An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog

Transcription

1 Master Thesis Software Engineering Thesis no: MSE December 2009 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Md Forhad Rabbi School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Box 520 SE Ronneby Sweden

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3 This thesis is submitted to the Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and to the School of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of European Master on Software Engineering. The thesis is equivalent to 22 weeks of full time studies. Contact Information: Author: Md. Forhad Rabbi CarreteraBoadilla Del Monte, 52, 5B Madrid, 28024, Spain University Advisor: Jose A. Calvo-Manzano Villalón Facultad de Informática - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Dpto de Lenguajes y SistemasInformáticos e Ingeniería del Software Campus de Montegancedo s/n Boadilla del Monte Madrid jacalvo@fi.upm.es Faculty Reviewer Richard Torkar PhD, Associate Professor in Software Engineering, School of Computing Blekinge Institute of Technology SE Ronneby Sweden ; richard.torkar@bth.se Office: +46 (0) Mobile: +46 (0) School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology Box 520 SE Ronneby Sweden Internet : Phone : Fax :

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5 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Table of Contents Acknowledgement...xi Abstract...xiii CHAPTER 1:... 1 INTRODUCTION Introduction Service Taxonomy Service Portfolio Service Catalog Problem and approach to the solution Problems in IT Service Catalog Approach to the Solution Objectives Expected outcome Research methodology Structure of the Thesis...8 CHAPTER 2:... 9 STATE OF THE ART IN SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT Systematic Review Systematic Review Background What is a Systematic Review Protocol Description Prototype Development Results of the Systematic Review Studies Trends Studies Classification Analysis of those studies covering the relationship of the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises) Study on the processes of the frameworks IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) CMMI for Services (CMMI_SVC) Control Objective for Information and related Technology (COBIT) Microsoft Operational Framework (MOF) Conclusion...28 CHAPTER 3:...31 RESOLUTION FOR IT SERVICE TAXONOMY Introduction Development of IT Service Taxonomy Identify, establish and define categories Identify, establish and define subcategories and services Assign the services to sub-categories IT Services IT Service Taxonomy...53 iii

6 3.3.1 Category: Support Services Subcategory: Network Services Subcategory: Security services Subcategory: Service Desk Services Subcategory: Maintenance services Subcategory: End User Services Category: Outsourcing Services Subcategory: Applications Outsourcing Services Subcategory: Application Development Services Subcategory: Systems Integration Services Subcategory: Business Process Outsourcing Services (BPO) Subcategory: Infrastructure Outsourcing Services Subcategory: Customer Relationship Management Service (CRM) Subcategory: IT Services Strategy Subcategory: Product Chain Management Service Subcategory: Consolidation Services Subcategory: Security Services Subcategory: Business Continuity Services Subcategory: Risk Management Services Subcategory: IT Architecture Services Subcategory: Business Service Category: Training Category: Operation Subcategories: Management and control systems Subcategory: Restoration Services Subcategory: Application Performance Management Subcategory: Performance Engineering Services Subcategory: Business Continuity Services Subcategory: Other Operating Services Subcategory: Server services Subcategory: Operational Security Services Subcategory: Microcomputer Operating Facilities Subcategories: Operations and monitoring services Subcategory: Mission Critical Services Category: Integration and Development Services Subcategory: Systems integration and implementation Services Subcategory: Software Development Services Category: Other services Subcategory: Security Management Services Subcategory: Risk Management Services Subcategory: Cost Management Services Subcategory: Print Management Services Subcategory: Relationship management services with suppliers (Supplier Relationships Management, SRM) Subcategory: Infrastructure Management Service Conclusion Application OF proposed IT Service Taxonomy: In IT Service Portfolio and IT service catalog Development Method to develop IT Service Portfolio using ITST Method to develop IT Service Catalog using ITST...91 CHAPTER: CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK...91 iv

7 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Bibliography...95 PUBLICATION...99 APPENDIX Template for Systematic Review Papers Used for Systematic Review Reviewed IT Companies v

