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What is ITIL®?
ITIL is the IT
Infrastructure Library and ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a
Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce. Developed in
the late 1980's by the CCTA (now the OGC), by the mid 1990's it had become
the world-wide de facto standard in service management. ITIL has
become so popular as it is a public domain framework
which is scaleable. Very large organisations,
very small organisations and everything in between have implemented ITIL
processes. ITIL focuses on best practice, and as such can be
adapted and adopted in different ways according to each individual organisations needs. So what is it?
ITIL (Information
Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of best practices standards for
Information Technology (IT) service management. The United Kingdom's
Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) created ITIL in
response to the growing dependence on Information Technology to meet business
needs and goals. ITIL provides businesses with a customizable framework of best
practices to achieve quality service and overcome difficulties associated
with the growth of IT systems. ITIL is organised
into sets of texts which are defined by related functions: service support,
service delivery, managerial, software support, computer operations, security
management, and environmental. In addition to texts, ITIL services and
products include training, qualifications, software tools, and user groups
such as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF),
all of which you can find details of on this website.
While owned by the CCTA since the mid-1980s, ITIL is currently maintained and
developed by the Office of Government
Commerce.
The Service Management
section of ITIL is made up of eleven different disciplines, split into two
sections, Service Support and Service Delivery:
Service
Support
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Configuration
Management
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Change Management
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Release Management
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Incident Management
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Problem Management
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Service DeskService Delivery
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Service Level
Management
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Capacity
Management
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Financial
Management for IT Services
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Availability
Management
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IT
Service Continuity ManagementConfiguration
Management
The object of Configuration
Management is to provide a logical model of the IT infrastructure by
identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the version of all
Configuration Items in existence. Configuration Management is used
to account for all IT assets, to provide accurate information to support
other Service Management processes, to provide a sound a base for Incident, Problem, Change and Release Management, to verify
records against infrastructure and to correct exceptions.
There are five
basic activities of Configuration Management:
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Planning - The Configuration
Management plan should cover the next three to six months in detail,
and the following twelve months in outline. It should be reviewed
at least twice a year and will include a strategy, policy, scope,
objectives, roles and responsibilities, the Configuration Management
processes, activities and procedures, the CMDB, relationships with
other processes and third parties, as well as tools and other resource
requirements.
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Identification - The selection, identification and labelling of all CIs.
This covers the recording of information about CI's, including
ownership, relationships, versions and unique identifiers. CIs should be recorded at a level of detail
justified by the business need - typically to the level of
"independent change".
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Control - This gives the assurance that only authorised and identifiable CIs
are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures
that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without the
appropriate controlling documentation e.g. approved RFC, updated
specification. All CIs will be under Change Management Control.
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Status Accounting - The reporting of all current and historical
data concerned with each CI throughout its life-cycle. It enables
changes to CIs and tracking of their records
through various statuses, e.g. ordered, received, under test, live,
under repair, withdrawn or for disposal.
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Verification
and Audit - This is a
series of reviews and audits that verifies the physical existence of CIs, and checks that they are correctly recorded in
the CMDB. It includes the process of verifying Release and
Configuration documentation before changes are made to the live environment.Change Management
The object of
Change Management is to ensure that standardised
methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of
all Changes, in order to minimise the impact
of any related Incidents upon service. Changes in the IT
infrastructure may arise reactively in response to Problems or
externally imposed requirements, e.g. legislative changes, or
proactively from seeking imposed efficiency and effectiveness or to
enable or reflect business initiatives, or from programmes, projects or
service improvement initiatives. Change Management can ensure standardised methods, processes and procedures are
used for all Changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all
Changes, and maintain the proper balance between the need for Change
and the potential detrimental impact of Changes.
Change Management
is responsible for controlling Change to all CIs
within the live environment. It is not responsible for change
within ongoing projects, which are controlled by the project change
process. However close liaison between development project
managers and the Change Manager is expected. Change Management
would typically comprise the raising and recording of changes,
assessing the impact, cost, benefit and risk of proposed Changes,
developing business justification and obtaining approval, managing and
co-ordinating Change implementation,
monitoring and reporting on implementation, reviewing and closing RFCs.
