Understanding Service Offering Relationships

[CD4WG]

Situation:

• Reviewing and cleaning up a technical service offering that's being phased out.
• The company has restructure one team into multiple teams, each with separate service offerings.
• I'm mapping all application services associated with the original service offering to make sure that they are re-mapped appropriately.
• In some cases, stakeholders are confused as to why either a technical or application service was mapped to the original service offering, since they don't answer tickets related to these services.

Solution:

• If the relationship (contains) always indicates incident support, then I can ignore remapping items the new teams don't handle. However, I need to rule out the possibility that the mapping might represent some other, less obvious connection.

Question:

• Does "contained" always imply support for incident resolution?
• Could "contained" indicate other types of relationships?
• Example: A service offering for software deployment distributes different software programs—would the corresponding application services still be mapped to this offering even if the team doesn’t handle tickets?

[Abbas_5 · Accepted solution]

Hello @CD4WG,

No, "contained" doesn't always imply incident support, though it can certainly have that meaning in a service management context. "Contained" can also indicate other relationships, like a "part-of" relationship or simply referring to the physical location or grouping of things. 

Here's a breakdown:

• Incident Support:

  When "contained" is used in relation to incident management, it usually means that the service offering is responsible for resolving or containing incidents related to the things it provides (e.g., a software deployment offering is responsible for incidents related to the software it distributes). 
• Other Relationships:

  • "Part-of" or Composition: "Contained" can also indicate a "part-of" relationship, where one thing is a component or part of another. For instance, a database application could be "contained" within a broader web application. 
  • Physical Location: "Contained" could refer to the physical location of something, like a server being contained within a data center. 
  • Grouping or Scope: It can also simply mean that something is grouped or within the scope of something else, without necessarily implying direct responsibility. 

In your example of a software deployment offering:

Even if a team responsible for software deployment doesn't handle tickets directly for specific application services, the application services could still be mapped to that offering for several reasons:

• Deployment:

  The software deployment team is likely responsible for deploying and managing the software that the application services rely on. 
• Infrastructure:

  The deployment offering might encompass the underlying infrastructure (servers, storage, etc.) needed by the application services, even if incident resolution is managed separately. 
• Reporting and Visibility:

  Mapping the application services to the deployment offering might be useful for reporting purposes, such as tracking which services are deployed and where they are located. 
• Relationship Tracking:

  The relationship might be a general indication of a "part-of" or "contained-within" relationship, rather than a specific incident resolution responsibility. 

In short, the meaning of "contained" depends heavily on the context. It's important to understand what the relationship between the service offering and the application services is, beyond just the incident resolution aspect. 

If this is helpful, please hit the thumbs up button and accept the correct solution by referring to this solution in future it will be helpful to them.

Thanks & Regards,

Abbas Shaik