This document discusses reframing service management concepts from an ITIL perspective to a market and product management perspective. It summarizes a framework for managing services by mapping concepts from product management to aspects of managing internal and external markets for services. Key points include: - Services are increasingly viewed and managed like products that are obtained from both internal and external providers to enable business capabilities. - A framework from Pragmatic Marketing is reinterpreted to show how aspects of managing markets map to evaluating, strategizing, designing, and delivering services. - Managing services is reframed as managing the markets in which services exist, with a focus on meeting demand and customer expectations. - This new perspective is presented

1. Unlearning and
Re-learning ITSM
Service Management as Product Management

2. Service Management, and its sub-area IT Service Management, is changing
in an evolutionary fashion, and faster.
The changes create interesting challenges. For example, the best practices
library, ITIL, represents the leading thinking on operationalizing ITSM. But
when it was mapped to an official standard (ISO), it then continued to
change while the published standard did not.
Additionally, the “commonplace” terminology used in ITSM has increasingly
reflected ITIL’s own dictionary, but in some key situations the terminology
does not work outside of ITIL contexts in the way the terms would work
across management disciplines not focused on IT or on services yet possibly
governing them.
The following exploration at no time relies on, nor refers to, terms from the
point-of-view of ITIL. Readers are cautioned to note the generic stance of
this discussion’s key words, which have established common meanings
outside of any requirement to consult ITIL.

3. Services are Products

4. It is increasingly evident that a Service is a go-to-market Product.
We see it reflected in many ways:
• XaaS
• BYOD
• Open Source
• MSPs
• IoT
Probably, the more important current distinction is between the
internal markets of the business and its external markets.
Either way, the provision of IT-based capability is seen from the
Demand-side as a combination of packaging, availability and
assurances.
Concepts of effective utility are not about the construction of the
service. Instead they are about fit-to-need: the relevance, impacts
and control of the on-demand employment of the service.

5. From the demand-side, the adoption of, and adaptation to,
services is essentially about managing choice.
This highlights the position of the service in a market-orientation.
Demand-based service management does not look like
engineering. It looks like product management.
As more and more service utilization begins with a selection of
packaged or managed services, a product-management paradigm
is a more logical perspective for the business view of I.T.
We will use a famous product management framework as a device
to continue this discussion. Our use is an analysis, not an
endorsement; however we use the device with thanks to its
author. Our discussion introduces an original re-interpretation of
the existing work.

7. The most common error in viewing the Pragmatic Marketing framework is in
forgetting that the framework’s organization is about markets, not about products.
The products have to exist within (and because of) markets.
Market
DESIGN
Market
DEVELOPMENT
Market
REQUIREMENTS
Market
OPERATION

8. Framework logic: Revisited

9. Market
DESIGN
(Technical product
management)
Market
DEVELOPMENT
(Product marketing management)
Market
REQUIREMENTS
(Strategic product management)
Market
OPERATION
(Product marketing
management)
The framework’s typical coverage of market management focus is typically modeled
this way. However, the distribution is, on the X-axis, called “product” management.

10. Because of “product” focus, big chunks of “designing” the market (bottom left)
and “operating” the market (top right) are conspicuously blank areas.
Market
DEVELOPMENT
(Product marketing management)
Market
REQUIREMENTS
(Strategic product management)
Market
DESIGN
(Technical product
management)
Market
OPERATION
(Product marketing
management)

11. To further see through the product perspective into the market
perspective, we decoded the framework by showing new
parameters that are normally not published with the diagram.
The parameters model the distinctions that describe what visible
market conditions can correlate types of service with types of
success.
• Environment, opportunity, probability, and performance of use
• Definition, cultivation, position, and validation of deliverable
These parameters account for what it is about market
management that becomes a factor in the decisions about what
products should become available and how.
Also, at this point going forward, we consistently read the term
“Product” as an umbrella term that covers a type of product
known as “Services” (as well as other types such as “Goods”).