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9 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Index of Figures Figure 1 Studies Trend Figure 2 Studies Classification Figure3 Studies Classification by Country Figure 4 Studies by Company s Size Figure 5 Studies classified by model Figure 6 Categories and Sub Categories of IT service Figure 7 Support Service Category Figure 8 Network Services Figure 9 Security Services Figure 10 Service Desk Figure 11 Maintenance Services Figure 12 End User Service Subcategory Figure 13 Outsourcing service Category Figure 14 Application Outsourcing Figure 15 Application Development Figure 16 System integration Figure 17 Business process outsourcing Figure 18 Infrastructure outsourcing Figure 19 Consultancy Figure 20 Customer Relationship Figure 21 IT services storages Figure 22 Product chain management Figure 23 Organizational performance Figure 24 Consolidation Figure 25 Security service consultancy Figure 26 Business continuity Figure 27 Risk management Figure 28 IT architecture Figure 29 Business services Figure 30 Training Figure 31 Operation services Figure 32 Integration and development services Figure 33 Other services Figure 34 IT Service portfolio vii

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11 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Index of Tables Table 1 Spanish Companies (Employee s Straturn and Total) Table 2 Search String for Systematic Review Table 3 Source List Table 4 Studies inclusion and exclusion criteria definition Table 5 Number of Studies and Result Table 6 Information inclusion and exclusion criteria definition Table 7 Hardware Upgrade Service ix

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13 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Acknowledgement In the name of GOD who is the most gracious, merciful and creator of this universe. I am thankful to Him who blessed me with abilities to do this thesis work. I am thankful to our supervisor, Jose A. Calvo- Manzano Villalón, who was the real source of encouragement and motivation during the whole work of thesis. His useful suggestions, advice and ideas to bottleneck problems encountered during this thesis work were just immensurable. His expertise, devotion and constant encouragement were very helpful and made this effort an enjoyable one. My gratitude s also goes to Gerzon Eliud Gómez for his invaluable guidance, fruitful discussions and encouragement throughout this thesis work. I am grateful for his kindness, patience and feedbacks. He is really the best. I am also grateful Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the co founder of Google. Thanks God, they came out of this idea of Google engine. Through out my thesis work I really got incredible supports from this search engine. I am thankful to all staff and friends at UPM, Spain; they all were very supportive and kind. We are thankful to Professor Oscar my contact person in UPM who encouraged me throughout the master studies. I am also thankful to Mai Nguyen for proof reading the whole thesis and helped me to cook my foods during my thesis work. At last, I am thankful to my family for their kind support, encouragement and dedication of their whole lives to make it possible for me to pursue higher studies in Sweden and Spain. Indeed, without their emotional support it would not be possible for me to accomplish this work. xi

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15 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Abstract In this thesis, I, as the author, have tried to propose a methodology for establishing IT service taxonomy in order to elaborate IT service portfolio and IT service catalog. As a core part of my thesis, IT service taxonomy has been discussed to manage IT services in an efficient way in the small and medium sized enterprises The small and medium sized enterprises can use the categories and sub categories of this taxonomy to define their service catalog and portfolio. In that regards, a list of IT services has been identified from the industries and has been used to define the IT service taxonomy. Keywords: IT Service Taxonomy (ITST), IT Service Management (ITSM), Service Level Management (SLM), IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). xiii

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17 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Introduction

