ITIL Overview

ITIL Overview

By Faisal

ITIL Definition


•  ITIL ≡ “Information Technology Infrastructure Library”

– Books that describe best practices for IT Service Management

– Published by the UK government

•  Think of it as an ‘instruction manual’ for effective IT Service

– You can take the parts of it that you need

•  Framework of “suggestions” and suggested processes for managing IT services

•  Customer focused

– Focus on providing the value to customers

•  Provides approaches/models/etc.

– E.g. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)

•  Validated across many other organizations

•  Non-prescriptive (can use parts)–”ITIL-lite”

ITIL - Wikipedia

•  “The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business…..ITIL describes procedures, tasks and checklists that are not organization- specific, used by an organization ….” (Wikipedia)

•  Customer expectations have increased

•  To work better individually and together

•  Some things we are doing already, but with varying approaches

– Defining of processes, across IT groups

– Defining of roles

– Tracking requests, managing asset inventory

•  Improve Customer Service

– Check with customers to ensure needs are being met

– Ensure value provided

– Co-operation between Helpdesks

– Be proactive

– Examine existing processes, define, document

– Look at roles and ownership


•  Ensure accountability

•  Ensure communications

– Between IT staff and clients

– Between IT staff in different locations

•  Opportunity to do things better

•  Change management

– Maintaining systems, services

Related Goals

•  Collaboration between IT support groups

– Knowledge base

– Knowledge sharing

– Request tracking

•  Consistent user experience

•  Cost savings (bulk purchases, cooperation,
etc.)

•  Accountability, Service Quality

ITIL Lifecycle

Lifecycle of a service, from ‘cradle’ to ‘grave’

Stages (each stage includes
multiple processes):

• Service strategy
Service gets approved

• Service transition
Service is tested

• Service design
Service is designed

• Service operation
Coordinate and carry out activities and processes required to deliver the service and manage them at agreed levels

• Continual Service Improvement (CSI)
Continually align and re-align
IT services to changing needs

ITIL Highlights

• Lifecycle, Stages and Processes, CSI

• Service Desk (Help desk) functions

• Roles, Ownership

• Measuring/Metrics

• Asset Management

• SLAs, Customers and Users

• Change Management

• Knowledge Management

• Communication

 

Lifecycle Stages and Processes

• Implement processes that make the most sense or are the most useful for an organization

• Allows reassessment of

– how things are done

– if current processes are meeting client/business needs

 

Why Define Processes?

• Documented, available, processes: 

– IT Staff

• Better understanding (IT staff) of how something is done

• Fewer mistakes

• Useful for new employees or when a staff member is away

• Can manage expectations easier, when processes are predictable

– IT Clients

• Better understanding (clients) of how to get something done (how to request a service/work)

– Better service-things are done the same way every time (regardless of who performs them)

– Coordinated work across the organization