FAQ

USM addresses critical challenges across organizations:

• Ambiguity around 'service', 'process', and operational structures.

• Lack of standardized management systems.

• Complexity in real-world service scenarios.

For C-level, it ensures strategic alignment and efficiency. Operators gain clear guidelines for daily operations, while mid-level managers oversee streamlined routines.

USM defines 'service', 'process', and other operational terms universally, fostering clarity and alignment. It empowers organizations to deliver consistent, customer-focused services, enhancing governance and operational effectiveness.

USM is the unified solution needed to simplify and optimize service management across all sectors.

Not a difference but rather a relationship: USM offers a systematic approach to realizing an ESM strategy. It answers the question “But how?” by defining the concept and the structure of a link for sustainable supply chains and networks.

USM stands out by offering:

• A stable foundation for enterprise service management, adaptable to any standard or organizational structure.

• Principles-based guidance for unprecedented challenges, ensuring systematic solutions.

• Simplicity with just eight templates for all customer interactions, reducing complexity and costs.

USM fosters sustainability and efficiency, unlike fragmented frameworks. It empowers users to navigate complexities with confidence, providing a cost-effective, community-driven approach to service management.

It’s not USM versus/against ITIL or COBIT, but USM with ITIL, COBIT, FitSM - or any other source of best practice guidance. USM serves as the fundament, the management system that is not described in a practice-based framework like ITIL or one of its alternatives. These best practice frameworks serve a rich source of inspiration about the how: which practices are available out there and which of have proven to be effective? If you consider your organization to be a building, these best practices describe the floors. But we've learned for centuries that you can’t just pile up the floors without having a foundation, a fundament below it.

If you want learn in detail how USM and ITIL relate, you can read “How to make a success of ITIL® 4 with USM”. In short: ITIL is about practices, USM is about principles. The same applies to COBIT, FitSM, or any of the alternatives out there: great additional guidance, but they lack the information on the foundation that can turn the guidance into a success. That's what you need USM for...

USM offers:

• Flexible integration with any standard or organizational model.

• Principle-driven guidance for tackling new challenges systematically.

• Simplified structure with just eight templates for all customer interactions.

USM reduces complexity and costs while fostering community-driven knowledge sharing, ensuring sustainable service management in a rapidly changing digital world.

Ask yourself: “What is the benefit of having a fundament below the floors of my building?”. Your answer will contain terms like sustainability, efficiency, etc.

But in practice, of course, it is completely illogical not to lay a foundation under your building. And yet we neglect to do so in service management. With USM you can fix that.

USM delivers a streamlined service management system for entire enterprises, accommodating diverse practice-based frameworks and organizational structures. It provides:

• A unified glossary with consistent terms.

• Versatile building blocks for any service organization.

• Guiding principles for sustainable implementation.

**By defining 'service' practically, USM enhances consistency across supply chains and strengthens customer relationships. It standardizes process, procedure, and work instruction, enabling tailored routines across industries. Supported by efficient tools, USM boosts communication, customer satisfaction, and compliance, freeing professionals to innovate and excel in their expertise.

USM specifies an integral but non-redundant management system. As redundancy is the archenemy of efficiency, USM supports the maximum efficient process model for a maximum efficient management system.   

Furthermore, USM focuses on standardization and on separation of duties, to improve control, and both help to reduce complexity.  

USM is basically free knowledge. The training and coaching market is also supported with free products, to keep the cost of training and coaching as low as possible.

USM benefits everyone involved:

• C-level executives gain strategic clarity and governance alignment.

• Mid-level managers streamline operations and translate strategy into action.

• Operators enjoy simplified routines and efficient tooling.

• Citizens, patients, and customers experience clearer expectations and improved service delivery.

USM unifies service management across sectors, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction. It empowers educators to teach comprehensive service perspectives, ensuring universal applicability and value across all organizations.

USM is for enterprises of any size.... Smaller organizations can use USM with very limited practice guidance, mid to large size enterprises will benefit from the universal nature of the USM management system.

USM is for all stakeholders as well... Executive management gets consistent and structured data fed into governance, operators and users get consistent routines that can be automated and since middle management sits in the middle, they have a management system that improves their ability to manage resources.

As we move towards enterprise service management there is a critical need for a generic standard service management system. This 'systems thinking' based approach is not optional to be in control of today's complex service supply chains (which exist in virtually every enterprise, all providers, and any type of service).  

The USM (Unified Service Management) method was developed in 2015 and first published in 2016, representing the latest evolution in service management approaches that began in the early 1990s.

