Linking ITSM and SDLC: the continuous improvement cycle

Sooner or later any IT product company comes to the need not just to develop software, but also to provide related services to its customers. These may be implementation services, user training, technical support, upgrades and functionality development. In essence, the company becomes a full-fledged IT service provider, which means that it has to set up all the processes of interaction with clients and consideration of their needs.

SDLC and ITSM are two effective practices gaining more and more popularity in business. At first glance, these areas may seem loosely connected:

• SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) is the concept of software creation, including its planning, development, testing and deployment;
• ITSM (IT Service Management) – an approach to implementing, managing, and improving IT services;

However, upon deeper examination, it becomes clear that integrating SDLC and ITSM practices is critical to ensuring continuous improvement of both the products and services of an IT company.

SimpleOne’s webinar “SDLC and ITSM: The Process of Continuous Product Improvement” was dedicated to this topic. Experts shared their insights on why it is important to consider SDLC and ITSM together, and how to establish effective collaboration between product and support teams. The webinar demonstrated how the use of a single platform enables the integration of development lifecycle management and service management processes, ensuring a continuous flow of value creation for customers.

The key insights from the webinar form the basis of this article. We will look at why product companies need to act as service providers, how to build collaboration between development and support teams, and how the practices of problem management, incident management, and product backlogging are related. Special attention will be paid to the importance of a unified information environment and platform solutions in realizing an integrated approach to SDLC and ITSM.

Product organization as a service provider

Let’s start by introducing the concept of a product organization. It can be an entire company, such as a large software vendor, or a small automation group within the IT department at an enterprise.

Resources of a product organization

Resources include employees (staff), information technology, information systems, infrastructure, code base, and other IT-related production assets. In addition, resources include the processes used by the team and the partners and vendors with whom the product team interacts

Elements of Product Value

A product is a formed configuration of resources, their combination and bundling in an organization that can potentially deliver value to the customer.

“A product can exist without a consumer – this is a key point to understand. Simply creating and releasing a product is not enough. That combination of resources, potentially delivering value, can be left lying on the shelf. The product organization must present its product to consumers and organize the very process of consuming the product. It is also the case that products are often complex and not all of their parts need to be – ‘visible’ to consumers.”

– commented Andrey Vishnyakov, Business Product Director at SimpleOne, ITIL® SL, MP, Expert.

What must be done for a product to begin to provide value to the customer?”

In order for a product to start bringing real value, it is necessary to present it to consumers in the form of services and service offerings. It is the services that are the very link between the product and the users, providing accessibility, convenience and quality of use. Service offerings may include various variants of product provision – from the complete transfer of its copy to the client to the organization of access to functionality on the SaaS model. At the same time, a single product can be the basis for a multitude of service offerings oriented at different groups of consumers.

As a rule, service offers are of 3 types and may include:

• Transferring copies of products to the consumer;
• Providing access to products and resources;
• Defined service actions;

The product organization becomes a service provider

The focus of any product organization is the creation and development of software products. Teams of developers, testers, analysts, and other specialists work to produce quality software that meets the needs of the business and users. However, the finished product provides only part of customer satisfaction. It is also important to ensure effective implementation, support, and continuous improvement of the product. Here, the product organization also assumes the role of an IT service provider.

Providing Value.

By becoming a service provider, the product organization assumes responsibility for the full lifecycle of delivering value to customers. This means that in addition to directly developing the software, it must ensure that it is implemented correctly, training users, providing technical support, handling change requests, and more. In essence, the product company builds long-term partnerships with its customers, taking responsibility for their success in using the product.

Continuous Improvement.

This transformation requires the product organization to rethink its internal processes and practices. Traditional software development approaches focused solely on creating quality code are no longer sufficient. It is necessary to build end-to-end processes that span the entire product and service lifecycle, while ensuring effective communication and collaboration between development, support, operations, and customer relations teams. This is the only way to ensure that the product will not just meet specifications, but also bring real value to customers, continuously evolving and adapting to their changing needs.

SDLC and ITSM: a single value creation stream

A product organization’s awareness of its role as an IT service provider is only the first step towards effective product and service lifecycle management. The next challenge is to seamlessly integrate development (SDLC) and IT service management (ITSM) practices. While both methodologies are focused on delivering value to end users, they have a number of fundamental differences.

Differences in tools and systems

• Development teams use different development systems and tax-trackers to manage backlog, tasks and defects, as well as version control and CI/CD systems.
• Support teams utilize ITSM systems to handle requests, manage incidents, problems, issues, queries, and service delivery.

