
provision are continually
challenged to identify potential
increases in economy,
efficiency
or effectiveness. |
|
|
| Continuous
Learning, Innovation and
Improvement |
Organisational
performance is maximised when it
is based on management and
sharing of knowledge within a
culture of continuous learning,
innovation and improvement. |
|
|
| Continuous
Operation |
A
characteristic of an IT service
that masks users from the
effects of planned
downtime. See also Continuous
Availability. |
|
|
| Contract |
An
understanding, usually in
documentary form, between two
bodies with separate legal
existence, e.g. between an IT
services department and an
external supplier. Subject
to specific legal
interpretations. See also Agreement. |
|
|
| Contract
Managers |
Responsible
for the management of all IT
related contracts which are not
managed directly by the
customer. Their prime
responsibility is to ensure that
there is coherence between the
levels of service offered to
customers and those agreed with
external suppliers. This
includes drafting and reviewing
the content of contracts and
also regular liaison with
suppliers, monitoring the
supplier's performance during
the contract term. |
|
|
| Control |
See
Configuration
Control. |
|
|
| Cost |
Amount
of expenditure, actual or
notional, attributable to a
specific activity, service or
business unit. When
considering pricing, the cost
may be the full cost, calculated
as a total cost of ownership,
including depreciation and
planned, renewal, or the
marginal cost of providing the
service now, based upon the
investment already made. |
|
|
| Cost
Centre |
A
unit or activity to which costs
are allocated. Also, an
approach to IT Financial
Management where IT is budgeted
and there is nominal charging
for specific services; it is
concerned with both input and
output costs. |
|
|
| Cost
Effectiveness |
See
Effectiveness. |
|
|
| Cost
Element |
Within
each high level Input Cost Type
there will be a number of
defined Cost Elements.
Typically, People costs will
consist of payroll, staff
benefits, expenses, overtime,
consultancy, etc. |
|
|
| Cost
Model |
In
order to calculate the costs of
providing service it is necessary
to design and build a
framework in which all costs can
be recorded and allocated or
apportioned to specific
Customers or other
activities. Such 'Cost
Models' can be developed to
show, for example, the cost of
each service, the cost for each
Customer or the cost for each
location. The usual start
point is to develop a Cost-by-Customer
Cost Model. |
|
|
| Cost-Plus |
A
means of pricing, often used
when the costs cannot easily be
predicted, that adds a
percentage to the costs for
recovery purposes. |
|
|
| Cost
Types (Input) |
The
categorisation of IT service
input costs into types for the
purposes of building a Cost
Model should aim for simplicity
and consistency. Typical
Cost Types are hardware,
software, people, accommodation,
external services and
transfer. These are
high-level classifications of
what money is spent on and each
will be sub-divided into a
number of Cost
Elements. |
|
|
| Cost
Unit (Input) |
See
Cost
Element. |
|
|
| Cost
Unit (Output) |
The
functional business output cost
unit e.g. invoice, stock picking
list, report, for which a charge
will be made. |
|
|
| Cost-by-Customer
Cost Model |
A
framework in which costs are
identified and allocated or
apportioned according to the
customers that incur those
costs. This model is most
commonly used as a basis for charging. |
|
|
| Cost-by-Serivce
Cost Model |
A
framework in which costs are
identified and allocated or
apportioned according to the
services that are delivered by
IT. |
|
|
| Costing |
The
process of identifying costs and
relating them to business units
or activities. |
|
|
| Countermeasure |
An
action taken to reduce
risk. It may reduce the
'value' of the asset, the
threats facing the asset or the
vulnerability of that asset to
those threats. |
|
|
| Creativity |
The
generation of ideas for new or
improved working practices,
products or services. |
|
|
| Crisis
Management |
The
process concerned with managing
the whole range of impacts
following a disaster, including
elements such as adverse media
coverage and loss of customer
confidence. |
|
|
| Critical
Success Factors |
The
certain factors that will be
critical to the success of the
organisation, in the sense that
if the objectives associated
with those factors are not
achieved, the organisation will
fail - perhaps catastrophically
so. Identification of CSFs
should help determine the
strategic objectives of the
organisation. |
|
|
| Culture |
The
total range of behaviours,
ethics and values that are
transmitted, practised and
reinforced by members of the
organisation. This might
include the way authority is
exercised and people are
rewarded, the methods of
communication used and the
degree of formality expected. |
|
|
| Customer |
A
business manager authorised to
negotiate with the IT supplier
on behalf of the business.
Typically someone who has
responsibility for the cost of
the service, either directly
through charging or indirectly
in terms of demonstrable
business need. (See
Intelligent Customer). The
term must be used carefully
because an IT Services
Organisation's customers will
undoubtedly have customers of
their own within their supply
chain. |
|
|
| Customer
Focus |
Recognising
that the customer is the final
arbiter of product and service
quality and that customer
loyalty, retention and market
share gain are best optimised
through clear focus on the needs
of current and potential
customers. |
|
|
| Customer
Relationship Management |
All
of the activities necessary to
ensure that IT Service Managers
have a true understanding of
their customers' needs and that
the customers also understand
their responsibilities.
Use of the term in an IT Service
Management sense should not be
confused with the specific CRM
term which is generally focused
on helping a business 'sell'
more to its customers rather
than deliver better services. |