USM is governed by the SURVUZ Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Foundation's mission is to develop and disseminate knowledge on service management, providing the new thinking of the USM method and its resources freely, and certifying associated products and training.

The concept of ‘service’ has evolved from traditional after-sales support to encompass ‘everything-as-a-service’ today.

Originally focused on maintenance contracts, it now includes ongoing access and use of technology-driven solutions.

This shift reflects a broader trend towards continuous value creation for customers, where services themselves become the primary offering of providers. U

SM embraces this evolution, emphasizing structured management to ensure seamless delivery and customer satisfaction in today’s service-driven economy.

Defining what constitutes a ‘service’ is crucial because it clarifies expectations and responsibilities across organizations, departments, and suppliers. It ensures everyone understands what is being offered, received, and agreed upon, minimizing misunderstandings and maximizing efficiency.

However, it’s challenging because the term ‘service’ can be ambiguous and used inconsistently.

USM addresses this by providing a structured approach to define and manage services, fostering clarity and alignment in service delivery across diverse environments.

USM defines a service as a supported facility that creates continuous value for the customer's business.

This facility, whether tangible or intangible, is what the customer uses to achieve their desired outcomes.

Additionally, the service includes the support provided by the service provider to ensure the facility functions effectively.

This definition ensures clarity and agreement between the customer and provider, crucial for managing and delivering consistent value in a dynamic business environment. 

USM specifies a service by defining it as a supported facility, combining goods and actions to facilitate customer needs.

This approach ensures clarity on what the service delivers (functionality) and how well it performs (functioning), all from the customer's perspective.

USM emphasizes measuring both tangible and intangible aspects to optimize service quality and value creation, making it universally applicable across diverse industries and customer contexts.

Documenting services in USM involves structuring them into service trees, defining them clearly in service catalogs, request catalogs, and service agreements (SA's).

Each perspective—customer, user, provider—has specific documentation needs met through these catalogs and agreements.

Version control via a MIR (CMDB) ensures clarity, repeatability, and measurability, fostering continuous improvement and service excellence.

USM's approach ensures alignment across all agreements using a non-redundant process model, enhancing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

In USM, processes outline the logical sequence of actions that support the delivery and maintenance of services.

These processes, part of the USM process model, focus on customer-facing interactions - wishes, service requests, incidents, and changes - and internal improvement initiatives (risks).

They ensure efficient delivery, updates, recovery, and continuous improvement of services without burdening users with internal complexities.

USM's unified approach integrates these processes into clear, measurable workflows, enhancing service quality and customer satisfaction.

In modern Service Dominant economy, a service is the product of the service provider.

In the Goods Dominant era, a product was something tangible you bought and owned, like a phone or a car. In modern times, we understand that this 'product' requires ongoing support to be of value to the buyer. It has turned into a service: USM specifies both the traditional 'product' and the required support as part of the concept of 'service': a 'supported facility' to create value.

This perspective shifts us from old ideas of products versus services to understanding everything as continuously supported resources. It's about ensuring what you buy continues to serve you well, aligning with today's service-focused economy. 

To define a service offering in USM: 

• Agree on what constitutes the service (facility and support). 

• Define the outcomes and value the service will deliver. 

• Consider the entire delivery chain and dependencies. 

• Use USM's structured approach to ensure clarity and consistency. 

• Specify service details in terms of functionality and performance expectations. 

USM simplifies this process, ensuring mutual understanding and alignment across service agreements, operational level agreements (OLAs), and underpinning contracts (UCs). 

First of all: if you find anything that really does the same as USM, please let us know. We can always learn and improve. But we consider USM to be new thinking, based on complexity reduction and systems thinking.

Making the world aware of this is done by means of knowledge exchange: the SURVUZ Foundation delivers a portal, een wiki, regular introduction sessions, articles, etc., and we manage LinkedIN groups with some 250.000 experts that we can send a message now and then. We trust that word-of-mouth will contribute to the spreading of the new thin king of USM. Also, the partners of SURVUZ will approach their market sections with their own messages. And we invest in higher public education: we support business schools and universities with free online learning environment.

Once you understand USM, you will find that you will able to deliver much more value to your customer/employer in shorter time, and with a more sustainable effect. You will soon find out that your customer/employer will be very happy and reward you for this value.

Certified USM Coaches will be able to measure the performance of a service organization with the assessment tools in their toolkit. We’re working on a self-assessment that will provide an entry into the idea of assessing your performance.
Beware: if you would assess your organization, you should be very much aware of the reference model (USM) that you’re assessing against. As most organizations abuse the term ‘process’ and have an inconsistent use of the term ‘service’, you should first understand the structure of the management system that you’re assessing against.

