ITIL

Overview of the ITIL 2 library

2008-10-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

The IT Infrastructure Library originated as a collection of books each covering a specific practice within IT Service Management. After the initial publication, the number of books quickly grew within ITIL v1 to over 30 volumes. In order to make ITIL more accessible (and affordable) to those wishing to explore it, one of the aims of ITIL v2 was to consolidate the publications into logical 'sets' that grouped related process guidelines into the different aspects of IT management, applications and services.

While the Service Management sets (Service Support and Service Delivery) are by far the most widely used, circulated and understood of ITIL publications, ITIL provides a more comprehensive set of practices as a whole. Proponents believe that using the broader library provides a comprehensive set of guidance to link the technical implementation, operations guidelines and requirements with the strategic management, operations management and financial management of a modern business.

The eight ITIL version 2 books and their disciplines are:

The IT Service Management sets

1. Service Delivery
2. Service Support

Other operational guidance

3. ICT Infrastructure Management
4. Security Management
5. The Business Perspective
6. Application Management
7. Software Asset Management

To assist with the implementation of ITIL practices a further book was published providing guidance on implementation (mainly of Service Management):

8. Planning to Implement Service Management

And this has more recently been supplemented with guidelines for smaller IT units, not included in the original eight publications:

9. ITIL Small-Scale Implementation

ITIL is built around a process-model based view of controlling and managing operations often credited to W. Edwards Deming[citation needed]. The ITIL recommendations were developed in the 1980s by the UK Government's CCTA in response to the growing dependence on IT and a recognition that without standard practices, government agencies and private sector contracts were independently creating their own IT management practices and duplicating effort within their Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects resulting in common mistakes and increased costs.[citation needed] In April 2001 the CCTA was merged into the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), an office of the UK Treasury.[8]

One of the primary benefits claimed by proponents of ITIL within the IT community is its provision of common vocabulary, consisting of a glossary of tightly defined and widely agreed terms. A new and enhanced glossary has been developed as a key deliverable of the ITIL v3 (also known as the ITIL Refresh Project).

The ITIL Toolkit

2008-10-15T03:47:00.000-07:00

The much acclaimed ITIL Toolkit is essentially designed to help guide you through the ITIL/ITSM minefield. It contains a series of components and resources to help simplify, explain and manage ITIL and the ITIL process.

It comprises a series of discrete resources:

* An ITIL Guide
This is a detailed and comprehensive introduction to ITIL, targetted at both beginners and seasoned practitioners.

* An ITIL Management Presentation
This is a full presentation on ITIL and service management. It explains how, what and why through a series of PowerPoint foils with detailed notes.

* The ITIL Fact Sheets
This is a unique reference kit comprising a series of 12 ITIL (2 page) fact sheets. These cover each of the main ITIL disciplines. The Factsheets are described here as a separate offering if preferred.

* An ITIL Compliance Assessment Kit
This is a comprehensive Excel based questionnaire set, designed to help assess the compliance position with ITIL and identify which areas are in need of some attention with respect to best practice

* ITIL Presentation Template
These items are designed to help you interpretation compliance assessment scoring from above, and to create a high quality presentation from the results.

* ITSM Reference Guides
These are intended to introduce a range of other ITSM related frameworks and approaches.

* ITIL Version 3 Bridging Kit
These documents explain the differences between the old version (v2) and the current.

THE ITIL TOOLKIT
Essentially, this is a substantial and co-ordinated kit, covering a host of basic requirements. It is targetted at both the beginner and those who are already seriously implementing ITIL within their management regime. For the former it is an excellent tool to 'get you going' with ITIL. For the latter, it provides a number of extremely useful items and reference materials to give practical assistance in a number of areas.

MORE INFORMATION
The ITIL Toolkit is actually documented on its own dedicated site: The ITIL Toolkit. On here you will find a more complete description, along with a series of sample snapshots from each of the components.