Release Management
The object of
Release Management is to take an holistic view
of a Change to an IT service and ensure that all aspects of a Release,
both technical and non-technical, are considered together.
Release
Management should be used for large or critical hardware roll-outs,
major software roll-outs and bundling or batching related sets of
changes. Release management co-ordinates the many service
providers and suppliers involved with a significant Release of
hardware, software and associated documentation across a distributed
environment.
Release
Managements is responsible for planning and overseeing the successful
roll-out of new and changed software and associated hardware and
documentation, liaison with Change Management to agree exact
content and roll-out plan for the Release, ensuring that all items
being rolled out or changed are secure and traceable via the CMDB and
managing Customers and Users expectations of Releases and roll-outs.
Incident Management
The object of
Incident Management is to restore normal service to operation as
quickly as possible with minimum disruption to the business, thus
ensuring that the best achievable levels of availability and service
are maintained.
Incident
Management should be used to ensure the best use of resources to
support the business, to develop and maintain meaningful records
relating to Incidents, and to devise and apply a consistent approach to
all Incidents reported.
Incident
Management is responsible for Incident detection and recording,
classification of all Incidents, and initial support, investigation and
diagnosis, resolution and recovery, incident closure, and incident
ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication.
Problem Management
The object of
Problem Management is to minimise the adverse
effect on the business of Incidents and Problems caused by errors in
the infrastructure, and to proactively prevent the occurrence of
Incidents, Problems and errors.
Problem
Management should be used to resolve Problems quickly and effectively,
to ensure resources are prioritised to resolve
Problems in the most appropriate order based on business needs, to
proactively identify and resolve Problems and Known Errors thus minimising Incident occurrences, to improve the
productivity of support staff, and to provide relevant management
information.
Problem
Management is responsible for Problem identification, recording,
classification, investigation and diagnosis. Problem Management
is also concerned with error identification, recording, assessment,
recording of resolution, closure, monitoring resolution progress,
assistance with the handling of major Incidents, proactive prevention
of problems through trend analysis, targeting support action and
providing information to the organisation, as
well as obtaining management information from Problem data and
completing major problem reviews.
Service Desk
The object of The
Service Desk is to act as the central point of contact between the User
and IT Service Management. To handle Incidents and requests, and
provide an interface for other Service Management activities such as Change, Problem, Configuration, Release, Service Level and IT service Continuity Management.
The Service Desk,
unlike the other ten disciplines (processes), is a function essential
to effective Service Management. More than just a Help Desk, it
is the principal operational interface between IT and their
Users. A good first impression by each of its Users is predicted
upon its performance and attitude. Often a stressful place for
staff to work, underestimating its importance, high profile and the
skills required to perform the duties well can severely hinder an organisations ability to deliver high quality IT
services.
Since the ITIL
re-write took place the change of name from Help Desk to Service Desk
demonstrates the broader role of front line support - with more organisations looking to radically increase the
percentage of calls closed at first point of contact.
The main reasons organisations are investing in Service desks now
are that they provide a single point of contact for Users, enables them
to deliver high quality support critical for achieving business goals,
helps to identify and lower the cost of ownership for IT services as a
whole, supports Changes across business, technology and process
boundaries, helps to aid User retention and satisfaction ad assists in
the identification of business opportunities.
Most of the
activities carried out by the Service Desk fall under the
responsibility of one of the IT Service Management processes. The
role and responsibilities of the Service Desk will depend upon
arrangements that the organisation has put in
place. Among the tasks commonly assigned to the Service Desk are
to receive and record all calls from Users, deal directly with simple
requests and complaints, provide initial assessment of all Incidents,
make first attempt at Incident resolution and/or refer to 2nd
line support, based on agreed service levels, monitor and escalate all
Incidents according to agreed service levels, keep users informed on
status and progress, produce management reports.
Service Level Management
The object of SLM
is to maintain and gradually improve business aligned IT service
quality, through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, reporting
and reviewing IT service achievements and through instigating actions
to eradicate unacceptable levels of service.
