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An Introduction to ITIL

Added by Papergrl

Written By: Mitchell Rowton

What quality of IT service do you provide? To much of the IT community Service Management and Continuous Process Improvement are foreign terms. Most problems are cause by unscheduled or unplanned changes that we make. The level of service we provide from day to day varies based on “production problems” and we say things like “document OR implement.”

If businesses were ran in the same ad-hoc way that IT sections were ran… there would be a lot more bankrupt businesses. So how is it that IT gets away with this? Simple, IT is still new, it hasn’t really matured the way other sections have. Most Senior Managers think that we do a good job by working all night to fix a problem (not knowing that the problem was caused by an uncoordinated change the day before.)

IT Service is like a puppy. It runs, jumps, rolls over, stops, and starts but rarely does what it is supposed to do. Enter ITIL (pronounced “Idle”)

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It is a framework used for IT process management. It started in the late 1980’s by the UK’s Office of Government and Commerce (OGC). It was originally a set of 40 different books, but has recently been streamlined into 7 different sections. Each section describes a set of Service Management Processes. ITIL is an industry, technology, and vendor independent de facto standard.

ITIL outlines how to manage the IT Infrastructure in order to better guarantee the service levels between IT organizations and customers. It is a process oriented method of guaranteed services to customers.

We aren’t going to cover each of the 7 sections in detail. But this is a good outline of each.

1. Service Support

Ensures appropriate services are in place to support business functions. Service Support includes Configuration Management, Service Desk, Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, and Release Management.

2. Service Delivery

Ensures business functions receive adequate services to accomplish goals. Service Delivery includes Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Services Continuity Management, IT Services Financial Management, and Service Level Management.

3. Security Management

Ensures Security Management requirements are implemented as outlined in the Service Level Agreement. Security Management is the only process included in this section.

4. Application Management

Ensuring the appropriate software development lifecycle is followed. Application Management includes Software Lifecycle Support and Testing of IT Services.

5. ICT Infrastructure Management

This section covers Network Service Management, Operations Management, Management of Local Processors, Computer Installation and Acceptance, and Systems Management.

6. Business Perspective

This section includes Business Continuity Management, Partnerships and Outsourcing, Surviving Change and transformation of business practices through change, Understanding and Improving.

7. Planning to Implement Service Management

Explains how to implement ITIL and what benefits organizations may gain from this. This section covers Continuous Process Improvement.

It is important to point out that ITIL does not directly relate to cost savings. ITIL primarily increases the quality and efficiency of process and services provided to customers. This is likely to lead to cost savings or increased revenues in the long run but don’t expect to implement ITIL and cut your budget 30% at the same time.

Sooner or later every large organization will start to formalize their IT process management and chances are ITIL will be the preferred structure to use.

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