How the MOF Process Model corresponds to ITIL guidance
The MOF approach to “adopting and adapting” the ITIL service support (user focused) – service delivery (customer focused) organization is to extend this to distributed IT environments and current industry directions. Typically within an organization there are so many processes, procedures and tasks, it becomes very difficult to organize and document a “model” which accurately represents them. Microsoft adapted a quadrant based approach with a rapid life cycle inherent to it and prescriptive guidance to assist companies of all sizes with improving process maturity.
The high level detail of the MOF Process Model is displayed below. There are four Operations Management Reviews (OMRs) as indicated by the Change Initiation Review, Release Readiness Review, Operations Review, and the SLA Review. Within each quadrant are Service Management Functions (SMFs) which detail the prescriptive guidance on the process flows and roles with corresponding responsibilities. You will notice ITIL familiar functions around change mgmt, config mgmt, and release mgmt as well as new SMFs Microsoft has put into MOF to better align with the distributed environment. Though the model has the life cycle element to it, it is not to say that activities within do not occur in parallel as they certainly do.
From the Process Model white paper, “The MOF Process Model is meant to simplify process definition into a high-level framework that is easy to understand and whose principles and practices are easy to incorporate and apply selectively or comprehensively. The power of this simplified approach will enable the operations staff of a business of any size, regardless of maturity level, to realize tangible benefits to the existing, or proposed, operations environment. The intent of the MOF Process Model is to provide a simple representation of the complex components and their relationships within the model.”
The model assists the delivery and support of IT services by providing a structured architecture, iterative improvement life cycle design, review-driven management (the OMRs), and, very importantly, embedded risk management (more on that in the future). If you have any questions or comments on the model itself, how it relates to ITIL, etc, please feel free to leave a comment here or by email.