What is ITIL? Framework, Process, Best Practices

Popular IT services covered by ITIL are Cloud services, backup, network security, Data processing and storage, managed print services, IT consulting, Help desk support, IOT etc.

The systematic and structured approach of ITIL framework helps an organization in managing risk, establishing cost-effective practices, strengthening customer relations. All these eventually result in building a stable IT environment for your business.

In this ITIL tutorial, you will learn:

• What is ITIL?
• Why ITIL is required?
• History of ITIL
• Important Terminologies and Definitions used in ITIL
• Features of ITIL
• What ITIL is not?
• Important ITIL stages
• Service Strategy:
• Service Design:
• Service Transitions:
• Service Operations
• Continual Service Improvement:
• ITIL v2. Vs. ITIL v3
• Advantages of ITIL
• Application of ITIL

Why ITIL is required?

Here are some important reasons for using the ITIL method in business.

• Improving project delivery success.
• Managing constant business and IT change.
• Offering maximum value to customers.
• Enhancing resources and capabilities.
• Provide services that are useful and reliable.
• Planning processes with specific goals in mind.
• Clearly defines roles for each task.
• Deliver value for customers through services
• Integrate business and service strategies.
• Monitor, measure and optimize service provider performance.
• It helps to control IT investment and budget.
• Change the organizational culture.
• Improve the relationship with customers.
• Service management best practices.
• Better management of services and integration.
• Business services IT Functions.
• IT and business strategic planning.
• Aligning and Integrating IT and business goals.
• Obtaining and retaining the right resources and skillsets.
• Measuring IT organization effectiveness.
• Developing business and IT relationships and partnerships.

History of ITIL

Here, are important landmarks from the history of ITIL:

• ITIL was first published in 1990
• It was re-published on 1995
• ITIL was introduced to North America in 1997
• In 2002, V2 process-based book introduced
• In 2005, Work for version 3 begun
• In 2007, version 3 with 5 books ISO 20000 was launched.
• In 2011, upgrade version of V3 was released.
• In 2019, ITIL v4 was released

Important Terminologies and Definitions used in ITIL

• Roles: are defined as collections of particular responsibilities and privileges. It may be held by an individual or team.
• Service Owner: The entity which is accountable for the overall design, performance, integration, and improvement of a single service.
• Process Owner: Responsible for the overall design, performance, integration, improvement, and management of a single process.
• Product Manager: Accountable for development, performance, and quality check and the improvement of a group of related services.
• Service Manager: Responsible for the development, performance, and improvement of all services in the environment.
• Services: A means of delivering value to customers without the need to specify costs and risks.
• Access : The level and scope of the functionality of a service or data that the user is allowed to use.
• Capabilities: It is specialized skills of an organization apply to resources in order to create value.
• Functions: Self-contained subsets of an organization which is intended to accomplish specific tasks.
• Processes: Structured group of activities designed to achieve a specific objective.
• Resources: They are raw materials that contribute to a service, such as money, equipment, time, and staff.

Features of ITIL

Here are some important features of ITIL

• One language/terminology.
• ITIL is a means to deliver a consistent quality.
• Focus on IT. However, it is just not only suitable for IT.
• Existing activities and how to optimize them.
• Related process and tasks (roles).

What ITIL is not?

• ITIL is not a complete blueprint, but just bricks and material from which you can build your own building depending upon your business needs.
• It is not a quick fix, but a set of processes that you need to build into the mind-set of your employees, and that must be continually updated and improved.
• It is not only another method of control but a way of setting up your organization so that it works towards the goals without controlling management.

Important ITIL stages

Service Strategy:

Service Strategy Operations ensure that services such as fulfilling user requests, working on service failures, fixing problems and carrying out routine operational tasks efficiently and effectively.

Here, are important services comes under this stage:

Finance management:

The Financial Management services provides a means of understanding and controlling costs and opportunities associated with services.

Service Portfolio Management:

Service Portfolio Management helps you to organizes the process by which services are identified, evaluated, selected, and chartered.

Demand Management:

The Demand Management is concerned with understanding and influencing customer demand. It also involves User Profiles, which characterize various groups of users for a given service.

Service Design:

This stage ensures agreed service are delivered when, where, and at the defined cost.

