ITIL

For those who want to expand your knowledge, I highly recommend learning about and getting ITIL certified. I learned about it from LinkedIn as I saw a large number of professionals with the certification. So I began my journey into ITIL.

As I worked through the vast amount of information during my research and how to become certified, I began to unwind all the terms, frameworks, models, and so forth and the list continued to grow and expand. As I am often told by my wife, I am a geek. I was instantly thrust into a tremendous amount of information where I became enthesiastic and excited to learn all I could. My OneNote on ITIL exploded with new notebooks, tabs, and pages filled with all the information I was gathering and learning about.

To that end, I will start by the basics of ITIL within this post and will expand on ITIL and other subjects in other posts. This post is to just introduce you to ITIL and ITSM.

I can tell you now as a ITIL Certified Practitioner, it was well worth the time and energy. Enjoy your journey no matter where it takes you.

ITIL on Axelos – find out more information regarding ITIL/ITSM and certifications

Background on ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and ITSM (IT Service Management)

ITIL
ITIL, an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a set of detailed practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. In its current form (known as ITIL 2011), ITIL is published as a series of five core volumes, each of which covers a different ITSM lifecycle stage.

ITIL describes processes, procedures, tasks, and checklists which are not organization-specific, but can be applied by an organization for establishing integration with the organization’s strategy, delivering value, and maintaining a minimum level of competency. It allows the organization to establish a baseline from which it can plan, implement, and measure. It is used to demonstrate compliance and to measure improvement.

Since July 2013, ITIL has been owned by AXELOS, a joint venture between Capita and the UK Cabinet Office. AXELOS licenses organizations to use the ITIL intellectual property, accredits licensed examination institutes, and manages updates to the framework. Organizations that wish to implement ITIL internally do not require this license.

I will also post some good videos regarding ITIL so check them out.

This information some if you want more, please visit Wikipedia

ITSM
IT service management (ITSM) refers to the entirety of activities – directed by policies, organized and structured in processes and supporting procedures – that are performed by an organization to design, plan, deliver, operate and control information technology (IT) services offered to customers.[1] It is thus concerned with the implementation of IT services that meet customers’ needs, and it is performed by the IT service provider through an appropriate mix of people, process and information technology.

Differing from more technology-oriented IT management approaches like network management and IT systems management, IT service management is characterized by adopting a process approach towards management, focusing on customer needs and IT services for customers rather than IT systems, and stressing continual improvement. The CIO WaterCoolers’ annual ITSM report states that business use ITSM “mostly in support of customer experience (35%) and service quality (48%).”

This information some if you want more, please visit Wikipedia

What is ITIL – from CIO

Introduction to ITIL

There are 5 Stages and 26 Processes

5 Stages

1.  Service Strategy
2.  Service Design
3.  Service Transition
4.  Service Operation
5.  Continual Service Improvement

26 Processes

Service Strategy – 4 processes

1.  Strategy Generation
   2.  Financial management
   3.  Demand management
   4.  Service Portfolio management

Service Design – 7 processes

1.  Service Catalog Management
2.  Service Level Management
3.  Availability Management
4.  Capacity Management
5.  It service Continuity Management
6.  Information Security Management
7.  Supplier Management

Service Transition – 7 processes

1.  Transition Planning and Support
2.  Change Management
3.  Service Asset and Configuration Management
4.  Release and Deployment Management
5.  Service Validation and Testing
6.  Evaluation
7.  Knowledge Management

Service Operation – 5 processes

1.  Event Management
2.  Incident Management
3.  Request Fulfillment
4.  Problem Management
5.  Access Management

Continual service improvement – 3 processes

1.  The 7 improvement process
2.  Service Measurement
3.  Service Reporting

There are some excellent images and charts that were an incredible help to me as I am a visual person.  Here are a couple examples:

ITIL Service Lifecycle Model

ITIL Components

ITIL Overview

I took several professional training courses from New Horizons and I highly recommend them. Their instructors are people who are or were active professionals in all kinds of business, they were not just book smart, so they offer tremendous insight and real-world examples that you can easily relate to. Their real world examples tie in the book knowledge to something you can relate to which really helps to understand the concepts, not just memorize them and regurgitate them to pass the certification(s).

https://nhlearninggroup.com

ITIL Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp2wfoVRMDE

Here is a useful consulting resource:

ITIL Consulting – Pink Elephant