USM will do much more than that. On page one, each of those standards refers to the required management system, and then describes a long list or requirements to fulfil. It doesn't say how to set up such a management system, only what you should do with it for that specific standard. The only information ISO offers on management systems is in ISO 9001, which again only describes the requirements for management systems. In that perspective, ISO is a dead-end alley. USM is the missing piece here: USM defines a service management architecture and then specifies how to set up a standard management system. Once you've deployed USM, you'll then see you have already complied with 60-70% of all requirements in each of these ISO standards. The rest of the requirements can then be realized with the USM management system, for a consistent result. It will not only save you huge effort and a lot of money, it will also be enough to do this only once, so you won't have to be afraid of the auditor coming by every one or two years.

First of all, you will need to find a definition that everyone can understand and that is applicable to each and every situation and to each line of business. This is the USM definition of a service: “A service is a supported facility”.

If you translate that to the business of these people, they will soon understand that it actually comes down to two things:

1. making a facility available in such a way that it adds value to the user
2. supporting these users during the time they have (agreed) access to that facility

That facility will vary with the line of business and with the organization, but the support is always exactly the same.

All these modes are practices, defined by the People and the Technology component of the management system. The universal USM management system supports all practices with the same service management principles, the same service management architecture, and the same service management processes. USM provides the patterns for all these practices.

A Service Management System (SMS) in USM is a structured approach to oversee and deliver services effectively. It integrates Systems Thinking to manage service delivery across processes, people, and technology. 

Unlike traditional management approaches, USM provides a clear, practical framework for creating and implementing an SMS, ensuring consistent and measurable service excellence. 

It's about aligning service delivery with customer expectations while adapting to changes in a dynamic environment, fostering operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

To specify a Service Management System (SMS) in USM, start by defining its scope, structure, and components aligned with Systems Thinking principles. USM simplifies this by focusing on essential components: People, Processes, and Technology. It's not a one-time setup but a method to sustain and adapt over time, ensuring service excellence amidst change. USM provides a clear path to integrate these components systematically, fostering operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

To specify a Service Management System (SMS) in USM, start by defining its scope, structure, and components aligned with Systems Thinking principles. USM simplifies this by focusing on essential components: People, Processes, and Technology. It's not a one-time setup but a method to sustain and adapt over time, ensuring service excellence amidst change. USM provides a clear path to integrate these components systematically, fostering operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

A standardized Service Management System (like USM) creates a shared “language” and architecture for services so teams and partners interoperate smoothly without losing local autonomy.

Benefits: faster, more consistent delivery; better knowledge reuse; clearer business alignment; higher customer satisfaction; and lower operational risk.

It simplifies enterprise service management and helps organizations execute reliably in a fast-changing world. Built as a living standard, it evolves with you—practical, scalable, and energizing. 

Architecture is the vocabulary and the set of essential building blocks and rules (principles) that guide how you create consistent, sustainable solutions. Think of it as a meta-language or instruction manual that lets teams design compatible components without forcing specific designs.

In USM, this meta-architecture empowers architects to enable designers, delivering predictable, scalable service outcomes.

The result: smoother coordination, less rework, and a clearer path for your organization to evolve with confidence. 

A Service Management Architecture (SMA) is the fundamental organization of a service management system: its vocabulary, building blocks, their relationships, and the guiding principles.

SMA makes services the starting point—business goals first, technology second—so teams and partners interoperate, reuse components, and decide consistently. It’s a meta-architecture (the framework USM defines) that lets you layer practices like ITIL without locking designs.

The result: faster delivery, less waste, clearer accountability—and a scalable way to evolve. 

A well-designed Service Management Architecture gives you consistent, sustainable solutions and seamless cooperation across teams and supply chains.

Benefits: predictable delivery and reuse of components; faster improvements with lower cost and lead time; a common “GPS” that aligns business intent before technology; easier integration of frameworks (ITIL, etc.); and reduced risk and rework.

With USM’s SMA, organizations move and improve together—clearer accountability, better customer value, and real interoperability. 

Service Management Architecture (SMA) sits at the top: it defines the system that creates value through services, so other architectures—technology, data, enterprise—plug into it.

SMA provides the common rules, components and interfaces so those specialized architectures align to business goals, interoperate, and avoid siloed designs.

Unlike layered or perspective models, SMA is a coordinating system that connects people, processes and tools and enables reliable execution.

In short: SMA makes all other architectures work together—predictably and purposefully. 

