Been working with my three-lifecycle model for a while now (also here) and it is holding up in the lab so far. (I have an ITSM laboratory called my day job, as an enterprise ITSM architect for a large US bank.) Can't talk too much about that side of things but the reader can assume I'm not going to keep blogging about dead ends.
The chevrons show the true processes. What do they have in common? They all are conceptual entities as well, candidates for entity lifecycle analysis. Furthermore it is interesting to consider the average duration of their lifecycles:
Service: Years
Technology Product: Years
Asset: Years
Project (strict SDLC): Months
Release: Weeks
Change: Weeks
Service Request: Days
Incident: Hours
Problem: Days/Weeks (& more, but then it gateways back to Project or even one of the big 3)
My belief is that a comprehensive process architecture - in the rigorous sense, not the confused ITIL sense - could be derived by looking at the state transitions of these entities as events and documenting the synch points and dependencies.
What does this mean in terms of MRP? Dependencies seem like another way of saying "buffer needed." Interesting...
An interesting question for another time: what is the relationship between Program and Service? My understanding in the military sense is that a Program might deliver Services. It's a highly mature concept for domains where the assumption is everything, no matter how big, is transitory - only the overall mission is permanent.
-ctb
