Service management has become a critica–and rapidly moving–target for today's organizations. To remain competitive, businesses need more appropriate services to support their customers, suppliers and business partners. At the same time, the entire landscape–IT, business, legislative and cultural–constantly shifts as a result of new technologies, business realignments and growing regulatory requirements. IT must control service quality and costs while enabling increased innovation for improved service quality.

As IT professionals, our thinking about service management has evolved from a focus on functions through a processes focus to a strategy based on the "service life cycle." The term "life cycle" has long been used in our industry in reference to the stages in the life of an item. In this instance, the term encompasses a service from conception through design, introduction, operation, and finally retirement and withdrawal.

Many companies now feel that the first step toward improved service management is to develop service life cycles and implement them across the enterprise. In fact, informed observation shows that they already have elements of these life cycles in place now. The new guidance of today can help identify service life cycles, check their performance, diagnose their limitations and facilitate improvement.

This executive brief will illustrate the progression of service management since the 1990s, illuminate the hidden service life cycles and discuss how, once they are visible, we can start to make them work–to improve services and better align IT with business objectives.