USM’s SMA is shown by the Customer–Provider Interaction Model: core building blocks are customer, provider, and service.

The provider uses a three-layer architecture: Process (a universal logical process model), People (roles like manager, coordinator, operator, plus principles such as separation of duties), and Technology (workflow system and a managed-infrastructure register/CMDB).

Routines — what people do with processes and tools — integrate the layers to deliver supported facilities.

Simple, standards-friendly, and built to make teams and partners interoperate reliably. 

Example: the Dutch government adopted USM’s Customer–Provider Interaction Model (NORA) to shift from a tech-layered view to a system-and-service perspective. They standardised routines using USM workflow patterns so agencies interoperate, reuse building blocks, and speed up citizen journeys.

Outcome for the nexdt decade: interoperable public services, major efficiency gains at national scale — while keeping existing technology. Practical, scalable, and transformative. 

Processes are the repeatable recipes that turn intent into reliable outcomes. They deliver efficiency, consistency and scalability by removing redundancy and giving a clear “who does what, when.” That makes services predictable, monitorable and improvable—so issues are caught early and fixed before customers are impacted.

In USM, well-designed process architecture lets teams reuse routines, speed delivery, cut costs, and continuously evolve.

Bottom line: processes make great ideas repeatable, measurable, and delightful for customers. 

Confusion arose because “process” has been used at many levels: people call any stream of activity a process, then add WHO (procedures), HOW (work instructions), tools and practices - - and then still call the result 'process'..

Different frameworks, vendors and operational decomposition multiplied the noise. USM clears this up by defining process as WHAT happens and separating roles, routines and technology into a simple meta-architecture that empowers teams.

Result: less ambiguity, easier reuse, and faster improvement. 

USM defines a process strictly: it must meet 10 clear requirements—most importantly, it describes what must happen (not who does it or how) and must serve a customer-relevant purpose. The moment you add roles, tools, or conditions, you've moved into practice territory.

This sharp distinction, rooted in systems thinking, simplifies service management and avoids confusion.

It’s one of the ways USM brings clarity and structure—making it easier to manage services with consistency and less complexity. 

USM defines just five universal processes—each focused on what must happen, not who does it or how. Four are triggered by customer interactions: Agree, Change, Deliver, and Recover.

The fifth, Improve, is driven internally to enhance service performance.

These processes are simple, generic, and apply to any service provider.

That’s the power of USM: it brings clarity and consistency by boiling service management down to its core, making it easier to master and scale—no matter your industry. 

USM’s process model is non-redundant—it covers everything a service provider needs to do without unnecessary duplication. By focusing on only the essential tasks, USM ensures all interactions require collaboration between processes, creating repeatable, streamlined workflows.

The result? Only 8 standardized workflow patterns are needed to manage any service.

This simplicity and universality make the USM model incredibly powerful, offering a clear, efficient, and adaptable way to manage services at any scale. 

USM starts with the core architecture—the building blocks and principles of a universal management system. This allows it to create consistent solutions for any service provider, in any industry.

Traditional approaches, on the other hand, start with practices and try to generalize them, often without understanding the underlying structure.

USM's systems-based approach eliminates complexity and redundancy, offering a simple, scalable process framework. It focuses on the engine of the system, making it adaptable, efficient, and ready to integrate with other practices—like LEAN—for maximum impact. 

USM's process architecture simplifies service management by reducing complexity and enabling consistent, efficient routines. It allows you to standardize operations across teams, cut costs, and improve outcomes with fewer resources.

You can still integrate practice-based guidance from any popular framework, if needed, without sacrificing the simplicity and flexibility of USM. It’s a sustainable approach that delivers faster value and supports clearer management—making your service strategy more effective and less costly. 

USM’s architecture is the key to unlocking efficiency and scalability—no matter the framework you use.

Adopting USM is simple and gradual. Start by mapping your existing routines into USM’s standardized workflows—no need for a full overhaul. You can begin with a pilot project (like a "service management lab") to test the approach in a low-risk way.

Over time, refine your procedures and work instructions one by one, improving efficiency and sustainability step by step.

The key is having an open mind and a willingness to adapt. USM’s process model is ready to go—your journey towards simplicity and clarity begins the moment you start.

USM’s approach to workflow is highly structured and efficient. It defines workflows as logical, non-redundant tracks through its process model, focusing on what really matters—the actions that impact the customer’s live environment. With only 8 standardized workflows, each is designed to eliminate waste and ensure smooth coordination across the organization.