NEW - PURCHASE ONLINE
The whole kit can now be purchased online for only: 199 USD and downloaded straight to your PC. It is our recommended support tool for ITIL.

ITIL History

2008-10-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Precursors

Many of the concepts did not originate within the original UK Government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) project to develop ITIL. According to IBM:
“ In the early 1980s, IBM documented the original Systems Management concepts in a four-volume series called A Management System for Information Systems. These widely accepted “yellow books,” ... were key inputs to the original set of ITIL books."[2][3] ”

The primary author of the IBM yellow books was Edward A. Van Schaik, who compiled them into the 1985 book A Management System for the Information Business[4] (since updated with a 2006 re-issue by Red Swan Publishing[5]). In the 1985 work, Van Schaik in turn references a 1974 Richard L. Nolan work, Managing the Data Resource Function[6] which may be the earliest known systematic English-language treatment of the topic of large scale IT management (as opposed to technological implementation).

[edit] Development

What is now called ITIL version 1, developed under the auspices of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), was titled "Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management Methodology" (GITMM) and over several years eventually expanded to 31 volumes in a project initially directed by Peter Skinner and John Stewart at the CCTA. The publications were retitled primarily as a result of the desire (by Roy Dibble of CCTA) that the publications be seen as guidance and not as a formal method and as a result of growing interest from outside of the UK Government.

During the late 1980s the CCTA was under sustained attack, both from IT companies who wanted to take over the central Government consultancy service it provided and from other Government departments who wanted to break free of its oversight.[citation needed] Eventually CCTA succumbed and the concept of a central driving IT authority for the UK Government was lost. This meant that adoption of CCTA guidance such as ITIL was delayed, as various other departments fought to take over new responsibilities.

In some cases this guidance was lost permanently. The CCTA IT Security and Privacy group, for instance, provided the CCTA IT Security Library input to GITMM, but when CCTA was broken up the security service appropriated this work and suppressed it as part of their turf war over security responsibilities.

Though ITIL was developed during the 1980s, it was not widely adopted until the mid 1990s for the reasons mentioned above. This wider adoption and awareness has led to a number of standards, including ISO/IEC 20000 which is an international standard covering the IT Service Management elements of ITIL. ITIL is often considered alongside other best practice frameworks such as the Information Services Procurement Library (ISPL), the Application Services Library (ASL), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), the Capability Maturity Model (CMM/CMMI), and is often linked with IT governance through Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT).

In December 2005, the OGC issued notice of an ITIL refresh [7], commonly known as ITIL v3, which became available in May 2007. ITIL v3 initially includes five core texts:

1. Service Strategy
2. Service Design
3. Service Transition
4. Service Operation
5. Continual Service Improvement

These publications update much of the current v2 and extend the scope of ITIL in the domain of service management.

ITIL alternatives

2008-10-13T08:06:00.000-07:00

IT Service Management as a concept is related but not equivalent to ITIL which, in Version 2, contained a subsection specifically entitled IT Service Management (ITSM). (The five volumes of version 3 have no such demarcated subsection). The combination of the Service Support and Service Delivery volumes are generally equivalent to the scope of the ISO/IEC 20000 standard (previously BS 15000).

Outside of ITIL, other IT Service Management approaches and frameworks exist, including the Enterprise Computing Institute's library covering general issues of large scale IT management, including various Service Management subjects.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) has developed the Framework for ICT Technical Support (FITS) and is based on ITIL, but it is slimmed down for UK primary and secondary schools (which often have very small IT departments). Similarly, The Visible OPS Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps claims to be based on ITIL but to focus specifically on the biggest "bang for the buck" elements of ITIL.

Organizations that need to understand how ITIL processes link to a broader range of IT processes or need task level detail to guide their service management implementation can use the IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP). Like MOF, ITUP is aligned with ITIL, but is presented as a complete, integrated process model.

Smaller organizations that cannot justify a full ITIL program and materials can gain insight into ITIL from a review of the Microsoft Operations Framework which is based on ITIL but defines a more limited implementation.

