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.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  In case you haven’t heard, a v1.2 update was released to the Microsoft Identity and Access Management...
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2003
  Thanks to Jonathan Hardwick for the recognition in his recent post on ITIL, MOF, and a critical mass...
• Anonymous
  May 29, 2005
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  May 30, 2005
  Thanks, Scott, for the comment. Sorry for the delay in response. I am going to get the official word on certification and will post that as soon as I have it.
  
  MOF does indeed relate to ITIL as it is based on it. The MOF Optimizing quadrant gets into all of the strategic alignment aspects you mention. Service Level Management and SLA/OLA development, IT to business alignment, etc. is the key SMF for that quadrant. Financial Mgmt, Workforce Mgmt (currently not in ITIL), Security Mgmt, etc. etc. all focus on the strategic nature of MOF. There are white papers for each of these, just follow the link on my site for the info.
  
  For Project Mgmt, I mention that in my post today about MSF. :)
  
  Thanks for the comments, Scott. I will post when I have word on the certification and will also go into training that is available.