Unlike traditional models that often lead to complexity and overlaps, USM ensures all processes are integrated, eliminating inefficiencies and enabling clearer, more effective management.

It’s the ultimate tool for streamlining work while ensuring control and consistency. 

USM defines 8 workflow patterns that cover all essential service management activities. These patterns handle any customer request—whether it's a wish, change, incident, or service request—by logically guiding the process from the initial request to the final completion.

For example, a request to start or update a service agreement will flow from agreement to change to deployment, then to closure. Each pattern ensures consistency, efficiency, and clarity, simplifying service management while offering the flexibility to adapt at lower levels. 

With just 8 patterns, USM makes managing services both simple and scalable. 

USM's 8 workflow templates handle all interactions by categorizing them into 4 main types: wish, change request, incident, and service request.

For example, if a user loses their password, it’s categorized as a service request, not an incident, because it's a user error, not a system failure. If a change isn’t covered by the service agreement, it’s treated as a change request once the agreement is updated.

Each interaction follows a clear, logical path, ensuring efficient handling of all scenarios, whether reactive or proactive, with minimal complexity. 

USM brings clarity and consistency to every customer interaction.

A USM workflow is a universal, standardized sequence of activities that defines what needs to happen, ensuring consistency across all service providers. It’s broken into three levels: process (what needs to happen), procedure (who does it), and work instruction (how it's done).

The workflow templates are simple yet flexible, allowing organizations to adapt them to their specific needs while maintaining a unified framework.

This makes it easy for teams to follow a clear, efficient path, ensuring minimal complexity and maximum effectiveness in delivering services. 

USM workflows transform how you manage service activities. 

In USM, workflows represent the sequence of activities required to fulfill a service request. These workflows align directly with value streams, which map out all actions needed to deliver the customer’s request.

While value streams reflect the provider's perspective, the customer journey focuses on the customer's experience, highlighting only the touchpoints and activities they interact with. USM’s structured workflows give you clarity on both perspectives, helping identify inefficiencies and optimize service delivery across the entire process.

It’s a powerful way to streamline operations and enhance customer satisfaction. 

In USM, capabilities represent what a system or organization is able to do, focusing on the combination of people, processes, and technology.

While capabilities provide a performance or output perspective, they don’t add new resources—they simply help optimize and analyze existing workflows. Essentially, they clarify what’s needed to execute activities effectively.

In the context of service agreements, a provider's capabilities define their ability to meet service commitments, ensuring the right resources are in place to deliver the promised service.

It’s about making sure everything aligns to create smooth, efficient service delivery. 

The main benefit of using USM is its ability to create a universal, efficient workflow structure that applies to any team or organization. By using just 8 core workflow templates, you can streamline processes, reduce complexity, and enhance interoperability.

USM also allows you to integrate any framework or practice, simplifying management across diverse operations.

In multi-vendor or service integration environments, USM ensures a consistent, customer-focused approach to service delivery, boosting both efficiency and customer satisfaction.

It’s a game changer for optimizing workflows and driving long-term success. 

To start with USM, begin by learning the method: read the USM book, explore the USMwiki, or take the two-day Foundation training.

Once you understand the principles, begin with a small-scale deployment—set up a USM lab in a limited area of your organization. Test the principles, workflows, and terminology in this controlled environment, making adjustments as needed.

If successful, gradually expand to other areas, focusing on step-by-step optimization.

Engaging a USM Professional or coach can help accelerate the process and provide ongoing support. This incremental approach ensures sustainable, effective change. 

Systems Thinking is a holistic approach to understanding and managing organizations. It views an organization as a system of interconnected components—people, processes, and technology—that must work together to deliver value. It emphasizes that improving one part of the system in isolation isn’t enough; the entire system must be optimized.

This approach ensures that every component contributes to the whole, creating sustainable improvements.

USM uses Systems Thinking to simplify complex interactions, focusing on these three key resources to improve service delivery and organizational performance efficiently. 

Systems Thinking in a service organization focuses on optimizing the three core components: People, Processes, and Technology (PPT). These components are interdependent, and improving one without the others won’t lead to sustainable results.

By viewing the organization as a cohesive system, USM ensures that these elements work together seamlessly to deliver consistent value. It standardizes routines to prevent silos and encourages continuous feedback to improve performance.

In practice, each component is optimized to work harmoniously, helping the organization efficiently meet customer needs and adapt to changing demands. 

USM ensures control through standardization and separation of duties. It uses a non-redundant process model and standardized workflows to maintain consistency across teams.

