Introduction to ITIL v3 IT Service Management
Exploiting IT Services is Essential to Business Strategy Planning
Feb 2, 2009
ITIL v3 [IT Infrastructure Library] provides a framework of best practice guidance for IT Service Management. According to the IT Service Management Forum "ITIL has grown to become the most widely accepted approach to IT Service Management in the world." Consequently, with the pervasive use of IT, it is important to understand IT Service Management.
Key Business Issues
The key business issues:
- IT and business strategy planning with aligned and integrated business goals and processes
- Measuring IT organisation effectiveness and efficiency
- Defining and optimising costs, especially from total cost of ownership
- Achieving and demonstrating value, return on investment and assets (IT services)
- Outsourcing, insourcing and using IT to gain a competitive edge
- Managing and facilitating constant change
- Governance
What is Service Management?
IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF) defines a service as "means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks." Service management builds on this foundation by organising services into a set of organisational capabilities. This set of capabilities is then wrapped into a cohesive view with a service lifecycle.
ITIL v3 IT Service Management
ITIL v3 IT Service Management is composed of five core publications, which constitute a service lifecycle -- strategy, design, transition, operation and improvement:
- Service Strategy - turning service management into a strategic asset
- Service Design - realising strategy by designing IT services, practices, processes and policies and ensuring a cost-effective, quality service delivery and customer satisfaction
- Service Transition - transition new or changed services to operation and minimising risks of failure or significant business disruption
- Service Operation - effective and efficient service delivery
- Continual Service Improvement - creating and maintaining value through better design and better operation of services
There are a number of differences between ITIL v2 and ITIL v3 but in short ITIL v3 moves from a process centric view to a service lifecycle focus. The key benefits include increased user and customer satisfaction as well as improved service availability, decision-making and optimised risk.
Business Strategy Planning
Business strategy planning must focus on ensuring that capabilities and goals for business and IT are in complete alignment. Consequently, IT service management is essential to strategic management and business strategy planning. With the introduction of ITIL v3 there is a clear emphasis on considering services as assets to be exploited and a clear expectation of achieving a return on assets. Therefore businesses must also move from considering IT service management as simply managing a set of IT processes, and a cost overhead, to how to exploit IT services for competitive advantage. For more information go to ITIL official-site and best management practice.
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