The enhanced Telecom Operations Map eTOM published by the TeleManagement Forum offers a framework aimed at telecommunications service providers. In a joined effort, tmforum and itSMF have developed an Application Note to eTOM (GB921 V, version 6.1 in 2005, a new releases is scheduled for summer 2008) that shows how the two frameworks can be mapped to each other. It adresses how eTom process elements and flows can be used to support the processes identified in ITIL.

certification ITIL

2008-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Certifications in the IT industry are so wimpy that ITIL Manager's looks tough. But stack it up against any undergrad or postgrad IT degree and it is just a test. Perhaps one day soon there will be plenty of ITSM-related degrees for it to compete against and it won't count for much any more.

A recent comment from Michiel talked about "ITIL is more and more part of the curriculum of universities and colleges". There is one more step for the tertiary institutes to take: from teaching awareness and general knowledge about ITIL to providing industry-recognised certification.

I'd love to see tertiary institutes emerge as accredited competitors for Expert and Advanced level training. Foundation and Practitioner are so short as to hardly count as a tertiary qualification but the higher two might - should - have enough meat to perhaps amount to one undergrad paper.

The alternative scenario is probably more likely: The existing training vendors keep their grip on governance of the qualifications and shut the tertiary institutions out. The tertiaries create their own Bachelors and Masters degrees. The industry finally realises that a year or three spent studying ITSM counts for far more than a commercial Expert or Advanced certificate and these become irrelevant or relegated to entry-level.

I can just see the university prospectus:
Batchelor of IT Operations Engineering
12 credits required
ITIL Advanced Certification: 1 first year credit.
Approved practical experience: 1 credit per year, maximum 6.

As someone who spent six years getting my own (non-IT) degree I've never quite understood the respect accorded an ITIL Manager (sorry folks). Folk say "it takes weeks of study and the exams are really hard". People who think ITIL Manager's is tough (or expensive) have either never been to university (common in IT but very rare in other engineering disciplines) or forgotten what it is like.

NHS IT professionals call for “simple systems”

2008-10-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Assist, an association of 1,800 IT professionals in the NHS, has called for the NHS to adopt "simple systems" which can be configured locally - not more sophisticated systems which it says bring rigidity.

But the government and the Department of Health plan the opposite. As part of the £12.7bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT] they are to roll out progressively more sophisticated standardized systems at trusts across England.

Assist, the association for informatics professionals in health and social care, says in a paper that a "one-size-fits-all" approach does not work.

"We observe that IT-imposed solutions have always tended to failure." It recommends a "focus on the basics before trying the ambitious" and adds that the emphasis should be on getting "clinical systems in hospitals working". It also says there should be a focus on standards, not the standardisation of systems - which was one of the original aims of the NPfIT.

Assist has submitted its comments to an Independent Review Group, set up by the Tory Shadow Health Minister Stephen O'Brien MP. The group's aim is to inform the Conservative's policy for the use of IT in the NHS, health and social care in England.

The Association's members are particularly concerned about the bad publicity over NHS IT. They say there have been "stunning" IT-related successes over the past 10 years. They praise the standards of IT in use in GP practices and say that the UK leads the world in the development of health information and IT standards. Thanks to the NPfIT, there is a "robust, secure IT network".

Assist's members observe that difficulties in meeting government targets such as Choose and Book and the 18-week initiative are failures of planning and policy rather than IT.

Choose and Book was set up to allow patients and doctors to book appointments online, but it is running several years late. The 18-week scheme is to enable patients to be treated for non-urgent conditions within 18 weeks of being referred by a GP. But hospital staff are struggling to implement systems to track each patient from the date of their referral to the 18-week deadline.

Assist says that although informatics is now fundamental to the delivery of national and local strategies it often remains an "afterthought in policy development and planning processes, at all levels". This lack of planning leads to "last-minute, ad hoc information demands and system changes at best miss opportunities for innovation through ICT and can only jeopardise delivery".

