ITIL – Good Practice Framework
ITIL is presented as “Best Practice” for IT Service Management which in turn is a proven “Good Practice” widely accepted and used in industry. Best Practice has a set of generic guidelines based on successful experiences of many organizations. These best practices are derived from Organizations past experience, Published Public standards, Industry Practices or researches. Service Management
The ITIL service lifecycle is based on ITIL’s core concept of “service management” and the related concepts “service” and “value”.
What is a Service?
- A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes the customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs or risks.
- Outcomes are possible from the performance of tasks and they are limited by a number of constraints. Sometimes customers seek outcomes but do not wish to have accountability or ownership of all the associated costs and risks.
- Services enhance performance and reduce the pressure of constraints. This increases the chances of the desired outcomes being realized.
- g. Delivery of Pizza, Data Storage, CloudServices
What is Service Management?
Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services. The Capabilities (like Capacity, Competency, confidence etc.) take form of functions and processes for managing services over a lifecycle. The act of transforming organization resources to valuable services is most important aspect of Service Management.
What is a Value?
Value is the core of the service concept. Value is defined by Customer. It is Affordable mix of features required by customer. The value definition or features required by customer changes over time. Value depends on the objects of business. How or how much business objectives are achieved.
Service contributes value only when its value is perceived to be higher than its cost.
Questions that need to be answered to understand the value of IT:
What services does IT provide?
What did the services achieve?
What is the cost of a particular service?
Value needs to be defined in terms of business outcomes, customer’s preferences and customer’s perception.
Value from the customer perception is influenced by:
service features;
Lessons or experiences from present or past
Peers – competitors
Position in the market.
Overview of the Service Lifecycle
ITIL V3 approaches service management from the lifecycle aspect of a service. The service lifecycle is an organizational model that provides insight into:
- The way service management is structured.
- The way the various lifecycle components are linked to each other.
- The impact that changes in one component will have on other components and on the entire lifecycle system.
Thus, ITIL V3 focuses on the service lifecycle, and the way service management components are linked. Processes and functions are also discussed in the lifecycle phases.
The service lifecycle consists of five phases. Each volume of the core ITIL books describes one of these phases. The related processes and functions are described in detail in the phase where they have the strongest association. The five phases are:
- Service Strategy – The phase of strategic planning of service management capabilities, and the alignment of service and business strategies. Processes and functions:
- Financial management
- Service portfolio management
- Demand management
- Business Relationship Management
- Strategy Management
- Service Design – The phase of designing and developing appropriate IT services, including architecture, processes, policy and documents; the design goal is to meet the current and future business requirements. Processes and functions:
- Service catalogue management
- Service level management
- Capacity management
- Availability management
- IT service continuity management
- Information security management
- Supplier management
- Design Coordination
- Service Transition – The phase of realizing the requirements from previous stages, and improving the capabilities for the transition of new and modified services to production. Processes and functions:
- Transition planning and support
- Change management
- Service asset and configuration management
- Release and deployment management
- Service validation and testing – Evaluation
- Knowledge management
- Service Operation – The phase of achieving effectiveness and efficiency in providing and supporting services in order to ensure value for the customer and the service provider. Processes and functions:
- Event management
- Incident management
- Request fulfillment
- Problem management
- Access management
- Application Management
- IT operations Management
- Service desk
- Continual Service Improvement – The phase of creating and maintaining the value for the customer by design improvement, and service introduction and operation. Functions and processes:
- The 7-step improvement process (CSI Improvement Process)
- Service reporting
Service Strategy is the axis of the service lifecycle that drives all other phases; it is the phase of policymaking and setting objectives. The Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation phases are guided by this Strategy; their continual theme is adjustment and change. The Continual Service Improvement phase stands for learning and improving, and embraces all other lifecycle phases. This phase initiates improvement programs and projects, and prioritizes them based on the strategic objectives of the organization.