Foreword of the Thematic Track: Quality in IT Service Management

Abstract

ERVICE quality is an abstract and elusive construct because of the nature of services – their intangibility, heterogeneity, and inseparability of consumption and production. The growth of IT services in terms of processes, frameworks and standards has been immense. ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, CoBIT and CMMI-SVC all address service needs. However, this shift to services in IT has not been accompanied by increased understanding of the concepts of quality and of the measurement of quality.