Reuse-Mechanisms for Mass Customizing IT-Service Engagements

Divergent requirements of customers limit the potential of information technology (IT) service providers to achieveeconomies of scale through the standardization of service engagements. Continuous change requests in ongoing IT-servicerelationships complicate matters even more. Mass customization strategies have successfully addressed similar challenges inindustrial sectors by reusing, i.e. composing and adapting standardized modules.Transforming this strategy to IT-service management, we present a three-layer approach of reuse-based IT-servicecustomization in order to increase both effectiveness and efficiency at the stages of initial service specification, customizationof offerings, and continuous adjustment of ongoing service engagements. This is proposed to be achieved by adopting wellestablishedreuse-mechanisms of reference information modeling. The approach has been developed and prototyped in closecooperation with IT-organizations.