Service Integration and Management practices
The practices domain tests the management disciplines the ecosystem must define once and apply consistently across every provider. Questions ask what each practice delivers, who owns it, and how it changes when services span several providers.
Core practices
- Service governance - decision rights, thresholds, escalation and the forum (typically a service governance board with customer representation) that owns the end-to-end service.
- Service level management - a hierarchy: customer-facing end-to-end SLAs, operational level agreements (OLAs) between integrator and each provider, and underpinning contracts with external suppliers.
- Service performance management - measuring the service the business receives, not just component uptime: one report, one dashboard, agreed critical success factors and KPIs.
- Service catalogue management - one catalogue and one entry point, so the business sees a single service rather than five provider offers.
- Supplier management - provider scorecards, service reviews, escalation, contract change and onboarding/offboarding.
- Service transition - onboarding and offboarding providers and releases, with knowledge transfer.
- Financial management, demand and capacity, knowledge and information, asset and configuration, service improvement - each defined once, with provider obligations written into contracts.
Practices describe what must be managed; the operational processes in the next domain describe how work flows between providers.
Worked example
A payroll service depends on three providers. Each provider SLA states 99.9%, yet the business loses four hours a month. Reasoning: provider SLAs measure components, not the service. The fix is an end-to-end SLA of 99.5% for payroll, OLAs with each provider sized to support it, a service performance dashboard showing the end-to-end outcome, and a governance board that reviews breaches jointly.
Traps
- Adding provider SLAs together and calling the total the end-to-end service level.
- Letting each provider publish its own catalogue entry, so the business sees a fragmented portfolio.
- Treating governance as a monthly management meeting rather than a set of decision rights.
- Reducing supplier management to contract administration and ignoring performance and relationship management.