Clear role separation is embedded, distinguishing between specifying and realizing responsibilities. For example, process managers define the process, while operators or coordinators execute it. This minimizes conflicts and overlaps, ensuring accountability.

Additionally, USM supports domain separation, enabling tailored procedures and work instructions while maintaining a unified framework.

This approach fosters clarity, reduces inefficiencies, and enhances overall service delivery. 

USM structures management through a flexible, role-based system using three core profiles: manager, coordinator, and operator. These profiles define specific responsibilities, authorities, and tasks (TAR), ensuring clear role separation and effective service delivery.

The manager specifies processes and sets objectives, while the coordinator ensures smooth execution, and the operator performs the tasks.

This structure is adaptable, allowing for various organizational types, from hierarchical to flat structures.

USM’s focus on standardized, non-redundant processes enhances control and ensures consistency across different service domains and vendor environments. 

USM offers two approaches: process-based steering and team-based steering, each with its pros and cons. 

• Process-based steering focuses on end-to-end outcomes, standardization, and efficiency. It breaks silos and increases scalability but requires clear process ownership and flexibility from teams. 

• Team-based steering provides clear hierarchy, accountability, and stronger team bonding but can lead to siloed thinking and reduced agility. 

Choosing between them depends on factors like culture, size, and goals. Often, a hybrid approach works best, combining the structure of teams with the flow-oriented focus of processes for optimal performance. 

To ensure accountability and prevent conflicts of interest, USM recommends clearly separating certain profiles: 

• Process Coordinators and Line Coordinators should be distinct to avoid conflicts where a line coordinator oversees their own team. 

• Reactive Process Coordinators (like Incident Coordinators) should not be combined with Proactive Process Coordinators (like Risk Coordinators), as urgent issues will always take precedence over long-term planning. 

• Governance (setting vision/strategy) and Management (executing tasks) should also remain separate to preserve clear roles and avoid blurring authority lines. 

Clear role separation in these areas ensures smooth, conflict-free operations and accountability. 

USM seamlessly integrates with modern management techniques like Agile, DevOps, and Lean. Its non-redundant processes support rapid improvement cycles and eliminate waste, making it ideal for environments focused on continuous delivery and efficiency.

Additionally, USM’s flexible framework fits any organizational structure—whether it's shared service centers, Agile teams, or DevOps—ensuring interoperability and standardized service delivery across all domains.

USM adapts to your chosen strategy, whether hierarchical, matrix, or Agile, making it the perfect companion for any modern management approach. 

USM guides the selection and implementation of service management tools by emphasizing integration and coordination.

It recommends tools that can support 8 workflow patterns and register managed infrastructure (CMDB), ensuring seamless workflow coordination.

Key criteria include a single database for full integration and a seat-based sales strategy to avoid redundancies.

This approach ensures efficiency and eliminates silos. Tooling is seen as an enabler of USM's streamlined processes, not just automation, with recommended providers like Clientele, OTRS, and Xurrent, all of which align with USM’s integrated, non-redundant philosophy. 

In a service organization, governance ensures that service delivery aligns with the company's vision, strategy, and goals. It provides direction by setting the mission, values, and principles that guide the organization.

Governance focuses on steering, monitoring, and evaluating, while management implements and ensures day-to-day operations support these strategic goals.

The governance framework provides clarity, ensuring resources are used effectively to meet customer needs.

With USM, this governance is well-supported by a structured system, where all components work in harmony to consistently deliver value, making the organization agile, efficient, and aligned with its core objectives. 

For the simple reason that USM is complementary with the popular frameworks and standards: it covers their blind spot. All frameworks and standards are based on practices, while USM is based on principles. USM provides the service management system that can realize all these practices, and even any combination of these practices. USM itself does not provide all the guidance of all these frameworks, and that’s why we still need them – to get inspired by the options we have. But USM then assures that the selected practices are always managed in a systematic way.

The delusion of the day often leads to abandoning the principles chosen for service delivery. This "firefighting" is a characteristic of a reactive organization. Reactive organizations are primarily guided by "pragmatism", which is then the cover for the lack of control.

