The Basics of ITIL

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of published books on implementing best practice in IT Service Management. It is currently in Version 3 which was implemented in 2007 by the Office of Government Commerce, which was a United Kingdom Government Department that is now part of the Efficiency and Reform Group in the Cabinet Office. 

Benefits

Adopting ITIL has a number of benefits that include

  • improved IT services
  • reduced costs
  • improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
  • improved productivity
  • improved use of skills and experience
  • improved delivery of third party service.

ITIL is a professional practice supported by an extensive body of knowledge, experience and skills. Contributions to ITIL come from both the public and private sector from all over the world.

Six Books

ITIL Processes and Functions V3

Version 3 of ITIL has six books 

  • Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle
  • Service Strategy
  • Service Design
  • Service Transition
  • Service Operations
  • Continual Service Improvement.

Service Lifecycle Approach

ITIL looks has a service lifecycle approach in version 3, and covers processes and functions at each phase of the lifecycle. Many of the processes will occur throughout the lifecycle, the book that the processes and functions end up in is simply designed to be the part of the lifecycle where that process or function is most prominent. For example Capacity is first and foremost a design process as you have to plan for capacity, but you will be monitoring capacity in IT Operations capacity is used up by either everyday use or by an unexpected event.

The service lifecycle is not a one way trip, you may start with a strategy and move through design, transition and into operations, but continual service improvement is a set of tools that means you should be forever improving what you do. Deming's Plan Do Check Act cycle is very much the way service management works, not surprising then you’ll find Deming mentioned in the book. ITIL Service Management has business value as its main objective, the key though is everything IT does should be measured in terms of business value. IT needs to measure and quantify what it is doing and to demonstrate the return of investment.

Qualifications Framework

ITIL has a qualifications framework and for most people, this is a three day foundation course which ends in a multi-choice examination. Many people I know did the version 2 ITIL foundation and appear to think therefore that ITIL is the ten processes that were covered there, well in all honesty most people only seem to recall incident, problem and change. The version 3 foundation covers the entire lifecycle and 26 processes, it gives a better grounding in what ITIL covers and anyone who has only completed the version 2 foundation should really think about refreshing their knowledge.  

There are also practitioner levels through either a capability or lifecycle path, and allow people in specialist areas to get greater knowledge in one area or a number of areas. The practitioner side covers the five ITIL books (excluding the introduction), you can go on a course dedicated to each book, so if you only want to focus on strategy you can do just that. However there are four capability courses focussed on the day to day execution of ITIL practices as follows;

By completing either the Service Lifecycle or the Service Capability papers, you can progress to the ITIL Expert level by completing a course on Managing across the Lifecycle. It is hard work to get there, takes many hours of training and review time, and it isn't cheap. A new Masters qualification is the equivalent of a post-graduate qualification and requires applying the knowledge gained at the expert level on a specific project in the workplace. 

Move to Customer Not Technology Focus

Many IT departments remain technology focused and adopting a service management framework can at least provide some pointers on where to start in getting to grips with building a service orientated relationship with the business. A good place to start is to get an independent assessment of how well you do each of the processes and functions today. It is not uncommon for an organisation going through an assessment for the first time to find they are immature in a lot of areas, and ok in a few more. An assessment allows a baseline and to focus on what areas the organisation might want to focus on. There are some typical ones like service catalogue, service level management or change management, but you can't buy service management off the shelf but you do need to know what business processes and services are, an how IT contributes those services. Initially that might be a list of hardware and applications, but it is thinking what the services are that moves IT from being a back room butler to a trusted advisor.