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19 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog 1.1INTRODUCTION Service is nowadays one of the most important values to achieve the organization s goals. In the present world, according to the study of National Academy of Engineering [3], most of the nations have transitioned from agriculture and manufacturing economics to service based economies. Hence, with respect to the research report from National Academy of Engineering [3], currently, more than 75% of the economies of industrialized nations are based on business services and in United States of America business services comprise nearly 80% of the country s economic activities. Moreover, another study from the Software Engineering Institute [4] shows that the expectation for process improvement in services is likely to grow: services constitute more than 80% of the USA and global economy and 54% of what the Department of Defense (DoD) acquires. Furthermore, according to Fleming [2], 80% of the cost of an infrastructure is in service delivery and service support. So, it is easy to comprehend that services are more important than any other sectors of the business. In this dissertation, among all types of services, IT service is the main concern. According to [7], the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field is one of the main contributors in changing economic background. And ICT companies are under pressure to deliver IT services in an efficient and effective manner to support the business. It is important to establish and employ the best practices and the best processes to optimize IT services in order to meet the business goal. In fact, IT service management is a set of processes that detail best practices based on some standards (IT Infrastructure Library, Microsoft Operational Frameworks, etc) to enable and optimize IT services in order to satisfy business requirements and manage the IT infrastructure both tactically and strategically [6]. Currently, a growing number of organizations are focusing on IT service management to manage their IT services. In the organizations, IT Service Management (ITSM) provides an approach combining process management and industry best practices [1] to ensure quality IT services. If the processes to deliver IT services are implemented in an uncontrolled way without defined measures, there is a high chance that these IT services will fail to meet the business needs [1]. According to Fleming [2], ITSM is a discipline for managing IT operations as a service that is process- oriented and accounts for 60% - 90% of total cost of IT ownership. It is about managing information technology (IT) systems as well as it is philosophically centered on the customer's perspective of IT's contribution to the business. ITSM ensures IT infrastructures are aligned to the business requirements so that business unit and IT can operate in a coordinated effort to achieve the goal of the organization. One key challenge faced by managers today is to provide IT services that will cross many platforms to work cohesively with all core business functions internally and externally. It is therefore very pertinent for the top management to consider how those IT investments will support better service quality and lower cost and risk with a united approach to cross- domain collaboration and automation [14]. Here appears Service Level Management (SLM). Service Level Management ensures that agreed services are delivered where and when those 3

20 are needed to be delivered. Service Level Management (SLM) negotiates, agrees and documents appropriate IT service targets with representatives of the business, and then monitors and produces reports on the service provider s abilities to deliver the agreed level of services. SLM is a vital process for every IT service provider organization as it is responsible for agreeing and documenting service level targets and responsibilities within Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Service Level Requirement (SLR), for every activity within IT. There are several frameworks that have been proposed so far in industries to manage the IT services. These standards, processes and evaluation models or frameworks help organizations to improve the management of IT services. The public framework and standards assessed relevant to service management are Information Technology Infrastructure library (ITIL) [1], Capability Maturity Model Integration for Service (CMMI_SVC) [8], Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT)[5], BS [7] and MOF [24]. Among all the frameworks and approaches to manage IT services, ITIL is the most widely used service level management practice to establish and improve capabilities in service level management. ITIL is a set of publications providing descriptive guidance (i.e. what to do and why) on IT service management. ITIL has become the international standard guidance for IT service management [1]. This framework was created in the late 1980s by the government of United Kingdom to use in government agency and later expanded for using in all organizations. ITIL was formed with two objectives in mind: 1) create comprehensive, consistent and coherent codes of best practices for quality IT service management promoting business effectiveness in the use of IT, and 2) encourage the private sector to develop ITIL- related services and products (training, consultancy and tools). There are three features that make ITIL unique. Firstly, ITIL is vendor- neutral, best practice guidance. ITIL is a synthesis of ideas drawn from international practitioners not academic theory of how things should be or a vendor s view of how to operate its products. Secondly, ITIL is non- proprietary. Anyone can apply ITIL concepts freely in their organization. Thirdly, ITIL is comprehensive and consistent. Rather than providing isolated advice, ITIL attempts to describe every key process in IT service management, and to use a consistent, common sense set of definitions and distinctions across each process. Besides ITIL, the other popular framework for ITSM is CMMI for Service. This framework carries the CMMI architecture into the realm of practices that cover the management, establishment, and delivery of services [8]. CMMI for Services builds upon the same foundation of material that is in common with other CMMI constellations and adds goals and practices that focus specifically on service- related work. This framework has been developed to be compatible with the broad definition of service [8], and its goals and practices are therefore potentially relevant to any organization concerned with the delivery of services. CMMI for Services contains practices that cover project management, process management, service establishment, service delivery, and other supporting processes. This framework shares a great deal of common material with other CMMI constellations, and those already familiar with another CMMI constellation will find much of the CMMI for Services content to be familiar. However, the 4

