For IT Service Management

Everything you wanted to know about

ITIL® in less than one thousand words!

White Paper
October 2007
 Everything you wanted to know about ITIL in less than one thousand words!

What is ITIL? Release Management provides a

framework for coordination, control
future needs of the business. Service
Level Management explains the
Primarily, ITIL provides international and physical introduction of a change relationship required with customers to
best practice guidance in IT Service into the development and production ensure that business needs are understood
Management. However, ITIL offers more environments. Elements include technical and delivered, as well as acting as the
than just guidance; it underpins the and non-technical aspects e.g. user overarching process for reporting on
foundations of ISO/IEC 20000 (Service training, to ensure that all the required SLAs and managing internal and external
Management Standard, previously support is in place. provider relationships.
BS15000). It also provides a framework
Configuration Management provides Availability Management is concerned
for IT Service Management Practitioners
the foundation to all the Service with understanding each component
to demonstrate their knowledge and
Support and delivery processes. By part of the service, how reliable it is and
understanding of ITIL and to develop their
ensuring a comprehensive and accurate putting in place alternative provisions to
professional expertise through training
database of software, infrastructure ensure the service continues should a
and qualifications.
and documentation, Configuration component fail.
Management provides the collateral for
all processes, e.g. providing component Capacity Management ensures that there
The Evolution of ITIL relationship information for impact is sufficient resource, infrastructure and
ITIL V1 was initially developed in the 1980’s assessment and incident / problem overall service capacity to meet the current
by the forerunner to the OGC (CCTA) resolution and maintaining release and future business requirements. It
and was used mainly by government baselines for both development and demonstrates how important it is to have a
agencies. From 1999 to 2001, ITIL became back-out purposes. clear understanding of where the business
the cornerstone for Service Management is going and how it is planning to achieve
by introducing the Service Support Service Delivery by contrast, concentrates its objectives.
and Service Delivery disciplines and on the underpinning processes required
to ensure that the services are maintained Financial Management for IT supports
establishing Version 2. There then followed
and provisioned to meet the current and the company’s overall financial objectives
a natural progression of alignment
between ITIL and BS15000, culminating in
today’s ISO/IEC 20000 standard and more
importantly, ITIL V3 – The Service Lifecycle. The Service Lifecycle

ITIL V2
lementary Publica
ITIL V2 has prooved to be highly significant
m p ti on
in the history of IT Service Management.
Co Continual Service
Improvement
Service Support focuses on the processes
s

required to keep operations running on

Service
a day-to-day basis. It explains how the Design
Service Desk owns and supports Incident
Management and provides a foundation
Service
for supporting users issues and requests. Strategy

Equally, understanding how Problem

Management needs to be proactive as Service ITIL
Operation
well as reactive and the significant benefits
to be gained from effective root cause
Co Impro

ent ce
nti ve

vem ervi

analysis, gives great insight into reducing

nu me

Service
pro l S
al

Transition
Im tinua

the impact of service outages for the user.

Ser nt
vic

n
e

Co

Change Management provides a

structured and controlled process to
ensure effective impact assessment
and scheduling for the introduction of
We s
change. Through consideration of both b Sup t Service
business and technical criteria, the Change p or
Management process can significantly
reduce risks and minimise the impact ITIL Service Lifecycle OGC Crown Copyright. Reproduced with Permission
of change.
 Everything you wanted to know about ITIL in less than one thousand words! 

by being able to demonstrate control

and understanding of how much
Management and the concepts of Service
warranty and utility, which customers Acknowledgements
services, infrastructure and support costs, consider to be fundamental. ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a
and enabling effective budgeting and Community Trade Mark of the Office of
accounting of the whole IT division. It also Service Transition aims to bridge the
Government Commerce, and is Registered
explains how you can introduce charging gap between projects and operations
in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
into your organization, along with some of more effectively. It provides clear
the inherent issues. accountabilities and responsibilities for The swirl logo™ is a Trade Mark of the
more of the V2 key processes e.g. Change, Office of Government Commerce.
Finally, IT Service Continuity explains Configuration and Release, but extends
how to assess business risk, the different them into Service Asset and Configuration
types of continuity provision that can be management, Build and Test with Release
For Further Information:
considered and the importance of aligning and Deployment management. Service
IT service continuity to the business Transition is concerned with the quality www.ogc.gov.uk
continuity requirements. and control of the delivery to operations www.tsoshop.co.uk
and provides example organization models www.usergroup.org.uk
V2 identified the key processes of its time, to support transition, and guidance on www.apmgroup.co.uk
but the shape of Service Management now how to reduce variation of delivery.
has many facets. It is therefore becoming
more and more important to recognise Service Operations ensures that there
that Service Management is not just about are robust end-to-end practices which
supporting the end product. Hence, ITIL V3 support responsive and stable services. It Author
– The Service Lifecycle was born. influences Strategy, Design, Transition and
Jane Clark
Continuous Service Improvement through
Management Consultant
its knowledge of actual Service Delivery.
Connect Sphere Limited
The Service Lifecycle A new beginning? www.connectsphere.com
The Service Lifecycle bridges the 4 key It was essential that the evolution of
stages of a service; Strategy, Design, ITIL recognised the shortcomings of
Transition and Operations. Enabling its forebearer, and looked to provide a Sourced by TSO and published on www.
improvement and providing a vehicle holistic lifecycle framework. Its focus is best-management-practice.com
for recognising change, Continuous much more now on recognising service
Service Improvement surrounds the core as a commodity, an entity in its own Our White Paper series should not be
processes. Each Service Lifecycle core right providing value and benefit, rather taken as constituting advice of any sort
process recognises the strengths of V2 and than being considered as a series of and no liability is accepted for any loss
uses it as a platform to consolidate the components; the whole service being resulting from use of or reliance on its
whole lifecycle. There are new processes greater than the sum of its part. content. While every effort is made to
introduced to give a more robust service ensure the accuracy and reliability of
profile, with models to support any the information, TSO cannot accept
organization size. responsibility for errors, omissions or
inaccuracies.
Service Strategy concentrates on ensuring
that the Service Strategy is defined, Content, diagrams, logo’s, jackets are
maintained and implemented. It introduces correct at time of going to press but may
new concepts such as value creation, be subject to change without notice.
market definition and solution space. It
focuses on enabling practical decision Reproduction in full or part is prohibited
making, based on understanding service with consent from the Author.
assets, structures and service economics
with the ultimate aim of increasing the
economic life of the services.

Service Design focuses on setting

pragmatic service blueprints which convert
strategy into reality. Harnessing Availability,
Capacity, Continuity and Service Level
Management, Service Design also
focusses on the new process of Supplier