A Comparison of Service Design Processes in Relevant International ITSM Models and Standards

International IT Service Management models (CMMI-SVC, MOF-4, and ITUP) and de facto or de jure standards (ITIL v3, ISO 20000-4) include a Service Design process as part of their mandatory set of processes. Nevertheless such availability of processes, their used nomenclature, their phase-activity structure, and their granularity level used for their descriptions, are nonstandardized. Additionally, there are few if any -comparative studies in Service Design processes. Consequently, ITSM academics are faced with a useful but disparate and disperse literature, and ITSM professionals lack of practical insights regarding comparative characteristics of such Service Design processes. In this research, we address such real and academic problematic, and develop a conceptual comparative study of Service Design processes of five relevant ITSM models and standards. Thus, we report a substantial description of each one, and report an initial comparative scheme based in the criteria of clarity, completeness and balance for assessing an overall value of each model or standard. Our findings suggest that ITSM models (MOF-4, ITUP and CMMI-SV) provide more informational value than ITSM standards (ITIL v3, ISO 20000-4). We conclude with the need to elaborate an integrative Service Design process which contains the minimal set of expected phases, activities, artifacts and roles using a common nomenclature.