12. What is called “Strategic” Product Management is almost entirely about market Requirements in four areas.
(Environment, opportunity, probability, performance)
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY

13. What is included in Product “Marketing Management” is about market Operation within the same four areas.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY

14. What is called “Technical” Product Management is entirely about market Design in two of four key aspects.
HOWEVER…
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

15. CRITICAL NOTE: We believe that both Technology Assessment and Innovation are in the wrong position
within market Design. So we made an adjustment (see next)…
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

16. Technology Assessment and Innovation are logically relocated here within the market Design area.
What is then must be covered is a responsibility for business definition and strategy cultivation,
which are both internal research-based decisions guiding the product’s potential relevance prior to
market development (especially, decisions involving strategic technology impacts).
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

17. What also gets called Product “Marketing Management” is heavily about four areas of market Development.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

18. Framework logic: Reset

19. Any provider of a service is concerned with whether the end user
will be satisfied based on expectations.
The importance of expectations is due to the fact that the provider
has only a certain amount of influence on what the user will
actually do.
A provider whose business is based on benefiting predictably and
repeatedly from multiple services or multiple independent users is
required to manage demand. Otherwise, expectations cannot be
the basis of satisfaction, and satisfaction cannot be the provider’s
basis of gaining a sufficient level of benefit.
Since the single most important point of the service is to meet
demand, service management must be based in demand
management.
Demand management is exercised through managing markets.
Service management must synchronize with market management.

20. Services are a type of product that are managed within the internal and external
markets of the business organization. The markets are managed, themselves. Market
management aspects predispose service management aspects.
Market
DESIGN
(=> service strategy)
Market
DEVELOPMENT
(=> service design)
Market
REQUIREMENTS
(=> service evaluation)
Market
OPERATION
(=> service delivery)

21. Market
DESIGN
(=> service strategy)
Market
DEVELOPMENT
(=> service design)
Market
REQUIREMENTS
(=> service evaluation)
Market
OPERATION
(=> service delivery)
SERVICE EVALUATION is
managed in the context of
market requirements,
whether the market is
internal or external to the
business organization.
Evaluation signals change
or acceptance.
SERVICE DELIVERY is
managed as operating a
market, with access and
influence on the market
through using the services
catalog and portfolio.
SERVICE STRATEGY is
developed and conducted
to leverage the design of
the market. The service
strategy organizes
opportunities promoted
by the market design.
SERVICE DESIGN aligns
with market development
by generating and
supporting options to
connect opportunities
and customers.
Market/Service Synchronicity

22. SERVICE EVALUATION is managed in the context of market requirements, whether the market is
internal or external to the business organization. Evaluation signals beneficial acceptance or change.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY

23. SERVICE DELIVERY is managed as operating a market, with access and influence on the market
through using the service catalog and service portfolio.
PERFORMANCE
ENVIRONMENT
OPPORTUNITY
PROBABILITY

24. SERVICE STRATEGY is developed and conducted to leverage the design of the market. The market
design promotes opportunities and the service strategy organizes them.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

25. SERVICE DESIGN aligns with market development by generating and supporting options to connect
opportunities and customers.
VALIDATION
DEFINITION
CULTIVATION
POSITION

26. Management logic: remapped

27. Business capabilities are built with goods and services – in other
words, with products.
Increasingly, services are sourced from a wide variety of internal,
external and even unauthorized providers.
Said differently, the primary business perspective on services now
is not about how they are made but how the right ones are
obtained.
Business management of services derives from that perspective, to
represent and assure their business alignment.
A business is a market for services; therefore, we are re-mapping
service management to market management.

28. The re-mapping helps to recognize that some notable problems occur when
the demand-driven associations are missing.
• The classic issue of a “solution looking for a problem” quickly comes to
mind.
• Additionally, there is the struggle to understand if, or how, “innovations”
will play out and whether they require costly management-by-exception.
• And the increasing frequency and diversity of business change puts risk
into the lifespan of every deliverable and related development project.
The re-mapping allows the framework to prevent such problems through
clarifying management goals versus Demand, which is an obviously logical
approach to developing customer satisfaction.
Demand view of
Service (as a product)
Relevant Focus Effects of Management
Evaluation Business opportunities Detect acceptance and change
Strategy Value propositions Organize opportunities
Design Capability options Create connections of customers to options
Delivery Return on investment Leverage markets

29. A work in progress

30. This discussion’s framework study does not argue for any change
to the work we referenced from Pragmatic Marketing.
Our objective has been to show that critical demand-oriented
perspectives are already in use for managing products, whether
explicitly or implicitly.
By exposing the inherent logic in place with those perspectives, an
opportunity is offered to make conceptual associations that are
meaningful and relevant in recognizing the product-nature of
services.
The abstraction obtained from the study can promote new
development of a similar framework that is extending or re-
contextualizing cases and lessons learned from management in a
well-practiced precedent.

31. ©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research
mryder@malcolmryder.com