ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) was first published in the late 1980s to promote best practices. It is now an international standard [ISO IEC 20000] with ITIL v2 published in 2000 and ITIL v3 published in 2007. The evolution of ITIL v3 has been driven by an increasingly complex business and IT environment and the need to move beyond a simple alignment of business and IT to an integrated view of business and IT.
Purpose of ITIL v3
The integrated view of business and IT moves beyond a process-centric view of service management to a service lifecycle approach. The purpose of ITIL v3 is to:
- Evolve service management to give a better fit for customer needs and desired customer outcomes
- Address current practice gaps, especially more complex supplier relationships, improved consistency and how-to guidance
- Extend the solid ITIL v2 processes into a service lifecycle
- Stronger and more visible connection to converging industry frameworks for governance, standards and management
Why a Service Lifecycle?
The evolution to a service lifecycle is to:
- Build on the solid foundation of service processes in ITIL v2 and to remove process silos
- Manage services through their full cycle from conception through to retirement
- Enable better integration with business processes
Strategy is at the centre of the new lifecycle and continual service improvement is embedded in ITIL v3
Value of Services
Including service strategy in the lifecycle is to enable service management to be understood and valued fully by business and IT. The service can be seen as an asset, providing sustainable performance and a return on assets. The service must be fit for purpose and fit for use and potentially is part of a portfolio of services that meet, and preferably exceed, customer needs and desired outcomes.
Service Design
To deliver return on assets services must be designed to:
- Meet business requirements, with an effective capability and efficient use of resources
- Management system and tools integrated into a technical architecture
- Efficient processes and effective measures
Continual Service Improvement
Continual service improvement is part of ITIL v3 and is about identifying the vision, strategy and operational goals and is composed of a seven-step process:
- Define what you should measure
- Define what you can measure
- Gather data
- Process data
- Analyse data
- Present and use information
- Implement improvement
Benefits of ITIL v3
Benefits of ITIL v3 include:
- Improved use of IT investment, with a portfolio view of services and a return on assets
- Integration of business and IT, value drivers and processes
- Performance and measures that are business value based
- IT service assets linked to business services
For more information go to ITIL official-site and best management practice.
Roger Lever - Early career was in Treasury Banking and this led to my interest in financial investment, especially the stockmarket. Enjoy reading widely ...
