Services Operations Management

AY2025/2026 Semester 1

Services power your everyday life-from enjoying a meal at a restaurant, riding a bus to catch your morning class, paying bills via your banking app, to texting friends via Telegram. These moments rely on a hidden web of processes to meet your expectations. For the service providers, whether their services meet or exceed customer expectations will ultimately determine their success or failure. So, how do we achieve success? We will learn that through the following two main goals of this course. (1) Understand the Operations Management (OM) Principles You will discover how OM principles transform service delivery - making it better, faster, and more reliable, all at a lower cost. While applicable across all service domains, we will use IT services, exemplified by the practice of DevOps, as a critical context to demonstrate OM's relevance and effectiveness in addressing challenges in this fast-moving field. (2) Provide Practical Exposure to IT Development-Operations Environment For students unfamiliar with IT development environments, this course offers an accessible introduction to their fundamental operations, using DevOps as a practical example to illuminate common challenges and processes. This will offer valuable perspective for those considering a career in this field. This course will emphasize the conceptual OM principles, with minimal focus on mathematical modeling and no coverage of technical software implementation.