The VeriSM Model and the Management Mesh
This domain tests whether you can describe the VeriSM model accurately and use the management mesh correctly in scenarios. Marks here are lost through small structural errors far more often than through misunderstanding.
Structure of the model
VeriSM is drawn as layers around the consumer:
- Governance wraps the entire model. It is not a stage and not a fifth step; it is the direction-and-control layer applied across everything.
- Four stages operate around the centre: Define, Produce, Provide, Respond. They are iterative and overlapping, not a waterfall. A live service in Provide can re-enter Produce for a change while Respond keeps handling contacts.
- The management mesh sits at the core: the flexible set of elements combined to create each product or service.
The stages in shorthand: Define settles what the service is, for whom, and the value it promises; Produce builds it so it is fit for purpose; Provide makes it available and usable so it is fit for use; Respond handles requests, incidents, complaints and feedback and feeds improvement back.
The four mesh elements
- Resources - people, money, materials, technology, information.
- Environment - culture, sourcing model, organizational structure, market, regulation.
- Emerging technologies - new and evolving technology available to the organization.
- Management practices - the practices, methods and frameworks used, such as ITIL, Agile, DevOps, Lean or COBIT.
The mesh is composed per service. Two services in one organization may legitimately use quite different combinations; the mesh is not a single organization-wide standard, and it is reassessed as the service evolves.
Worked example
A provider wants a self-service password reset service. Which mesh composition fits?
Reasoning: emerging technologies - a conversational agent plus cloud hosting; management practices - knowledge management, Lean for waste reduction, DevOps-style release; resources - service desk subject-matter experts, budget for the platform; environment - an existing self-service culture, data protection regulation, an outsourced hosting supplier. Each element is selected because of this service's outcome. Copying an organization standard would ignore that environment permits self-service but constrains where identity data is stored.
Traps
- Treating the mesh as one fixed set for the whole organization.
- Treating Define→Respond as a linear lifecycle with a start and end.
- Counting governance as a fifth stage of the model.
- Listing resources and technology but forgetting Environment - culture, sourcing and regulation.
- Swapping fit for purpose (Produce) with fit for use (Provide).