Introduction to ITIL

What ITIL is
• Contents of this module:

– What ITIL is
– ITIL history
– Contents of ITIL books
– Popularity and benefits of ITIL
ITIL: de facto standard for service management
built on industry “best practice”

• What is ITIL?
 ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library
 A set of books that describe best practices for IT infrastructure management
 An internationally-recognized set of best practices in the public domain
– Provides guidance, but not a step-by-step methodology
 A holistic approach to IT infrastructure management
 ITIL by its widespread use became a de facto standard
• The aims in developing the IT Infrastructure Library are
 To facilitate the quality management of IT services, and in doing so increase the
efficiency with which the corporate objectives and business requirements are met
 To improve efficiency, increase effectiveness, and reduce risks
 To provide codes of practice in support of total quality
• Benefits of implementing ITIL
 Enhanced customer satisfaction, as it is clear what service providers know and deliver
 Formalize the use of procedures so that they are more reliable to follow
 Improved quality of service – more reliable business support
 Better motivated staff through better management of expectations and responsibilities
What ITIL is
Main characteristics of ITIL are: IT services are business-oriented, and
provision of quality customer service

•Other Characteristics of ITIL

• Service and customer focused
• Helicopter view of processes and activities
• Provides a common language. This makes education very important to provide this
common language to all people in the process.
• Independent of organizational structures, architectures or technologies

•IT management is all about the efficient and effective use of the four Ps: people,
processes, products (tools and technology), and partners (suppliers, vendors, and
outsourcing organizations).

People

Processes Products

Partners
What ITIL is
Originally created by the UK’s Central Computer and
Telecommunications Agency (CCTA)

• Origin and History of ITIL

– Originated from UK government in late 1980s (CCTA Central Computer and

Telecommunications Agency
– First publications appeared in 1989
– Further developed by incorporating public and private sector best practice (IBM, HP,
Microsoft, and so on)
– Consolidated in 1999 into ITIL Version 2. Two books to improve consistency and focus
on service management were published – Service Support and Service Delivery
– These two core books were supplemented by new books that cover implementation
planning, security management, infrastructure management, application management,
and the business perspective
– 2001: the CCTA is incorporated within the Office of Government Commerce (OGC). ITIL
is a registered mark of OGC.

– ITIL has subsequently been used as the basis for the development of a British Standard
for Service Management.
What ITIL is
The BSI roadmap to make ITIL a standard for service management

• British Standards Institution (BSI)

– 1998 - Code of Practice [PD0005]

– 2000 - Self-assessment Workbook [PD0015]
- Specification [BS15000:2000]
– 2001 - Early adopters  Feedback
– 2002 - Rewrite as Part 1 & 2
- Rewrite PD0015/PD0005 W hat to
Standard achieve
– 2003 - Formal certification scheme B S15000 Specification

– 2006 - ISO Standard Code of Practice

Guidance
PD0015

M anagem ent
PD0005 overview

Process
OG C IT IL
definitions
questionnaire

In-house processes & D eployed

procedures solution
What ITIL is
ITIL is a library of books that aim to describe best practices for IT
infrastructure management

Content of ITIL
“Currently ITIL consists in a set of books,
which document and place existing
methods and activities in a structured
context."

ITIL as a Guidance
"ITIL does not cast in stone every action
you should do on a day to day basis
because that is something that will differ
from organization to organization. Instead
it focuses on best practice that can be
utilized in different ways according to
need."
What ITIL is
Service management focuses on the tactical and operational processes
of service support and service delivery and their relationships, including
security management (separate ITIL book)

Capacity
Management
Availability Service Delivery - IT Service
Management Provide quality, cost- Continuity
effective IT Services

Service Level Financial

Management Management

Release Configuration
Management Management

Service Support - Provide

Change stability and flexibility for IT
Incident
Management service provision
Management
Problem
Security
Management
Management
 What ITIL is
The ITIL books describe best practices in IT management, with a
special focus on service management

ITIL – Planning to Implement Service Management

Technology
Business

Service Management

ICT
The Business
Infrastructure
Perspective
Management
Service Delivery
Service Support

Security
Management

Application Management
 What ITIL is
ITIL processes in service support represent many of the reactive
processes within IT operations (operational)

•Service Desk
•Central point of contact between users and the IT service organization.

•Incident Management
•Restore normal service operations as quickly as possible.

•Problem Management
•Prevent and minimize the adverse effect on the business of errors in the IT Infrastructure.

•Configuration Management
•Provide a logical model of the IT infrastructure by identifying, controlling, maintaining, and verifying the
versions of all configuration items.

•Change Management
•Ensure standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient, prompt, and authorized handling of
all changes in the IT infrastructure.