Differences in object models and processes

• SDLC operates on backlog elements (epics, features, stories, defects, releases, etc.); processes focus on developing, testing, and delivering the product.
• ITSM deals with services, incidents, problems, service and change requests, configuration units; processes are focused on service stability and availability.

Organizational separation.

• Development and support are often the responsibility of different units or organizations.
• Specialists have different competencies and speak different professional languages.
• The use of different accounting systems makes communication and knowledge transfer difficult.

A single value creation flow should encompass both product development and service delivery processes. To build such a flow, it is important to consider SDLC and ITSM practices together, ensuring:

• Cross traceability from customer needs to specific tasks in the development backlog, avoiding the accumulation of technical debt;
• Efficient prioritization of tasks based on business value and feedback from users;
• Fast handling of incidents and change requests with the involvement of the necessary experts;
• Continuous improvement of the product and services based on collected analytics and metrics.

Implementing an integrated approach requires both organizational changes and appropriate tools. Close collaboration between development, support, and customer interaction teams must be established. In addition, it is important to create a unified information environment that seamlessly integrates SDLC and ITSM processes.

Collaboration between development and support teams

For teams to interact effectively, it is essential to establish processes for sharing information and working together to improve the product. Feedback from users through the support team is a valuable source of data for product development. Let’s take a look at how to properly build data sharing and collaboration processes between development and support.

1. Analyze user feedback

Most of the requests that come into the helpdesk are “live” feedback from people who use the product every day. Behind every request there is a real person with their needs, pains and expectations. This information should be treated with the utmost care and attention.

Analyzing user requests allows you to build a detailed picture of their experience with the product, identify problem areas, and identify opportunities for improvement. Product teams can use this data to shape and prioritize their backlog, supplementing it with user stories, valuable business features, and important enhancements.

2. Incidents as growth points

Many product teams try to abstract away from operational issues, shifting the responsibility for incident resolution onto the shoulders of technical support specialists. However, this approach fails to fully utilize the potential of incidents to improve product quality.

Developers who become direct participants in the incident resolution process get an opportunity to dive deeper into the problems of real users. Involving product teams in investigating the causes of failures and finding workarounds not only improves the quality and speed of incident handling, but also provides invaluable experience that is then translated into product improvements and optimization.

3. Manage change together

Change requests generated by users are another important feedback channel to keep a finger on the pulse of changing customer needs. Handling these requests properly requires close collaboration between product teams and support specialists.

Together they can ensure an efficient process of acceptance, coordination and planning of changes. This will allow the product to be quickly adapted to changing business requirements, while maintaining the stability and manageability of services. Transparent communication with users at all stages of change request processing increases their loyalty and trust in the IT service.

4. Unify processes, integrate tools

Building effective collaboration between product teams and support requires not only organizational change, but also the right tools. It is necessary to ensure unification of processes and integration of development and support systems in order to organize a full end-to-end process of product and service lifecycle management.

Platform solutions enable seamless integration based on a single system. Products SimpleOne SDLC for software development lifecycle management and SimpleOne ITSM for service process automation form a single information space. This opens up opportunities for cross-functional interaction and allows you to build a complete development cycle based on feedback from real users.

The role of requests in the formation of the backlog

To create an effective continuous improvement process, there must be a tight integration between problem management, incident management, and backlog generation.

Incident management and problem management are two complementary ITSM processes that nevertheless have different goals and focus.

Incident management aims to restore normal service operations to users as soon as possible. The top priority is to resolve the user’s problem as quickly as possible and minimize the negative impact of the incident on the business. At the same time, the underlying causes of an incident often remain unknown.

Problem Management, on the other hand, focuses on finding and eliminating the root causes of incidents. Its goal is to prevent incidents from recurring in the future.

The separation of these processes allows both to promptly eliminate the consequences of incidents for customers and to systematically work on the quality and stability of the services provided. But it is important to realize that in the end both processes must be integrated into a single stream of continuous improvement.

Traditionally, incidents and problems have been the responsibility of the service desk, while product teams focus on developing new functionality. However, for effective product and service lifecycle management, the two must work closely together.

There are several benefits to involving product teams in incident and problem management:

• Developers get first-hand information about real-world experiences with the product, which helps them better understand user needs;
• Product teams can more quickly and accurately diagnose the technical causes of problems and propose solutions;
• Collaborative work on incidents and problems fosters a culture of quality and accountability for the bottom line.

