Friday, April 05, 2002

 
Posted by Mike Tarrani 3:21 AM
Dutch - Language of Service Management? Most of our research focused on service management leads to the Netherlands, and many of the documents are in Dutch - a language that none of the members of TEAM Zarate-Tarrani read or speak.

The IT Service CMM initiative is under the aegis of the Software Engineering Research Centre (Netherlands). The other interesting initiative, the Application Services Library, a framework for application management, is also an innovation that comes from the Netherlands.

Although the entire Application Services Library web site, and most of the documents, are in Dutch, I've managed to find a few documents in English. The approach is mature, especially if you're familiar with the support hierarchy using application support analysts, business systems analysts and business systems managers. The documents are:

• Introduction to the Application Services Library: Best Practices and Framework for Application Management.
• A methodology for the Provision of Application Services.
• Application Services Management.

There is sufficient information in these documents to reverse-engineer the processes and methods that comprise the Application Services Library. I can only hope that the full suite of documents will one day be available in English.

The key point, other than sharing information and trends that we've noted, is that if you're a service level management practitioner you will do well to watch that the Dutch are doing because they appear to be doing world-class work. Learning Dutch is optional.