•Release Management
•Ensure that all technical and non-technical aspects of a release are dealt with in a coordinated
approach.
 What ITIL is
Service Delivery focuses on what service the business requires in order
to provide adequate support to the business users (tactical)

•Service Level Management

•Maintain and improve IT service quality through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, reporting, and reviewing IT
service achievements.

•Financial Management for IT Services

•Provide cost-effective stewardship of IT assets and resources used in providing IT services.

•Capacity Management
•Ensure that capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are provided in a timely and cost-
effective manner.

•Availability Management
•Optimize the capability of the IT infrastructure and supporting organization to deliver a cost-effective and sustained
level of availability to satisfy business objectives.

•IT Service Continuity Management

•Ensure that the required IT technical and service facilities can be recovered within the time scales required by
Business Continuity Management.

•Security Management
•Manage a defined level of security on information and IT services.
 Delivering Services,
Perception & Communication
 Delivering Services

• Nothing is more central to an organization's

effectiveness than its ability to transmit accurate,
relevant, and understandable information among its
members.

• All the advances of organizations - economy of

scale, financial, and technical resources, diverse
talents, and contracts, are of no practical value if
the organization's members are unaware of what
other members require of them and why.
• With ITIL Service Delivery, users, customers and service
providers can properly define the content, role and
responsibilities of each party so that they can set
expectations of the speed, quality and availability of the
service.

• ITIL Service Delivery will work upon and improve on

existing IT infrastructure for continuous improvement of
service.

• It is custom made to specifically meet the needs of

businesses.

• ITIL Service Delivery clearly illustrates a responsible

corporate behavior in the use of the IT infrastructure in
order to maximize profits and reduce unnecessary
expenses.
 Interdependent Technologies & Unplanned Downtime

• Today, technologies are massively interdependent and

businesses can no longer function without the aide of
interdependent technologies.

• As technologies become increasingly dependent,

communication disconnections between technology silos
leads to increasing amounts of unplanned downtime.

• The challenge then becomes how to keep the deep technical

expertise found in silos, while minimizing the communication
disconnection that increasingly causes unplanned downtime.
• For instance, Microsoft Exchange 2000 is dependent
upon Windows 2000 Domain services.

• Messaging, provided by the Exchange application, is the

service that end-users care about and that customers
purchase.

• Domain services, however, are services that very few

end-users ever recognize as being a service, yet they
are critical to the messaging services upon which end-
users depend.

• Other services depend upon domain services as well,

which means that domain services support multiple IT
customers.
• Communication exists for two main purposes:

• to impart information
• to meet needs

• Imparting information is a simple form of communication and only

requires the transmission of data.

• To meet needs, both the giver and receiver of information must

speak the same language in order for the data to be successfully
communicated.

• However, if an organization has need to satisfy customers then

that organization must understand the language of its customers
and learn to communicate effectively in that language.
• If we are not speaking the same language of our
customers or if we do not understand the source of our
customer's need because of our communication deficit,
then we cannot service the customer and will lose
revenue.

• Imagine trying to conduct a sales call on a new customer

when you each speak a different language and no
interpreter is available; it seems an impossible task.

• The essence of effective communication is identifying the

customer's needs and primary language in order to meet
those needs and provide a valued service to that
customer.
• The primary communication change, speaking in terms
of services instead of technologies, is relatively easy to
introduce and has significant effects on the way IT
operates and in the way business interacts with IT.

• Some of the key communication elements are:

• IT provides "services" to the business.
• Services are defined in technology agnostic business
terms.
• Services are discussed in terms of features, quality, and
costs.
• Communications outside of IT utilize either
customer or end-user terminology.

• Communications outside of IT focus on

the needs and concerns of either
customers or end-users.

• Communications internal to IT focus on

recognition that IT exists primarily to
provide IT services to the business.
 "Perception is reality."
• It all depends on how we look at things and not on how
they are in themselves

• IT service management provides concrete operational

activities and tactics for managing perception of two
crucial groups, end-users and customers.

• More importantly, it makes a case for why IT should care

more about how it presents itself to the business.
•
• However, the trend is beginning to change as business
leaders become more technologically savvy and as
technology becomes more commoditized.

• Business is beginning to demand that IT conform to more

traditional ways of operation.
Manage to Process & Deliver
Quality
 Manage to Process
• If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what
you're doing.

• Process is how business operates. Businesses have processes for building

products, for taking orders, for serving customers, and for each and every
set of activities they perform.

• Processes also ensure consistent delivery of products or services. Process

controls provide consistent parameters for operation and a method for
assuring stakeholders that the organization will produce acceptable results.