On the other hand, support teams accumulate a huge amount of knowledge about customer pain points and product bottlenecks. This information is invaluable for building and prioritizing the backlog of product teams. User requests, frequently occurring incidents, identified problems – all of this should be reflected in the form of tasks for product development and improvement.

Thus, incident and problem management becomes an integral part of the backlog process. And product teams and support service turn from office neighbors into partners working together to achieve strategic business goals.

Realization of such integration in practice allows to implement an end-to-end process from user request to development and release of product improvements:

1. Incidents and user requests are registered by the support service in the ITSM-system;
2. Based on incidents, problems that require more in-depth development are identified;
3. Information about problems and requests for improvements is automatically transferred to SDLC systems in the form of development tasks;
4. Product teams, using Agile practices, incorporate these tasks into their backlog and plan for their implementation in sprints;
5. After product updates are released, information about resolved issues and implemented improvements is communicated back to ITSM;
6. Support informs users about the changes made and collects feedback.

Thus, a single closed cycle is formed, providing continuous improvement of products based on the real needs of users. Integration at the data and process level eliminates discontinuities and improves speed and quality.

Platform-based process integration

Building effective collaboration between product and support teams, integrating development lifecycle management and service delivery processes requires an appropriate technology base.

“Siloed systems and tools used by different departments often become a barrier to building a unified value stream. Implementing an integrated platform that enables seamless collaboration between processes and teams can be a solution to this problem.”

– commented Andrey Vishnyakov, Business Product Director, SimpleOne, ITIL® SL, MP, Expert.

A single information environment for SDLC and ITSM integration provides:

• Transparency and availability of data for all process participants;
• Elimination of information barriers and bottle necks between departments;
• Automatic transformation of incidents and user requests into development tasks;
• Collaborative release planning and change management based on business priorities and user needs;
• Create a single repository of knowledge and experience gained during product development and operation;
• The ability to build end-to-end analytics and reporting across the entire lifecycle of products and services

Platform solutions SimpleOne SDLC and ITSM are a vivid example of end-to-end integration of software development and management of related IT services. Their joint implementation and use on the basis of a single Low-code platform opens up opportunities for effective support of a single value stream:

1. Seamless integration of data and processes through the use of a single information environment and unified object model.

Realization of end-to-end processes on the basis of a single platform provides seamless integration between SimpleOne SDLC and SimpleOne ITSM products. A single information environment and unified object model allow to overcome the limitations of disparate systems and organize effective interaction between product teams and technical support at all stages of the life cycle of products and services.

2. Value Stream Management

The platform provides tools to map, analyze and optimize the value stream, enabling you to identify and eliminate bottlenecks, minimize waste and improve the efficiency of your service development and delivery processes. The integration of metrics and analytics from SimpleOne SDLC and SimpleOne ITSM provides a holistic view of flow performance and enables timely decisions to improve it.

3. Ability to flexibly customize and extend platform functionality through Low-code tools and open API.

SimpleOne solutions can be adapted to the specific needs and processes of a particular company without involving developers. The ability to quickly create customized applications, automate workflows, customize interfaces and reports allows the platform to ensure maximum compliance with business requirements and effectively support its development.

4. Intelligent process automation based on machine learning and natural language processing technologies

The SimpleOne platform uses AI capabilities to automatically categorize, prioritize and route user requests, identify similar incidents and problems, and recommend solutions based on a knowledge base. This allows to significantly increase the speed and quality of request processing, reduce the load on the support team and free up resources for more complex tasks.

5. Scalability and the possibility of phased implementation of new practices and tools

The platform architecture allows for incremental scaling of solution functionality as business needs evolve. Companies can start by implementing individual products or processes and gradually expand the scope of automation by adding new tools. Due to the modularity of the platform, the introduction of new practices and integration with related systems do not require lengthy and costly projects.

6. The ability to implement complex cross-functional scenarios through the use of a common process core and a common knowledge base.

The SimpleOne platform provides tools to create and automate processes, manage configurations, organize teamwork and accumulate expertise. It allows you to build holistic product and service lifecycle management processes involving different functional areas and roles.

Summary

Integrating SDLC and ITSM practices is a necessity for companies seeking continuous product improvement and value creation.

Key factors for successful integration of SDLC and ITSM:

1. Rethinking the role of product teams as service providers;
2. Effective feedback and collaboration on product improvement;
3. Integrating service processes into backlog generation;
4. Implement integrated platform solutions to support end-to-end ITSM processes in development management;

Companies that are able to implement these principles will gain significant competitive advantages: increased customer satisfaction, faster time to market, cost optimization and increased innovation potential.