Here, are important services comes under this stage:

Service Level Management:

Service Level Management is deals with securing and managing agreements between customers and the service provider irrespective of the level of performance and reliability associated with specific services.

Here, are important services comes under this stage:

Availability Management:

Availability Management service is concerned with the agreed-upon availability requirements as established in Service Level Agreements (SLA).

Capacity Management:

Capacity Management is focused with ensuring that at all times, the cost-effective capacity exists that meets or exceeds the demands of the business as established in Service Level Agreements

IT Service Continuity Management:

IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) process ensures that the service provider provides the minimum agreed-upon levels of service. It uses techniques like Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and Management of Risk (MOR).

Service Catalog Management:

The Service Catalog is a subset which contains services available to customers and users.

Service Transitions:

The goal of the Service Transition process is to build and deploy IT services. It also make sure that changes to services and Service Management processes are conducted in a coordinated way.

Change Management:

Change management activity controls the lifecycle of all the changes with minimum disruption to IT services.

Service Asset and Configuration Management:

The goal of this service is to maintain information about configuration items needed to deliver an IT service, including their relationships.

Release and Deployment Management:

This process helps you to plan, schedule, and control the movement of releases to conduct testing to live environments. It also ensures that the integrity of the live environment is protected and the correct components are released.

Transition Planning and Support:

This ITIL process mainly focuses on planning and coordinating the use of resources to deploy a major release within the expected cost, time and quality.

Service Validation and Testing:

This process helps to deployed releases and the resulting services able to meet expectations of the customer.

Evaluation:

Evaluation process helps you to assess major changes, like the introduction of a new service or a significant change to an existing service

Knowledge Management:

The objective of knowledge management service is to gather, analyze, store, and share knowledge and information within an organization. It helps improving efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge.

Service Operations

This ITIL stage focuses on meeting end-users' expectations while balancing costs and discovering any potential problems.

Service Desk:

It is the main point of contact between users and the service provider. A service desk handles communication with the users and also manages incidents and service requests.

Incident Management:

The objective of Incident Management is to manage the lifecycle of all incidents. It also makes sure that services are returning back to the IT service to users as fast as possible.

Problem Management:

The objective of problem management is to manage the lifecycle of all problems. It helps IT organization to prevent incidents from happening and minimize the impact of incidents which cannot be prevented.

Event Management:

The object of event management is to make sure configuration items and services are continually monitored and to filter and categorize events to determine the specific actions.

Request Fulfilment:

The objective of request management is to fulfil service requests. In many cases, they are minor changes (for example, requests for changing a password).

Technical Management:

This function offers technical expertise and support for the management of the IT infrastructure.

Application Management:

Application Management is a service that is responsible for managing applications throughout their lifecycle.

IT Service Operations:

The goal is to maintain information about configuration items needed to deliver an IT service operations, including their relationships.

Continual Service Improvement:

It makes sure that IT services can recover and continue from a service incident. It helps to conduct business simper analysis to prioritize business recovery.

ITIL v2. Vs. ITIL v3

Here are the major differences between ITIL v2. And ITIL v3.

Advantages of ITIL

Here, are pros/benefits of using ITIL services

• Increase customer satisfaction
• Improve service availability
• Financial management
• Allows you to improve the decision-making process
• Helps you to control infrastructure services
• Helps to create a clear structure of an organization

Application of ITIL

Here, are important areas where ITIL plays an effective

• IT and business strategic planning
• Implementing continuous improvement
• Obtaining and retaining the right resources and skillsets
• Reducing total cost and overall cost of ownership
• Demonstrating the business value to IT
• Helps you to measure IT organization effectiveness and efficiency

Summary:

• The acronym/abbreviation of Information Technology Infrastructure Library is ITIL.
• ITIL framework helps in improving project delivery success and managing constant business and IT change.
• ITIL was first published in 1990 and after modification it was republished in 1995
• ITIL is a means to deliver a consistent quality.
• Remember that ITIL is not a complete blueprint, but just bricks and material from which you can build your own building, depending upon your business needs.
• Important ITIL stages are 1) Services Strategy 2) Service Design 3) Service Transition 3) Service Operations 4) Continual Service Improvement
• ITIL v2 is centred around the product, process, and people whereas ITIL v3 is centred around a product, process, people, and partners.
• ITIL services allows you to improve the decision-making process
• ITIL services are used for implementing continuous improvement in the organisation