It is quite difficult to become a proactive organization, and get in control of your services. To stimulate proactivity, you can implement USM and take the following measures:

• Invest in employees: make sure all employees have a clear picture of how the work is organized. Provide sufficient training. Establish a training requirement for all employee profiles.
• Apply separation of duties to task domains, and within domains and teams, so that employees can focus on their task.
• Unlock agreed-upon routines in a simple way. Make sure everyone knows who is responsible for what. Make sure that everyone has that information at their fingertips with one click, e.g. via a BPM tool or an internal wiki. Hang posters with the USM process model and USM workflows on the wall.
• Support the work with a simple and intuitively designed tool. Furnish all structured workflows with the 8 USM templates so that everyone knows how to "read" each workflow.
• Standardize as many routines as possible with the 8 USM workflow templates.
• Specify services in a standardized way as supported facilities so that everyone talks about those services in the same way.
• Make clear and unambiguous agreements with customers and suppliers, using that standardized service definition.
• Continuously produce better reports based on those service agreements, feeding into service discussions with customers and suppliers.
• Continuously and routinely inventory service bottlenecks and drive planned improvements.
• Involve all employees in the continuous improvement of practices. For this purpose, establish the USM Panel (par. 9.8 USM book).
• Actively involve management in steering for continuous improvement. Make sure that improvement is standard on the MT agenda.
• Demonstrate compliency with relevant standards, based on the USM management system.

The lack of explicit principles is the main cause of many problems with regard to the practices with which organizations have set up their services. By looking only at practices, for decades now, and setting up working methods on the basis of those practices instead of on the basis of principles, a building with many floors is actually created without a clear foundation. It goes without saying what happens to that building when a storm comes along ("storm" in the form of a reorganization, tool replacement, a new manager...). Thus, an organization that has followed practices only for the governance of service delivery is "a shaky building.

Organizations can develop their own principles by asking e.g. for each adopted practice, "what principle underlies this practice?". Section 2.1 of the USM book explains what practices and principles look like. Those who want to look at a set of service management principles right away can view a fleshed-out set of principles on the USM portal for reference. That set of principles need not be adopted all at once: each organization can select from that set the principles that the organization needs most.

Principles form the basis for the service management architecture and thus for the service management system of the organization. With every choice regarding the design of organization and routines, the organization must follow those principles, for a consistent and sustainable result. To achieve this, the organization must make its principles explicit, share them with every employee, and actively monitor compliance with them.

No – most services and most agreements are currently still expressed in terms of technology. Deploying USM means that you get the opportunity to upgrade your service definitions and your service agreements to a structured format. The big benefit of this is that you will now get a standardized format that can be used as a building block to decompose services – as in outsourcing – but also to combine sub-services to one integrated whole tat a customer can still relate to. USM offers you the opportunity to make the shift to services that are more meaningful to customers

USM is based on new thinking, so it takes time before it is accepted widely. Especially in a push market that is dominated by one flavor: ITIL. The offering of USM is based on the proposition that USM provides the fundament under your building, and that you can still use ITIL guidance for the decoration of your floors. And as we all know: a building without a fundament will be at risk of collapsing when a storm hits it. A sustainable future of your organization will require a solid solution for that fundament. Most organizations completely lack the awareness of this, and as a consequence they fail to be in control. They are constantly catching up with new developments, and the chaos and complexity only grows. USM offers a way out, but it will take some time before the traditional ITIL shops will learn to see the benefits of that.

Most ITSM tools can do the basics of service management: they can handle incidents and changes, some do a bit of service level management and problem management, and most of them have a CMDB. But most of these tools do not offer the integration of everything a service provider does, especially not at the operational level: the silos are still there.

This is mostly caused by the fragmented nature of most tools: they organize their functionality in modules, and these modules are not fully integrated - which means that the existing organizational silos are only reinforced by that tooling.

For an integrated service delivery, you will get the best results if you build on a tool that offers the maximum integrated functionality, based on the fully integrated USM management system. Several tools offer that functionality, but only a few support it actively. For the simple reason that the sales strategy of the supplier will suffer if you succeed in doing more, in a better way, with less modules….

Luckily, there are tools out there that do support the integrated approach of USM. The SURVUZ Foundation audits these products against the specs of USM. Currently three products have passed that test: the open source tool OTRS, and two service management tools: Clientele (in the US we know this as Epicor), and Xurrent (formerly 4me). You can achieve better results, make the work easier, and save a lot of money if you would use one of these products.

USM encourages tools that simplify service management. Unlike traditional approaches, USM favors integrated solutions with a single database and seat-based pricing. This approach avoids the pitfalls of complex, module-heavy toolsets. By focusing on efficiency and integration, USM aligns tools with organizational goals, ensuring cost-effective and sustainable service delivery.

No – USM only requires the organization to contribute as much as possible to control. USM does recommend using separation of duties as much as possible, because this contributes directly to control. 

