I have observed in quite a few publications and remarks that refers to ITIL as a “standard“.
In actual fact, IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL) is not really a standard, but rather an approach to IT service management. The United Kingdom’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) defines ITIL as “the key to managing IT services“.
Neither the previous ITIL v2 nor the new ITIL v3 is a standard, and neither has an auditing criteria. ITIL is fundamentally a cohesive set of concepts and best practice framework, drawn from the public and private sectors internationally. It describes the organization of IT resources to deliver business value, and documents processes, functions and roles in IT Service Management (ITSM). ITIL is supported by a comprehensive qualifications scheme, accredited training organizations, and implementation and assessment tools. The original version of ITIL (version 2) was developed and released in 2000, and at that point in time, the British Standards Institute (BSI) created BS 15000 as an audit standard for IT Service Management. BS15000 was designed to specifically to address the management of IT services, adoption of ITIL / ITSM processes, establishing audit criteria and a continuous improvement program. Then BSI submitted BS15000 to the International Standards Organization (ISO), and ISO adopted it and released it as ISO/IEC 20000 in December 2005, the first international standard in ITSM. OGC is committed to the maintenance of alignment between future versions of ITIL and ISO/IEC 20000. Here’s a little background on ISO/IEC 20000. Essentially, it is made up of two parts:
- ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005 is the specification for IT Service Management. This specification promotes the adoption of an integrated process approach to effectively deliver managed services to meet the business and customer requirements. This part specifies a number of closely related service management processes and provides the framework as a criteria for an independent assessment.
- ISO/IEC 20000-2:2005 is basically a documented code of practice which offers a form of guidance and recommendations. This part describes the best practices for service management processes within the scope of ISO/IEC 20000-1:2005.
ISO/IEC 20000 classifies and groups ITIL (version 2) processes into five core groups:
(1) Service Delivery Processes (covering SLM, AvM, CapM, Continuity Mgmt, Budgeting & Accounting for IT services or FinM, InfoSec Mgmt, and Service Reporting);
(2) Relationship Processes (covering the Business relationship, i.e. customer relationship and customer satisfaction, and Supplier Mgmt);
(3) Resolution Processes (covering Incident and Problem Mgmt);
(4) Control Processes (covering Configuration and Change Mgmt); and
(5) Release Process (Release Mgmt).
Most likely you have already observed, ITIL v2 is quite heavily focused on supporting and delivery of IT Services, i.e. very inclined towards Operations.
Recognizing that technology have advanced tremendously and emerging challenges for IT service providers, OGC commenced on a major refresh initiative of ITIL in 2004. This resulted in a refreshed version of ITIL introduced in 2007 (now known as version 3).
The objective of the new ITIL is essentially to provide a business-aligned and a more encompassing Service Management practice. The fundamental core of IT Service Management begins with the strategy in mind. Most high-performing service providers share a mutual characteristics, which is an inherent capability that can be consistently demonstrated, and that capability is their strategy. It is the intrinsic understanding of how they could provide value to their customers that differentiates themselves from their competitors. Predicting customer needs through analysis, preparation and examination of customer usage patterns, and then designing a service and service management practice that are responsive, consistent, measurable and provides the perception of value and quality to customers, is key. Hence, ITIL v3 offers an ITIL Service Management practice framework as an approach to provide services to business customers that are fit for purpose, stable and reliable, that the business views them as a trusted utility, e.g. just like when you switch on the lights, you’ll take it for granted that it will almost always turn on. The core set of ITIL Service Management practices consists of five publications:
- Service Strategy – the hub of the core; understanding and translating business into IT strategy.
- Service Design – IT service architecture and design models.
- Service Transition – Creating a transition strategy from service design into service operation.
- Service Operation – managing services in live / production environment, operational processes.
- Continuous Service Improvement – Improving the service on a continuous basis.
As ITIL evolved from v2 to v3, we observe the practice to encapsulate a bigger role in aligning IT with the business. This is the brief history of ITIL and how it has become today.
Tags: ITIL, Service Management