An-Najah Staff

Palestine is directly affected by global trends of technological advances and revolution of information technology. As a result, the concept of IT-based services becomes clear in several service sectors like banking, stock exchange, telecommunications, and internet services. This research is an ambitious initiative that addresses the problems of Palestinians IT service delivery with the goal for more organized and streamlined IT service delivery. This research aims at organizing, and governing Palestinian IT service management by building a framework that is based on ITIL international framework. The framework was built with the principles of keeping it simplified, cost effective, and the most important thing is that framework fits Palestinian IT organizations. To understand and analyze the problems of Palestinian IT services delivery, the researcher adopted mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) approach so that focus group was used to understand the problem qualitatively, and based on findings; a survey was conducted to pull the opinion of IT community quantitatively. The researcher reverts back to qualitative approach and conducted several semi-structured interviews with IT seniors to validate findings of the survey. Based on analyses of mixed method approach and literature review, the researcher addressed the major problems of IT service delivery here in Palestine. It was obvious that no clear alignment between business strategy and IT service strategy for IT organizations, at the same time, no clear end-to-end service delivery process, unclear requirements, weakness of testing methodology, unclear phases for product or service development, and requirements collection methodology should be more efficient and effective. Results of focus group, survey, and semi-structured interviews are almost aligned which indicate that the addressed problems almost exist. To treat the problems of Palestinian IT organizations service delivery that clarified throughout this research, the researcher based on literature review and data analysis findings has built Palestinian IT Service Delivery Framework (PITSDF) that has taken into consideration current problems of IT service delivery in Palestine. The framework is based on well known international framework; ITIL. PITSDF framework aims to provide Palestinian IT organizations with a simplified IT service delivery framework that is cost effective and easy implement and at the same time fits Palestinian IT organizations needs in term of providing systematic process follow for IT service delivery throughout service lifecycle. PITSDF is consisted of five key service areas; these are service strategy, design, transition, operation, and finally continual service improvements. At the end, this research has opened the door for other initiatives and endeavors to pursue in developing and improving IT service delivery in Palestine.