21 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog CMMI for Services constellation provides an alternative, more streamlined approach to evaluate and improve the development of service systems that may be more appropriate in certain contexts [8]. All these frameworks have tried to recommend better IT service management than traditional service management [7]. In this dissertation, the research has been advanced based on ITIL framework. Therefore, this research work has used the same vocabulary of ITIL framework. Here are three most important vocabularies that have been used Service Taxonomy In this thesis, to the author, IT Service Taxonomy is a logical hierarchy of IT services to use in future development of IT service portfolio and later IT service catalog. IT Service Taxonomy (ITST) identifies the common and distinguishing characteristics of the services to increase discoverability and reuse. When there is IT service taxonomy, it is easy to recognize the services for the portfolio and catalog Service Portfolio The Service Portfolio is an executive- level view for mapping services to business needs. It documents the services under development (e.g. Service Pipeline), services that are in production or available for deployment (e.g. Service Catalog), and the retired services [9]. The Service Portfolio is useful for analyzing where to invest, prioritizing and allocating resources, risk management and financial modeling Service Catalog Service Catalog in service level management, by the definition of ITIL [9], is a list of services that an organization provides, often to its employees or customers. Each service within the Catalog typically includes a description of the service, timeframes or service level agreement for fulfilling the service, who is entitled to request/view the service, costs (if any), how to fulfill the service. It provides a central source of information on the IT services delivered by the service provider organization. This ensures that, area of the business can view an accurate, consistent picture of IT services, their details and their status [1]. Hence, it contains a customer- facing view of the IT services in use, how they are interested to be used, the business process they enable, and the levels and quality of service the customer can expect for each service. 1.2 PROBLEM AND APPROACH TO THE SOLUTION Interestingly, although there is so many frameworks and models for IT Service Management, this domain still demands a lot of research, especially in Service Level Management. The objective of the Service Level Management in ITSM is to lead IT organizations through the design of a service catalog and through the development of detailed service description for their services [36]. These services will then be documented in Service Catalog. But the industry has problem to understand this service catalog. Here, the major problem of existing IT service catalog has been discussed. 5

22 1.2.1 Problems in IT Service Catalog Services defined in IT Service Catalog are ambiguous. In service industry, there is no uniform vocabulary for each service [32]. Sometimes services are offering the same content to the customers but addressing to the service labels are different. Vice versa is also true. Perhaps the services have the same label but they offer completely different content. Therefore, when customers request for the services based on the label of those services, the customers can be misled. As a result, customers get different services that are not intended. In contrast to traditional service catalog, planned service catalog can help the industries to sell their core product and increase revenue for the companies [31]. Service Catalog with uniform vocabulary can improve to get more revenue for the companies. For example, while reviewing the IT service companies, the author has found that Security Service was defined in different ways in different companies. For some companies it is more about supporting service whereas for other companies it is more about deployment service. By checking only the label or terminology of the service, it is impossible for customers to know about the service. In addition to uniform vocabulary problem, the IT services in contemporary industries are not perfectly categorized for service catalog, especially in small and medium sized enterprises. It leads to luck of understanding of the relationship among services. It is hard to find information about the services including root of the services. Till now most of the works or research related to service level management and service categorization are for large industries [28][29][30]. But the fact is, most of the organizations are small or medium [23]. According to the DIRCE [23], the greater percentage of companies belongs to the small and medium sized enterprise (SME). In January 2007, the amount of the 99.81% SME ascended to equivalent to more than three million of small companies out of the total companies in Spain. Like other fields of science, lack of categorization of IT services in these small and medium sized enterprise may fail to define clear perceptive of IT services. In current context of service industry, it is difficult to identify the origin of the services as well as boundary of the services [34] Approach to the Solution Although there is no straightforward solution of those problems mentioned in the previous section, an approach has been recommend here to get the solution of the mentioned problems. As a part of the solution, a systematic review on IT service management in small and medium sized enterprises can be performed. This will allow us to know the current state of the art of IT services in the present industry. After knowing the state of the art, for the categorization of the IT services in small and medium sized enterprise, the IT Service Taxonomy (ITST) should be defined. In this regard, to identify the IT services, a large number of IT small and medium and large sized enterprises should be identified to know what IT services they are offering. Based on the results of reviewing IT services from 6

