DIGANO - Making a Difference

What is ITIL?

ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is up to its third edition. It is the leading framework (it is not a standard or method) for implementing and managing IT infrastructures based on good practices. It uses the knowledge and experience of organisations around the world taking IT management to a new, never before witnessed, level of IT management professionalism.

The current ITIL set, commonly referred to as ITIL v3, includes the following core volumes:

• Service Operation;
• Service Design;
• Service Transition;
• Continual Service Improvement;
• Service Strategy; and
• Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle (not seen as a core volume).

Why do we need it?

The ITIL framework is useful for organisations that:

• Need to make knowledge transferable
• Need to setup documentation and records
• Need guidelines on how to setup an IT infrastructure
• Need guidelines on how to manage an IT infrastructure
• Need a consistent approach in managing their processes, services, technology and customers
• Need to be able to measure the quality of their services, processes, technology, partners and own employees
• Need to improve quality (efficiency and effectiveness) of their processes or services
• Need to reduce the costs of providing services (or at least keep them under control)
• Need to (re)align IT with the business and the business with IT
• Need to create a culture that fosters continuous improvement
• Have become too complex to manage manually

The ITIL framework is based on the implementation and continous improvement of one own's processes.

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing."

W. Edwards Deming

Who uses it?

Probably everyone, some just don't call it ITIL. As 99% of the ITIL contents are based on common sense, most organisations are already using some or all of it. It's understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each individual process, the relationships between the processes, and instilling a culture of continuous improvement that will make or break the success of an ITIL implementation, although many IT professionals are more than happy to enter the typically vibrant discussion on whether or not such a thing as an ITIL implementation actually exists.

"It is not a question of how well each process works; the question is how well they all work together."

Lloyd Dobens and Clare Crawford-Mason

When do we need it?

As organisations become more and more dependent on their IT infrastructures, outages of IT services start to have an ever increasing impact on these organisations and their internal and/or external customers. As such it becomes vitally important to manage and control all aspects of the IT infrastructure. People, processes, technology, and information need to be managed and accounted for.

Where do we use it?

ITIL can be used in any type of organisation, from small to large enterprise organisations. It is quite flexible and can be tailored to the size and specific requirements of the organisation.

How do we use it?

An ITIL implementation basically has the following steps:

• Understand the current issues: What, and is there, a need to change?
• Ensure you have enough support from key stakeholders to make the change a success: Who will support me?
• Decide where you need to be as an organisation: What is the new/changed vision?
• Make it clear to everyone involved that this is the new vision and use their feedback to make fine adjustments: Communicate.
• Measure where you're currently at: How mature is the organisation at this moment?
• Create a plan on how you will get from where you are now to where you need to be as an organisation: The Service Improvement Plan will be your guidance.
• Make sure that enough awareness is raised relating to the contents of the plan: Does everyone understand why we're changing and what it means to them?
• Deal wih any obstacles and resistance early in the improvement process. Make sure there's appropriate risk mitigation in place before you start to do anything.
• Set realistic and measurable short-term, medium-term and long-term targets and communicate them: Use the "SMART" technique for settings goals and objectives.
• Implement the changes and communicate each success and deal with any shortfalls in an efficient and effective manner: Show everyone you're taking it seriously.
• Visualise and share your improvements: People need to see and feel that things are changing for the better.
• Continue making your people, process, product and partner improvements.
• Continually measure and evaluate that you're still on track. Make sure you achieve your milestones and take appropriate action if you're not.
• When you've reached your goals: Celebrate them!
• Perform a post implementation review and take a lessons learned.
• Iron out any glitches and make sure the new processes stay on track using a process of measurement, monitoring, reporting and auditing.