In a nutshell: USM is the next step in the evolution of service management systems. With IPW, the ground was laid for USM thinking in the early 1990s. With ISM and FSM, a step in the right direction was taken ten years later. USM, however, has gone considerably further since 2015. The main differences are reflected in the positioning, content development, professionalization, integration into workflows, broader scope, wide acceptance due to the nonprofit nature of USM, price, deployment in education, and the international nature of USM.

These differences all impact the ease with which the USM method can be adopted across the full breadth of service organizations. USM's universal nature makes it ideally suited to a future in which there is a sweeping integration between various support domains (think ICT, Building Management, Medical Technology, Security, Human Resources, etc.) that will integrate into shared service centers, and the subsequent phase in which primary task domains will also use the methodology, within and across organizations.

USM is independent of the service provider's industry: the "U" of USM stands for unified, offering an integrated and universal approach. A water board, a ministry, a province, and a municipality are all service providers. For those service providers to function as one government, in an integrated manner, they therefore all need the same solution for the interoperability of all those government agencies. That is the concept of the link for which USM provides a simple solution.

Such a solution for national interoperability starts, of course, with the service delivery vision and the architecture for the practices by which that collaboration is achieved. It is therefore a powerful signal from the government that it bases its new vision on the knowledge of the USM method: USM provides the basis for the Service Delivery Concept of the Dutch Government Reference Architecture, the NORA.

There are many:

• It is a practice framework with 5 processes.
• Traditional perspective of process (versus ‘practice’ view).
• It applies only to smaller organizations.
• It has not been fully field-tested.

Most of these and other misconceptions are due to experienced practitioners taking a ‘Quick Look’ at USM and quickly making judgements before really understanding what it’s all about… re-enforced by the inherent bias of existing knowledge and vested interests in what’s making them money today. They really should ”seek first to understand, then to be understood” …. especially if they really are about continuous improvement…. Beware the nature of the beast!

USM’s greatest gifts are as follows:

1. a non-redundant, integral and integrated process model of 5 processes that has been field tested for almost a decade
2. a universal, unambiguous, and logically repeatable definition of a service
3. a carefully thought out set of principles and a method for applying them to any service provider for any service in any line of business
4. the specification of this in an enterprise service management architecture, enabling the development of sustainable service delivery solutions

USM begins with defining a clear 'Service' and customer focus, with structured agreements. It deploys incrementally, starting with workshops and training to embed principles and templates. Ambassadors lead initial use-cases to demonstrate value, gaining organizational buy-in. Key steps include:

• Defining services  in a standardized, structured way
• Implementing logical support workflows step-by-step, using the 8 USM workflow templates.
• Training ambassadors and internal coaches.

USM integrates into daily practices, fostering culture change supported by C-level sponsorship and management. Successful showcases drive internal motivation, ensuring sustainable deployment and organizational transformation.

This depends on context and what you consider to be ‘implemented’…

As USM is a method, it can be learned quickly. However, because conditions will always keep changing, improving will never come to an end: quality is never ‘done’.

The biggest challenges were overcoming entrenched practices in service management and navigating a market focused on complexity. Many experts were resistant to rethinking their approaches, and traditional tools prioritized features over simplicity.

Despite these hurdles, USM is gaining traction among forward-thinking consultants and tool providers who recognize its potential to simplify operations and enhance value creation for customers.

Thinking logically along the lines of a system is not something most of us have learned at school. And the traditional consultancy and tooling industry certainly hasn't contributed to that either – as it conflicts with their business model.

This makes it difficult for individuals to make the move to USM's simple logic. It's kind of peddling upstream.

If you're strong enough, you can manage, and find the hidden treasures at the end of the stream. But you'll have to spend some energy to re-think a lot of what you've learned in the past.   

Why would that be so? In fact, with far fewer processes and only 8 standard workflows, USM makes a strong case that it is simpler that many other approaches… It also does not preclude the use of other methods and practices. On the opposite: USM supports the application of any combination of best practice guidance from any framework , enabling a structured approach for maximum effectiveness and maximum efficiency.

Typical challenges associated with any transformative change effort… misunderstanding, fatigue, resistance, lack of clear scope, resource allocation, etc.

USM will move towards a community-driven open-source position, where knowledge sharing is core. A pure non-profit knowledge product. In no way to be compared with the road that was taken by ITIL or the other best-practice frameworks.  

USM will provide the link for endless service ecosystems. This may be applied on a nation-wide scale, as is already illustrated by the adoption of USM as the architectural base for public services in the Netherlands, by Dutch government (in the NORA).  

The community of USM professionals is growing, and they co-develop smart solutions for practical problems like cross-references with ISO standards, simplified templates for service agreements and service catalogs, and simplified tool configurations.