• Process is defined as a series of related activities aimed at achieving a set

of objectives in a measurable, usually repeatable manner.

• It defines information inputs and outputs; consumes resources; and is

subjected to management controls over time, cost, and quality.
 Manage to Process ( Contd )
• IT customers and end-users deserve the same level of consistency
and low cost from the services IT provides.

• Process is the mechanism that delivers consistency of service at

low cost.

• When a business or industry is newly formed, heroic efforts are

required by individuals and groups to get the business/industry up
and running, and business owners generally recognize that they
cannot sustain these efforts over time.

• Organizational disciplines must be used to ensure repetitive

activities are completed quickly, cost effectively, and consistently.
 Manage to Process ( Contd )
• IT is a maturing discipline shifting from heroic effort to organizational
discipline. The business is beginning to question the justifications for
reliance on a hero model.

• As a result, IT managers are beginning to appreciate the value of

managing to process and are actively pursuing process based
management skills.
•
• Businesses increase profits by creating competitive advantage. IT
managers have three primary resources from which they can create
competitive advantage people, process, and technology.

• IT managers already do everything in their power to hire the best

people and deploy the best technologies. They compete in an open
market for existing talent and are constrained by competitive
realities in how effectively they can attract and retain employees.
 Manage to Process ( Contd )
• In the rush to keep up with the rapidly moving technology curve,
most IT organizations have invested very few resources developing
and managing the business processes that support delivery of
technology services.

• As a result, organizations are over spending on people and

technology to meet the service levels demanded by the business
and living in a continuous reactive fire-fighting state.

• Additionally, process improvements become unique to organizations

and are not easily duplicated by competitors.

• Even when competitors attempt to duplicate successful processes,

they are hampered by incomplete information and the fact that
process improvement is cumulative over time.
 Manage to Process ( Contd )
• A common trap for IT managers is the belief, as demonstrated by their actions,
that software can substitute for process.

• Software applications are critical components in modern business processes, and

most businesses could not compete without software applications that automate
routine business activities.

• However, because software automates many of the process activities, it becomes

very easy to think that simply installing the right software application will solve all
the problems. This trap compounds or shifts the underlying problems.

• Poorly designed processes end up producing sub-standard outputs faster and

more consistently thus magnifying problems in other processes as those outputs
become inputs.

• Problems that were previously fixed by well-meaning employees now become too
numerous to fix by the heroic method and often cause significant negative
impacts; the source of which goes unrecognized.
 Deliver Quality
• Give them quality. That's the best kind of advertising.

• Dr. Deming was able to demonstrate with very simple physical experiments
that systems naturally reach levels of stability (equilibrium), where the
system is producing the maximum level of quality that the system is capable
of producing.

• These experiments show that when a system has reached stability, any
attempts to improve quality within the system always results in increased
variability of quality.

• He proved, statistically and experimentally, that the only way to improve

quality once a system reaches stability is to change the system.

• He created a quality initiative, which proposes that workers tend to produce

the maximum quality allowed by the system within which they work.
Workers are naturally constrained by the system and rarely have the
authority to change it. The authority to change the system rests in the hands
of managers. Therefore, the managers hold responsibility for the quality
output of the system.
 Deliver Quality ( Contd )
• He proposed a system of continuous improvement by which managers with
input from workers could improve output quality over time. He developed a
very simple PDCA cycle to help companies accomplish this.
• Plan - Design or revise business process components to improve results.
• Do - Implement the plan and measure its performance.
• Check - Assess the measurements and report results to decision makers.
• Act - Decide on changes needed to improve the process.
 Deliver Quality ( Contd )
• Today there are a number of well-known quality initiatives that come from
this philosophy.

• You may recognize names such as TQM (Total Quality Management),

EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management), or Six Sigma.

• The Japanese have even coined the phrase Kaizen for Dr. Deming's
continuous improvement philosophy:

• Kaizen - the philosophy of continual improvement; that every process can

and should be continually evaluated and improved in terms of time required,
resources used, resultant quality, and other aspects relevant to the process.
When applied to the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement
involving everyone - managers and workers alike.

• Kaizen is not limited to manufacturing systems only. It also means

continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working
life.
 Deliver Quality ( Contd )
• One of the most impressive demonstrations of the value of this
philosophy is the success of a Japanese company that was little
known in the early 1970s in the west.

• Toyota was third worldwide in automobile production behind

General Motors and Ford.

• Today it has surpassed General Motors as the largest producer of

automobiles in the world. In 2002,

• Just as Japanese companies have adapted and adopted Dr.

Deming's recommendations to fit their cultural requirements, IT
needs to adapt and adopt his recommendations to fit IT
requirements.