As core systems become integral to front-line care, an ad-hoc approach will "increasingly put patients at risk". The 18-week initiative and others have led to "substantial, avoidable demands on limited informatics resources and capacity".

The association calls for greater openness and transparency over learning from what has gone wrong.

"From an Assist perspective, no informatics professional would knowingly implement information and communications technologies that could jeopardise patient safety or their organisations. To do so would be totally unprofessional, as well as being at odds with the fundamental ethos of the healthcare professionals to "do no harm", an ethos that we as healthcare informaticians fully identify.

"We would, therefore, call for greater openness and transparency in learning from what has gone wrong. To do otherwise is not just a matter of seeking to avoid criticism patients' lives may be at risk if we do not heed them."

What is ITIL?

2008-10-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Many people discuss about the ITIL, but whether it actually ITIL? The following information from the web ITIL, which I find:

ITIL® is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT Service Management. Used by many hundreds of organisations around the world, a whole ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance contained within the ITIL books and the supporting professional qualification scheme.

ITIL consists of a series of books giving guidance on the provision of quality IT services, and on the accommodation and environmental facilities needed to support IT. ITIL has been developed in recognition of organisations' growing dependency on IT and embodies best practices for IT Service Management.

The ethos behind the development of ITIL is the recognition that organisations are becoming increasingly dependent on IT in order to satisfy their corporate aims and meet their business needs. This leads to an increased requirement for high quality IT services.

ITIL Refresh
ITIL Version 2 (V2) has undergone a major refresh which is Version 3 (V3). Version 3 represents an important evolutionary step in its life. The refresh has transformed the guidance from providing a great service to being the most innovative and best in class. At the same time, the interface between old and new approaches is seamless so that users do not have to reinvent the wheel when adopting it. V3 allows users to build on the successes of V2 but take IT service management even further.

ITIL: Overview and Benefits
ITIL provides a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT service provision. Adopting its guidance offers users a huge range of benefits that include:

* reduced costs
* improved IT services through the use of proven best practice processes
* improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
* standards and guidance
* improved productivity
* improved use of skills and experience
* improved delivery of third party services through the specification of ITIL or ISO 20000 as the standard for service delivery in services procurements.

ITIL Users
ITIL has been adopted by hundreds of organisations worldwide. These include:

* Microsoft
* IBM
* Barclays Bank
* HSBC
* Guinness
* Procter & Gamble
* British Airways
* Ministry of Defence
* Hewlett Packard

ITIL Service Management Practices ('ITIL v3')

2008-09-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

In December 2005, the OGC issued notice of an ITIL refresh,[2] commonly known as Information Technology Infrastructure Library v3 (ITIL v3). The project culminated in the publication of five new core texts and a web based glossary on 30 May 2007. The ITIL Refresh project is being led by Sharon Taylor, chief architect of the ITIL Refresh, and president of the Aspect Group.

A key change to ITIL under version 3 has been a repositioning of the framework from the previous emphasis on process lifecycle and alignment of IT to "the business", to the management of the lifecycle of the services provided by IT, and the importance of creating business value rather than just the execution of processes. Consequently, it was rebranded ITIL Service Management Practices in order to represent service management 'best practice'. It is a publicly stated aim of the refresh to include more reference to ROI.

[edit] Version 3 structure

ITIL v3 comprises a set of core texts supported by additional complementary and web based materials. While the version 2 volumes were only available in English, limiting their use in non-English speaking countries, the core titles in version 3 are being translated into other languages. Among the initial target languages are Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Mandarin and Dutch. This initiative is being led by the IT Service Management Forum, with resources and support from OGC.

