IT service canvas

My recent doodle attracted enough attention to warrant a 'voiceover' in the form of an article. It illustrates the major parties and disciplines involved in providing IT services. As such, it is useful when trying to understand an unfamiliar service enviroment, for example as a consutant. It is easy to draw and fill in who does what, where they are located, how they collaborate and communicate etc. It could be called an IT service canvas, although I haven't given the name much thought.

Starting from the right, use of IT systems and services is positioned as part of work in the user organization. People use IT and the information that technology provides, to take better decisions, or to process information more efficiently.

The means by which users gain access to IT, is service. Service affords access to the systems and services, and supports users in their use thereof.

Operations ensures that the systems are available for use. The systems themselves are a combination of applications and infrastructure, provided by the disciplines with the same names.

The internal IT provider performs applications, infrastructure, operations and service in order to provide end user IT services.

Applications and infrastructure (or parts thereof) are often obtained from external providers, and are then integrated with other applications and infrastructure components to form a larger system. This also applies to applications and infrastructure provided as a service, in which case the external provider will also have an operations discipline. These are typically not end user IT services but technical IT services that only have value when combined with other technical IT services or applications and infrastructure. ITIL refers to these as service components that are obtained or built. SIAM descibes the service integration part.