Service Management Best Practices

Overview

Portfolios do not exist in isolation. An IT Infrastructure Services Portfolio underpins services in nearly every other portfolio. A Security Services Portfolio has dependencies that touch every service in the organization. Changes in one portfolio can have cascading effects on services in others. Organizations that manage portfolios as isolated units discover these interdependencies through service disruptions rather than through proactive governance.

Best Practice

Identify and document the significant dependencies and relationships between portfolios. Establish cross-portfolio governance mechanisms that ensure changes with inter-portfolio implications are coordinated before they are executed. Portfolio Owners should have a defined communication and coordination relationship with the owners of portfolios they depend on or that depend on them. Portfolio strategy reviews should consider the inter-portfolio landscape to avoid decisions in one portfolio that inadvertently harm the health of another.

Benefit(s)

Active management of inter-portfolio relationships produces a coordinated service landscape rather than a collection of independently managed silos. Technology changes are coordinated with dependent service portfolios before they are made. Strategic decisions in one portfolio account for their implications in others. The organization develops a mature, integrated Service Management capability that manages the service landscape as a connected whole rather than a set of disconnected parts.