23 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog small, medium and large sized enterprises, the categories of the IT service taxonomy can be formulated. Once there are IT services, the categories and the subcategories of the ITST have to be defined. Each IT service should be mentioned under a specific category and subcategory in that IT service taxonomy. Moreover, to ensure the uniform vocabulary, in IT service taxonomy, standard naming convention should be proposed. It will help to produce consistent service catalog that will have same meaning to every customer in the market. It will help to get rid of misunderstanding of service catalog. In this thesis, I have tried to find out the resolution to those challenges. Especially, generic IT service taxonomy has been proposed to overcome inconsistency that exists in current ITSM. This thesis has tried to find out the main IT services in small industries and define IT service taxonomy from it. The author of this thesis has found that improved IT service catalog can be outlined from this generic IT service taxonomy. 1.3 OBJECTIVES The objectives related to the thesis are given below: 1. To do a systematic review on IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprise to know the state of the art of ITSM in small and medium sized enterprise. a) Identify the relevant research works and get the results about state of the art of IT Service Management. b) Analyze the results of the systematic review. 2. To define a method for developing IT Service Taxonomy. a) Identify the IT service companies. b) Identify IT services. 3. To develop the IT Service Taxonomy a) Define IT Service Taxonomy categories and sub categories. b) Define the IT services. 1.4 EXPECTED OUTCOME At the end of this research, in this thesis, following outcomes can be attained. 1. A systematic review of IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprises. 2. A Method to define IT service taxonomy for the small and medium sized enterprises. 3. Detail descriptions of categories and sub categories of IT Service Taxonomy. 1.5 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY There are three types of research methodologies namely qualitative, quantitative and mixed methodology. However, in the context of this thesis, the author has used the qualitative approach [35]. 7

24 Firstly, a thorough literature study has been performed in order to collect material related to Service Level Management and ITSM. This is essential to gain a fundamental understanding of those research areas, the underlying concepts and to know the current state of research. The literature study embraces the study of existing articles, books and web references, if appropriate. However, it is taken in to account that a literature study can be time consuming [35]. In this regard to collect research works Google, IEEE, ACM, Springer databases have been used. Secondly, the author has conducted review of small, medium and large sized enterprises for IT services. Google search engine has been used to find out these small, medium and large industries. Categorization and sub categorization have been defined after that for ITST. 1.6 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS This section describes the overall structure and contents of the thesis. Chapter 2 (State of the Art) provides a detailed discussion about the basic elements of the systematic review. It contains review protocol that contains a comprehensive plan for conducting a systematic review. Review protocol contains search terms, names of databases to be searched, inclusion/exclusion criteria, study quality assessment procedure and the way to synthesize the data gathered from the systematic review. The process of systematic review on Service Level Management is completely documented in this chapter. It also discusses about the result of the systematic review. Moreover, framework related to ITSM has been discussed here. Chapter 3 (Resolution for ITST in small and medium sized enterprise) provides the solution to develop IT Service Taxonomy with a methodology. IT services are identified from small, medium and large sized enterprises based on their websites. Later in this chapter details of the proposed IT Service Taxonomy have been discussed by defining categories and subcategories. Chapter 4(Conclusion and Future Work) provides the future plan of the research and concludes this thesis. Most importantly, future work is about the naming convention for the IT services so that every small and medium sized enterprises can use unique vocabulary for the IT service. Chapter 5 (References) provides references related to this research work. References are from different conference papers, journals. There are some references from websites, white papers. Chapter 6 (Appendix) includes appendix. Here, systematic review protocol template, reviewed small and medium sized enterprises, and reviewed papers (for systematic papers) have been attached. 8

