ITIL is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, a set of tips, techniques, processes and concepts for managing an IT enterprise. ITIL focuses on infrastructure, application development and operations. ITIL is without a doubt the most widely accepted approach to enterprise management. It provides a full set of best practices.
I’ve come to believe that all CTOs should learn ITIL. I don’t believe ITIL holds all the answers for enterprises, but it has many useful models and many best practices that can be of enormous benefit, so enterprise class CTOs will increasingly find a familiarity with ITIL comes in handy. For CTOs in vendors, integrators or startups, you will be interacting with enterprise technologists and should understand the power of ITIL as well.
ITIL came out of the UK and the name ITIL remains a registered trademark of the UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC), so I should tip my hat to them. The OGC and the many other contributors to the ITIL have done enterprises everywhere a great service and they deserve our thanks.
The reference library of ITIL is provided in five core texts:
- Service Strategy
- Service Design
- Service Transition
- Service Operation
- Continual Service Improvement
Benefits of ITIL, asserted on the ITIL site, 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.
The following info on the books of ITIL v3 is condensed from Wikipedia’s entry on ITIL:
Service Strategy
Service strategy encompasses a framework to build best practice in developing a long term strategy. Topics include: general strategy, competition and market space, service provider types, service management as a strategic asset, organization design and development, key process activities, financial management, service portfolio management, demand management, and key roles and responsibilities of
staff engaging in service strategy.
Service Design
The design of IT services conforming to best practice, and including design of architecture, processes, policies, documentation, and allow for future business requirements. This also encompasses topics such as Service Design Package (SDP), Service catalog management, Service Level management, designing for capacity management, IT service continuity, Information Security, supplier management, and key roles and responsibilities for staff engaging in service design
Service Transition
Service transition relates to the delivery of services required by the business into liveoperational use, and often encompasses the “project” side of IT rather than “BAU” (Business As Usual). This area also covers topics such as managing changes to the environment. Topics include Service Asset and Configuration Management, Transition Planning and Support, Release and deployment management, Change
Management, Knowledge Management, as well as the key roles of staff engaging in Service Transition.
Service Operation
Best practice for achieving the delivery of agreed levels of services both to end-users and the customers (where “customers” refer to those individuals who pay for the service and negotiate the SLAs). Service Operations is the part of the lifecycle where the services and value is actually directly delivered. Also the monitoring of problems and balance between service reliability and cost etc are considered. Topics include balancing conflicting goals (e.g. reliability v cost etc), Event management, incident management, problem management, event fulfillment, asset management, service desk, technical and application
management, as well as key roles and responsibilities for staff engaging in Service Operation.
The above is just a short introduction. For more info, I recommend the booklet The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps
