Section 4 Service Leadership asks you to start by making
a commitment to service management and accepting responsibility
for it. It then asks you to develop a service management policy,
to clarify service management responsibilities, to define service
management communication procedures, and to establish
service management documents and records.

Section 4 also asks you to identify all processes operated by other
parties and to demonstrate that they are capable of directing and
controlling these processes. And finally, it asks you to establish a
service management system (SMS) and to provide the resources
needed to develop, implement, operate, monitor, maintain, audit,
review, and improve this system.

We’ve chosen to use the heading Service Leadership (instead of
"Service management system general requirements") because top
management is repeatedly asked to meet section 4 requirements
and because we believe that it more accurately captures the
essential nature of this section.

Section 5 Service Development asks you to control the
design and redesign of your services, to plan service additions,
changes, and removals, and to test new or changed services
prior to deployment.

Section 6 Service Delivery asks you to establish agreements
to control service delivery, to establish reporting methods, and to
prepare service reports. It also asks you to clarify service continuity
and availability requirements, to prepare service continuity and
availability plans, and to monitor and test the availability of your
services. In addition, it asks you to establish service budgeting
and accounting process, policies, and procedures.

Section 6 also asks you to identify service capacity requirements,
to develop service capacity plans, and to provide sufficient capacity.
And finally, it asks you to develop an information security policy, to
implement controls, and to manage security changes and incidents.

Section 7 Service Relationships asks you to manage your
relationship with service customers and service suppliers. More
specifically, it asks you to establish a customer relationship
management process, to measure customer satisfaction, to review
service performance, and to control changes to service agreements
and service requirements. Similarly, it asks you to establish a supplier
relationship management process, to manage the relationship you
have with suppliers, and to monitor and measure their performance.

Section 8 Service Resolution asks you to establish procedures
to handle service incidents, to address service requests, and to
identify and resolve service problems. More specifically, it asks you
to clarify how service incidents and requests should be recorded,
prioritized, classified, reported, updated, escalated, and resolved.
And it asks you to define how service problems should be
investigated, analyzed, and resolved.

Section 9 Service Control asks you to establish a configuration
management process, a change management process, and a release
and deployment management process. More specifically, it asks you
to prepare a procedure to manage configuration items and to develop
a configuration management database. And it asks you to formulate
a change management policy and to prepare procedures to manage
change. And finally, it asks you to develop a release and deployment
policy, to prepare release and deployment plans, to test releases prior
to deployment, and to manage and control unsuccessful releases.