25 CHAPTER 2: STATE OF THE ART IN SERVICE LEVEL MANAGEMENT 9 State of the art of Service Level Management

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27 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Service Level Management is the process by which an organization identifies and agrees on the level of IT Service needed to support the business and defines a mechanism to monitor the identified service level to see if they Service Level Management is also one of the important processes to regulate the qualities and to decrease the cost of IT services [15]. Moreover, the ITSM models, standards and proposals give high importance to Service Level Management in the IT Service Management context. The main factors to carry out this research focusing on a systematic review for SLM from the point of view of small and medium sized enterprise are: The current growing trend to acquire Technology and IT Services acquisitioned by organizations [16]. The importance of IT Service Management in small and medium sized enterprise. The absence of models that help to implement the Service Level Management process in the context of the IT Service Management for small and medium sized enterprise. The statistics compiled by the National Statistical Institute (INE) and the Central Business Directory [23], show that small companies represent the highest percentage of the industries. The INE and DIRCE analyze their situation within the European Union and their relationship with the employees they recruit. Table 1 summarizes the study for Spanish companies based on the employee stratum and total percentage [23]. The interest in showing this study is due to the current importance that small companies have. Microenterprise Small Medium Large Total SMEs 3, , , % 5.08% 0.70% 0.18% 100% % Table 1. Spanish Companies (employee s stratum and total percentage). Systematic review gives a summary of the state of the art for this specific topic about SLM. In this case, Service Level Management in small and medium sized enterprise has been discussed. In addition, systematic review identifies the existing gap in some topics related to SLM in small and medium sized enterprises These results can help users who are working with SLM to do further research and practice in the industry or can help to know current initiatives in this domain. Apart from that, there are several frameworks and models proposed to improve IT services management in the industry. ITIL [1], MOF [24], COBIT [5], CMMI_SVC [8] are the main frameworks working on IT service management. In S tate of the art of Service Level Management 11

28 this research, detailed studies have been conducted on those frameworks. While reviewing those frameworks, the focus was to investigate whether those frameworks or their processes have discussed any kind of IT services categorization or classification. 2.1 SYSTEMATIC REVIEW Here in this section the systematic review method has been discussed Systematic Review Background Integration of research results was introduced for the first time in twentieth century. In 1904, Pearson calculated the average of correlations between the typhoid fever inoculation and morality. Then, systematic review began to be formalized and at the end of the 80 s systematic review achieved legitimacy as a field of research [13]. Later, Kitchenham formulated the idea of Evidence- Based Software Engineering and proposed a guideline for systematic reviews that was appropriate for software engineering researchers [12] What is a Systematic Review Systematic Review (SR) is used to refer to a specific methodology of research, developed in order to gather and evaluate the available evidence pertaining to a focused topic [13]. This is the process of summarizing all existing information about a phenomenon in a thorough and empirical way. At the end, systematic review draws a general conclusion from individual studies on any phenomena. A systematic type of review follows a very well defined and strict sequence of methodological steps. A systematic review begins when researchers are confident that it is necessary to carry it out. It aims to integrate empirical research in order to create generalizations. In this regard, defined assessment objectives, reference source, data extraction method are some of the aspects contained in the protocol used for this systematic review [13] Protocol Description Biolchini et al, [13] have drawn up a proposal for how to conduct a systematic review focused on Software Engineering adapting it from other study areas such as medicine. Hence, for this work, the protocol proposed is applied to the systematic review for IT service management in small and medium sized enterprises Prototype Development The prototype development used for the systematic review of the subject is presented: Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises Question Formulation The systematic review objective should be clearly established in order to formalize the question. 12

29 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Question Focus The systematic review is carried out to identify initiatives and experience reports on Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises Question Quality and Amplitude This section aims at defining the syntax of the research question (the context in which the review is applied and the question the study must answer) and its semantic specificity (or question range) described by the remaining items of this section - intervention, effect, outcome measure, population and application. Next, each of them are described [13] specifically for Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprise. Problem: Service Level Management (SLM) is a vital process for every IT service provider organization in that it is responsible for agreeing and documenting service level targets and responsibilities within Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Service Level Requirements (SLRs), for every activity within IT. SLM implementation is needed to ensure that an agreed level of IT service is provided for all current IT services and those future services are delivered to agreed achievable targets [1]. Question: What initiatives have been carried out to evaluate processes for Service Level Management in IT service context? Intervention: Service Level Management for IT Services in small and medium sized enterprises. Effect: Service Level Management initiatives and proposals for IT services in small and medium sized enterprises. Outcome measure: Number of identified initiatives. Population: Publications related to Service Level Management, IT Services and small and medium sized enterprises. Application: Organizations that use IT services and those who provide them. Experimental Design: No experimental design will be performed Source Selection The objective of this section is to select the sources where the primary studies will be executed [13]. To perform the selection the author of the systematic review protocol proposes to address the following issues: Source Selection Criteria Definition Use search mechanism with keywords and sites suggested by experts. Use papers recommended by other experts. Use papers available on the website. S tate of the art of Service Level Management 13

