Published: April 25, 2008

Position of the Policy SMF Within the MOF IT Service Lifecycle

The MOF IT service lifecycle encompasses all of the activities and processes involved in managing an IT service: its conception, development, operation, maintenance, and—ultimately—its retirement. MOF organizes these activities and processes into Service Management Functions (SMFs), which are grouped together in lifecycle phases. Each SMF is anchored within a lifecycle phase and contains a unique set of goals and outcomes supporting the objectives of that phase. The SMFs can be used as stand-alone sets of processes, but it is when SMFs are used together that they are most effective in ensuring service delivery at the desired quality and risk levels.

The Policy SMF belongs to the Plan Phase of the MOF IT service lifecycle. The following figure shows the place of the Policy SMF within the Plan Phase, as well as the location of the Plan Phase within the IT service lifecycle.

Figure 1. Position of the Policy SMF within the IT service lifecycle

Before you use this SMF, you may want to read the following MOF 4.0 guidance to learn more about the MOF IT service life cycle and the Plan Phase:

• MOF Overview
• Plan Phase Overview

Why Use the Policy SMF?

This SMF should be useful for anyone with responsibility for IT policy, which ultimately means everyone in the IT organization. This is because policies are not only created and maintained, but they also need to be communicated, understood, and applied. This SMF provides sufficient context to understand the reasoning behind policies, the creation, validation and enforcement of policies, and how the policy management process communicates the policy and incorporates feedback about the policy. The purpose is to help the IT organization remain in compliance with directives. For the sake of clarity, these are the policies that address people and process; these are not machine-based control policies such as Group Policy Objects.

This SMF addresses how to:

• Determine areas requiring policy.
• Create policies.
• Validate policy.
• Publish policy.
• Enforce and evaluate policy.
• Review and maintain policy.