Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of practice for IT Service Management or to provide better IT service delivery. It describes all the processes, procedures, records, checklists which can be implemented and applied by organizations. The structured approach of ITIL can help in managing risk in a business or organization. As well it strengthens customer relationship and keeping the customer at their satisfactory limit.
There are individual ITIL Certifications available globally to proof your understanding, gain credits and working skill on ITIL process. The range of certification comes such as ITIL Foundation, ITIL Intermediate, ITIL Expert and ITIL Master.
The ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management is designed to certify the candidate upon his/ her understandings on ITIL terminology, basic concepts, practices on service management, service lifecycle.
Before going to learn the basics about ITIL, let me take you to understand some important terms which are essential to know.
Process: A process is a structured set of activities designed to accomplish a defined objective. These Processes are measurable, that provide results to customers or stakeholders, are continual and iterative and are always originating from a particular event.
Process Owner: Process Owner is someone who is responsible for the result of output of the process and they manage the process models.
Function: Functions can make use of one or more processes, activities.
Service: A Service is nothing but delivering some value to customer.
Demand: Need and use of service is known as demand.
Service provider: Someone who provides service to its customers. The service provider can provide service by hiring external third party.
Customer: Organization or individual who receives a service offerings.
Service Management: Service Management is a set of capacity to deliver the service to the customers.
Service Life Cycle: The ITIL is based on the Service life cycle which is to describe the processes of how services are to be initiated and maintained.
Service Portfolio: A Service portfolio is something that describes all the services of the service provider in terms of business and value.
Service catalogue: A part of service portfolio which includes the list of services, capacity and other offerings of the service provider that is visible to customer. It can be shown on website or can be documented (We know it as business leaflets). This Service Catalogue can be Business or Technical.
Service Level Agreement: Service Level Agreement or SLA is an agreement mutually agreed between service provider and customer having their scope, goal and objectives defined.
Now come to the ITIL processes.
The ITIL process basically focuses on service lifecycle. The service lifecycle consists of five phases as mentioned below.
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operation
- Continual Service improvement
Now here have a look in to the phases of service lifecycle on little details for a clear understanding.
Service Strategy:
The primary objective of Service Strategy is to help service providers to develop the ability to think and act in a strategic manner or market driven approach. It is important to align business in to services. So planning for business capability is essential. Processes come under strategy are Financial Management, Service Portfolio Management, demand management, Business relationship management, Strategy management.
There are four “P”s that guide the service strategy effectively i.e. Perspective, Position, Plan and Pattern.
Service Design:
During the service designing phase, a product or service is being developed including it’s architecture, processes, policy and documents, business requirements. The processes come under designing phase are such as Service Catalogue Management, Service Level Management, Capacity Management, Availability Management, Information security management, Supplier management and IT service continuity management.
There are four fundamental “P” s in Service Design such as people, products, processes.
Service Transition:
Then here comes service Transition phase, where the product or service goes planning or designing from scratch to new (live) or modified or changed from old to new.
The objective is to the new or changed service meets the expectations of the business. In this phase a transition strategy needs to be defined first. Then all the related processes needs to be reviewed and the plan for transition can be coordinated. Then the transition is supported for successful rollout.
There should be guidelines and procedures defined and implemented for service transition. Implement all changes through change management or within service transition process. Test the changes prior to release and deploy.
The processes and functions come under transition phase are such as Transition Planning & Support, Change Management, Configuration Management, Release & Deployment Management, Service testing, Service evaluation, Knowledge Management.
We will discuss each ahead in later posts.
Service Operation:
The Service Operation is fulfilling the effectiveness of the service offerings to ensure value for the customer and service provider. It emphasizes on the overall coordination and execution of activities that enable the ongoing service operation.
Generally during service operation phase many issues arises, complains raised, requests came and risks identified and incidents happen.
The processes come under operation phase are such as Event Management, Incident Management, Request Management, Problem Management, Access Management, Monitoring and Control, IT Operation Management, Servicedesk Management.
Continual Service Improvement:
The primary objective of this phase is to measure and analyze service level achievements by comparing them to the requirements in the Service Level Agreement (SLA).
It helps service providers to identify their gaps and to bring improvements in all phases of the service lifecycle. It aims to operate more cost effective IT services/ services without sacrificing customer satisfaction.
There is CSI improvement process and service reporting process to work in continual service improvement phase.
The CSI improvement process describes how to measure and report service improvement. The process is closely aligned to PDCA model (ITSM).
The 7 step measurement for Service Improvement is mentioned below;
- What should you measure
- What Can you measure
- Measure all the gathered data
- Process data
- Analyze data
- Present and use information
- Implement corrective action
Further we can go to other ITSM part where many things will be covered including the PDCA model.
If you have further question, feel free to share it.
-DR
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