30 Studies Language English. Source Identification The method to identify the sources has been discussed below Sources Search The identification of sources has been based on the criterion of experts in this research area. These sources include journals as: European Journal of Operational Research, Information and Software Technology, Software: Practice and Experience, Software Process: Improvement and Practice, IEEE Software, Software Technology and Engineering Practice, Computer and research workshops & technical reports of Software Engineering Institute SEI, among others. Search Strings Keywords from the word set defined in the question were extracted. By combining these keywords with the logical operators AND and OR, two search strings were obtained (see Table 2). These search strings have been adapted for each web browser of the sources. Search Strings 1 itsm or slm or sla or ((itil or asl or or or cmmi- svc or mof or cobit) and (small and (company or organization or enterprise or setting))) 2 it service management and 'service level management' and (small and (company or organization or enterprise or setting)) Table 2. Search Strings Source List These sources have been selected taking into account the defined source search method (see Table 3). 14

31 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Source Selection After Assessment Firstly, it is evaluated if the sources fit all defined criteria. Initially, the complete list is right. After applying the search string to all sources, it was found that some items were common in the IEEE Computer Science Digital Library and ACM sources. Reference Checking Three researchers from the Research Group of Software Process Improvement for Spain and Latin American Region evaluated the sources list obtained from the previous section and determined, at first instance, all references as approved Studies Selection In this systematic review, an iterative and incremental procedure is used for studies selection: a) Iterative, to group all activities that could be repeated during the procedure, and b) Incremental, because the studies are approached and recorded one by one until obtaining the systematic review results[10]. This iterative and incremental procedure is used due to its functionality in other systematic reviews. This section describes the process and criteria for studies selection and evaluation. Studies Definition # Source 1 ACM Digital Library 2 IEEE Computer Science Digital Library 3 Springer Link 4 Science@Direct 5 Software Engineering Institute Table 3. Source Lists The studies inclusion (IC) and exclusion criteria (EC) definitions [11] are as follows: S tate of the art of Service Level Management 15

32 Acronym IC1 IC2 IC3 IC4 EC1 EC2 Criteria Description Include papers whose titles are related to Service Level Management and IT Services and small and medium sized enterprise Include papers that contain keywords that match with those defined in the search string Include papers whose abstracts are related to the topic considered Include papers after partial or total reading Exclude those papers that do not match with the previous inclusion criteria Exclude all duplicate papers Table 4. Studies inclusion and exclusion criteria definition Studies Types Definition Initially all studies related to Service Level Management will be taken into account. However, the greatest interest will focus on studies that show results on Service Level Management for IT services in small and medium sized enterprise. Procedures for studies selection With regards to the selection criteria, the title was initially the main criterion; nevertheless, in some cases it did not provide enough information, thereby reading the summary of each of them was necessary and in some cases a review of the full text was required. Selection Execution Initial Studies Selection. At first a search execution was conducted to verify the parameters used by each engine and adapt search string to them. Table 5 shows in the column Found the obtained value. Study Quality Evaluation. To determine the quality of the study, some participants of the research group, applying IC and EC, obtained the primary studies (see Table 5). 16

33 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Sources Search date Found Primary studies IEEE 05/11/ ACM 05/11/ Springer 05/12/ Science@Direct 05/13/ SEI 05/14/ Total Table 5. Number of studies and results derived from each source Next, a quality study is performed to obtain the assessment results that permit us to quantify those studies that effectively support the stated objectives. The previous information constitutes the study basis for following the systematic review process, and checks the quality of the study Information Extraction This section begins once the primary studies are selected. In this section, extraction criteria and results are described Information Inclusion (ICinf) and Exclusion (ECinf) Criteria Definition: Acronym IC1inf IC2inf IC3inf EC1inf Criteria Description Collect Information about the organization s trend with respect to service level management. Classify processes followed by companies for IT service management. Identify proposed methodologies, methods and procedures in studies for IT service management Exclude the information that is not related to the inclusion criteria defined above. Table 6. Information Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria Definition S tate of the art of Service Level Management 17