[edit] ITIL v3 core volumes

* Service Strategy focuses on the identification of market opportunities for which services could be developed in order to meet a requirement on the part of internal or external customers. The output is a strategy for the design, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the service as an organizational capability and a strategic asset. Key areas of this volume are Service Portfolio Management and Financial Management.
* Service Design focuses on the activities that take place in order to develop the strategy into a design document which addresses all aspects of the proposed service, as well as the processes intended to support it. Key areas of this volume are Availability Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management and Security Management.
* Service Transition focuses on the implementation of the output of the service design activities and the creation of a production service or modification of an existing service. There is an area of overlap between Service Transition and Service Operation. Key areas of this volume are Change Management, Release Management, Configuration Management and Service Knowledge Management.
* Service Operation focuses on the activities required to operate the services and maintain their functionality as defined in the Service Level Agreements with the customers. Key areas of this volume are Incident Management, Problem Management and Request Fulfillment. A new process added to this area is Event Management, which is concerned with normal and exception condition events. Events have been defined into three categories:
o Informational events -- which are logged
o Warning events -- also called alerts, where an event exceeds a specified threshold
o Critical events -- which typically will lead to the generation of Incidents
* Continual Service Improvement focuses on the ability to deliver continual improvement to the quality of the services that the IT organization delivers to the business. Key areas of this volume are Service Reporting, Service Measurement and Service Level Management.

ITIL v3 uses the word "continual" as opposed to ITIL v2's references to "continuous" service improvement (CSIP). Continual implies an activity that is undertaken on a phased, regular basis as part of a process. Continuous is more suitable for the definition of activities intended to operate without pause, such as the ultimate goal of availability.

Criticisms of ITIL

2008-09-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

ITIL has been criticized on several fronts, including:

* The books are not affordable for non-commercial users
* Accusations that many ITIL advocates think ITIL is "a holistic, all-encompassing framework for IT governance";
* Accusations that proponents of ITIL indoctrinate the methodology with 'religious zeal' at the expense of pragmatism.

As Jan van Bon (author and editor of many IT Service Management publications) notes,

There is a lot of confusion about ITIL, stemming from all kinds of misunderstandings about its nature. ITIL is, as the OGC states, a set of best practices. The OGC doesn’t claim that ITIL’s best practices describe pure processes. The OGC also doesn’t claim that ITIL is a framework, designed as one coherent model. That is what most of its users make of it, probably because they have such a great need for such a model...[17]

CIO Magazine columnist Dean Meyer has also presented some cautionary views of ITIL,[18] including five pitfalls such as "becoming a slave to outdated definitions" and "Letting ITIL become religion." As he notes, "...it doesn't describe the complete range of processes needed to be world class. It's focused on ... managing ongoing services."

The quality of the library's volumes is seen to be uneven. For example, van Herwaarden and Grift note, “the consistency that characterized the service support processes … is largely missing in the service delivery books."[19]

In a 2004 survey designed by Noel Bruton (author of 'How to Manage the IT Helpdesk' and 'Managing the IT Services Process'), ITIL adopting organizations were asked to relate their actual experiences in having implemented ITIL. Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that "ITIL does not have all the answers". ITIL exponents accept this, citing ITIL's stated intention to be non-prescriptive, expecting that organizations will have to engage ITIL processes with their existing overall process model. Bruton notes that the claim to non-prescriptiveness must be at best one of scale rather than absolute intention, for the very description of a certain set of processes is in itself a form of prescription. (Survey "The ITIL Experience - Has It Been Worth It", author Bruton Consultancy 2004, published by Helpdesk Institute Europe, The Helpdesk and IT Support Show and Hornbill Software.)

While ITIL addresses in depth the various aspects of Service Management, it does not address enterprise architecture in such depth. Many of the shortcomings in the implementation of ITIL do not necessarily come about because of flaws in the design or implementation of the Service Management aspects of the business, but rather the wider architectural framework in which the business is situated. Because of its primary focus on Service Management, ITIL has limited utility in managing poorly designed enterprise architectures, or how to feed back into the design of the enterprise architecture.

The BOFH notes that “ITIL manuals are like kryptonite to enthusiasm."

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2008-09-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

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