The rapid growth of the importance of information technology for business requires more and more attention to the organization and implementation of the provision of IT services. To date, information technology is used not only to solve local problems in the organization, they are also involved in the development of its business strategy. The importance of these tasks required the development of a fundamentally new approach to the problem of systematizing the accumulated information. For these purposes, the ITIL library was created, which describes the best practices for the provision of IT services. Thus, IT specialists got the opportunity to use the best practices in their work, improving the quality of service delivery.
Why do it?
Every year information technology (IT) plays an increasingly important role in business. IT allows an organization to be competitive, as it provides tools to help collect, process, store and analyze large amounts of information for further business decision making. Those companies that are better at information technology also show better results, as they have a competitive advantage in the form of a tool that allows them to use the available data to maximize benefits. Thus, IT is a means of improving the efficiency of the entire organization.
For several decades, business informatization has played an increasingly important role in the efficient functioning of companies. At different stages of the existence of IT, many attempts were made to use them in business processes, and not all of them turned out to be effective. So there was a need to accumulate world experience in using IT in business, which was eventually implemented in the form of an ITIL library containing a methodology for managing and improving business processes, one way or another related to IT. The ITIL library can be used both by companies providing IT services and by individual divisions of other companies that provide IT for the entire organization. ITIL guidelines are used in the ITSM approach to managing and organizing IT services.
What is ITIL
The IT infrastructure library (ITIL library) or the Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a series of books containing a set of guides for managing, debugging, and continuously improving IT-related business processes.
The first edition of the library commissioned by the British government was created in 1986-1989, and began to be published in 1992, and the last, third version, ITIL V3, was released in 2007. The latest edition of the library, published in 2011, consists of 5 volumes. At the beginning of 2019, a harbinger of the fourth version of the V4 library was released, the full version of which the developer AXELOS will release approximately in a year.
Structure and content of the ITIL library
When developing the third edition, a new approach to the formation of its content, the so-called "service life cycle", was used. Its essence lies in the fact that each volume of the library focuses on a certain phase of the "life cycle". Since there are five phases of this cycle according to the ITIL library, there are also five books that it contains:
- Service Strategy;
- Service design (Service Design);
- Service Transition;
- Operation of services (Service Operation);
- Continuous Service Improvement.
The first phase of the Service Strategy helps the business understand who its target audience is, what their needs are, and therefore what services they need, what equipment is needed to provide these services, and the development of requirements for their implementation. Also, as part of the Service Strategy, work is constantly being adjusted in order to understand whether the price of the service corresponds to the values ββthat the client can receive from this service.
Next comes the Service Design phase, which ensures that the service fully meets the customer's expectations.
The Service Transformation phase is responsible for the production and successful implementation of the service required by the customer. Testing, quality control, product implementation, etc. take place at this level.
This is followed by the Operation of services, in which the planned production of services takes place, the work of the support service to solve local problems, the accumulation of a database of monotonous problems to further improve the quality of service provision.
The last phase is Continual Service Improvement, which is responsible for changes and improvements at all stages of service production and for the efficiency of all organizational processes.
These five phases are the skeleton of the service life cycle framework, key concepts that can be operated within the context of the ITIL library.
Each phase (and therefore book) covers a different aspect of business management. Examples include: Demand Management, Financial Management in IT Services, Supply Chain Management, and many others.
Principles for Using the ITIL Library
Since ITIL is one of the key points in applying such an approach as ITSM to business management, the basic principles for using the library follow from the philosophy of ITSM. The main idea of ββthe ITSM approach is to shift the focus from technology to the services provided. The ITSM approach suggests that instead of technology, an organization should focus on customers and services. Thus, the business needs to focus on what opportunities and results the technology can give to the client, what value the business is able to create, how the business can improve.
The ten key principles, taken from the ITIL Practitioner Guidance by Kaimar Karu and other library developers, are listed below:
- Focus on values;
- Design for practice;
- Start from where you are now;
- Approach work holistically;
- Move forward iteratively;
- Monitor processes directly;
- Be transparent;
- Interact;
- Main principle: simplicity;
- Put these principles into practice.
It can be concluded that these principles, which are key to ITIL, can be applied in one form or another to other approaches and methodologies in business management, product development, etc. (Lean, agile and others), which only confirms that these principles work. Since the ITIL library has incorporated many years of experience from many organizations, these principles have become basic for effective business operation.
Since these principles are relatively non-specific, they have the quality of flexibility as a tool. One of the main theses when working with ITIL is as follows: βAdopt and adaptβ, that is, βAccept and adaptβ.
βAcceptβ refers to the adoption of the ITIL philosophy by the business, shifting the focus to customers and services. The "Tune" thesis implies the thoughtful use of ITIL best practices and their adaptation to the needs of a particular business.
Thus, adherence to an approach consistent with ITIL principles, using the library's guidelines, can change and significantly improve the various processes of the organization.
So, the conclusions
ITIL takes a new approach to developing and delivering IT services that considers the entire IT service life cycle. This systematic approach to IT service management enables businesses to make the best use of the opportunities that ITIL provides: manage risk, develop a product, improve customer relationships, optimize costs, speed up processes, increase the number of services, thanks to the competent design of the IT environment.
Since the business environment is constantly changing, the ITIL library must also change and improve in order to best meet all the requirements that the modern world puts forward. At the beginning of 2019, a new version of the ITIL library is scheduled to be released, and the application of its guidelines in practice will show in which direction the business and its processes will develop further.
Literature
Cartlidge A., Chakravarthy J., Rudd C., Sowerby JA Operational Support and Analysis ITIL Intermediate Capability Handbook. - London, TSO, 2013. - 179 p.
Karu K. ITIL Practitioner Guidance. - London, TSO, 2016. - 434 p.
Source: habr.com