34 Data Extraction Forms To analyze data and information submitted in selected studies, relevant remarks of the main studies ideas were made and recorded in a document with a sequence number identification that matches with the sequential paper number given when it was stored as primary study. Extraction Execution The process to extract results from the primary study has been discussed below. Objective Results Extraction A complete and detailed reading from these studies allowed us to organize and classify them for a later analysis. With an unbiased evaluation of the information, identified and classified study records were generated in a structured table containing the following rows: Consecutive Study (sequential paper number), Study methodology (remarks of the main ideas concerned with the methodology), and Study outcome (data and information of the conclusion presented in each study). Subjective Result Extraction The following rows were added to the previous table: Data about Authors (full names and available contact information in the studies) and Additional Notes (a specific field to store general information related to subject covered in the study). Resolution of divergences between reviewers In the development procedure for the extraction of the information contained in the selected primary studies, different perceptions among authors of the studies were presented. However, none of them is considered as an important divergence, but rather, the findings were complemented to obtain a comprehensive analysis of the paper. Here, in this section, the author has tried to find out current state of the art of the Service Level Management in small and medium sized enterprises using the defined protocol from Biolchini et al, [13] in a systematic way. Detailed finding from this systematic review is described in next section. 2.2 RESULTS OF THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW After the systematic review execution (mentioned in previous section), the results must be summarized and analyzed using statistical methods. This section presents a summary of the data resulting from the selected studies. This summary is obtained from statistical calculus Studies Trends In order to know organization trend respect to Service Level Management (SLM), studies related to any aspect of SLM were classified; taking into account 18

35 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog that "SLM" term refers to both Service Level Agreement (SLA) and Service Level Operation (SLO) terms. Figure 1 shows two types of trends. 1) Between 2002 and 2006, there is a polynomial trend of order 3 because data fluctuate along the graphic. And, 2) from 2006 to 2008 data have a linear trend because the studies are increasing at a constant rate. The trend shows the increasing interest related to Service Level Management since year Figure 1 Studies Trend Studies Classification During the protocol development, by using the studies selection s methodology and information analysis found in each study, it was possible to determine that studies could be classified into four items. Those studies covering: A) Topics related only to ITSM and SLM. B) Topics related only to ITSM and small and medium sized enterprises. C) A relationship of three topics (ITSM and SLM and small and medium sized enterprises), and D) Other studies that have no relationship with these issues (ITSM and SLM and small and medium sized enterprises). Figure 2 shows the studies percentage for each item according to the previous classification. S tate of the art of Service Level Management 19

36 Figure 2 Studies Classification Figure 2 shows that 45% of the primary studies (see Table 5) are related to ITSM and SLM which confirms the trend shown in Figure 1. 26% shows information related to ITSM and small and medium sized enterprise. However, it is necessary to highlight that only 23% is related to item C) that grouped the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprise). Finally 6% has been eliminated by the exclusion criteria EC1inf Analysis of those studies covering the relationship of the three topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises) Figure 3 shows the results of the relationship related to topics (ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises). In the analysis, it is noted that 23% of the papers comprise the three aspects (basis of the ongoing systematic review). From here all analyses are referred to this 23% (item C). Analysis by country The source of 23% of the papers is shown in Figure 3. United States of America is one of the main countries involved in the study of ITSM, SLM and small and medium sized enterprises, with 29%. The remaining studies are related to the countries like South Korea, Sweden, French, Canada and Germany with 14% respectively. 20

37 An IT Service Taxonomy for Elaborating IT Service Catalog Figure. 3. Studies Classified by country Analysis by company size Figure 4 shows information about companies size. Because most of the studies are lack of information about companies, Figure 4 has been made taking into account two criteria: 1) the application of studies in the companies size, 2) the studies did not mention the companies size. Hence, according to Figure 4, most of the companies that support their research are small companies; statistically there are 85.7% of such companies. For the remaining 14.3% companies, the sizes of those companies are not mentioned. Figure 4. Studies by company s size Analysis by models With respect to item C (mentioned in 2.2.2) only 78% of the small and medium sized enterprises have used ITIL or COBIT or ISO to manage their IT services. S tate of the art of Service Level Management 21