SLM is
responsible for ensuring that the service targets are documented and
agreed in SLAs and monitors and reviews the
actual service levels achieved against their SLA
targets. SLM should also be trying to proactively improve all
service levels within the imposed cost constraints. SLM is the
process that manages and improves agreed level of service between two
parties, the provider and the receiver of a service.
SLM is
responsible for negotiating and agreeing service requirements and
expected service characteristics with the Customer, measuring and
reporting of Service Levels actually being achieved against target,
resources required, cost of service
provision. SLM is also responsible for continuously improving
service levels in line with business processes, with a SIP, co-ordinating other Service Management and support
functions, including third party suppliers, reviewing SLAs to meet changed business needs or resolving
major service issues and producing, reviewing and maintaining the
Service Catalogue.
Capacity Management
The object of
Capacity Management is to understand the future business requirements
(the required service delivery), the organisation's
operation (the current service delivery), the IT infrastructure (the means of
service delivery), and ensure that all current and future capacity and
performance aspects of the business requirements are provided cost
effectively.
Capacity
Management is responsible for ensuring that IT processing and storage
capacity provision match the evolving demands of the business in a cost
effective and timely manner. The process includes monitoring the
performance and the throughput of the IT services and supporting IT
components, tuning activities to make efficient use of resources,
understanding the current demands for IT resources and deriving
forecasts for future requirements, influencing the demand for resource
in conjunction with other Service Management processes, and producing a
capacity plan predicting the IT resources needed to achieve agreed
service levels.
Capacity
Management is has three main areas of responsibility. First of
these is BCM, which is responsible for ensuring that the future
business requirements for IT services are considered , planned and
implemented in a timely fashion. These future requirements will
come from business plans outlining new services, improvements and
growth in existing services, development plans etc. This requires
knowledge of existing service levels and SLAs,
future service levels and SLRs, the Business
and Capacity plans, modelling techniques
(Analytical, Simulation, Trending and Baselining),
and application sizing methods.
The second main
area of responsibility is SCM, which focuses on managing the
performance of the IT services provided to the Customers, and is
responsible for monitoring and measuring services, as detailed in SLAs and collecting recording, analysing
and reporting on data. This requires knowledge of service levels
and SLAs, systems, networks, service
throughput and performance, monitoring, measurement, analysis, tuning
and demand management.
The third and
final main area of responsibility is RCM, which focuses on management
of the components of the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite
resources within the IT infrastructure are monitored and measured, and
collected data is recorded, analysed and
reported. This requires knowledge of the current technology and
its utilisation, future or alternative
technologies, and the resilience of systems and services.
Financial Management for
IT Services
The object of
Financial Management for IT Services is to provide cost effective
stewardship of the IT assets and the financial resources used in
providing IT services.
Financial
Management for IT Services is an integral part of Service
Management. It provides the essential management information to
ensure that services are run efficiently, economically and cost
effectively. An effective financial management system will assist
in the management and reduction of overall long term costs, identify
the actual cost of services and their provision, provide accurate and
vital financial information to assist in decision making, identify how
IT adds value to the customers business, enable the calculation of TCO
and ROI, make customers aware of what services actually cost (if
appropriate), support the recovery costs, from customer if appropriate,
in a fair and equitable manner, provide measurements of value for
money, and provide incentives to produce quality services aligned to
business needs, help influence customer behaviour
for example by providing incentives for using non-critical resources,
encourage more efficient use of resources, provide better cost
information and control of external contracts and suppliers, and to
assist in the assessment and management of changes.
Financial
Management for IT services is responsible for enabling the organisation to account fully for the spend on IT
services and to attribute these costs to the services delivered to the organisations Customers, assist management
decisions on IT investment by supporting detailed business cases for
Changes to the IT services, and to control and manage the overall IT
budget and enable the fair and equitable recovery of costs (by
charging) for the provision of IT services.
Availability Management
The object of
Availability Management is to optimise the
capability of the IT infrastructure and supporting organisation
to deliver a cost effective and sustained level of availability that
enables the business to satisfy it's
objectives.
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