One of the most frequently heard terms in IT circles lately is ITIL when it comes to how an IT department works, how it delivers services to a business, or a new way of organizing technical support. However, not all IT managers understand exactly what it is about. Here are 10 key facts that will make the definition of ITIL more understandable.

1. ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

The ITIL library contains a complete and detailed set of best practices that are used to develop and implement IT service management. The implementation of these practices gives businesses a number of advantages:

• Increase competitive advantage through cost reduction and management flexibility.
• Increase efficiency by streamlining IT processes.
• Understanding IT for business and increasing value.
• Increase user and customer satisfaction.

2. The organization that develops and maintains ITIL is located in the UK

The ITIL library appeared in the 1980s by order of the British government. Work on it was carried out from 1986 to 1989, and publications began in 1992. However, for a long time outside the UK, she was little known, while a large number large companies did not announce the use of ITIL, and publications about the implementation experience did not appear in the media. Throughout the existence of the library, it continues to be actively developed and now the third version (ITIL v. 3) is available.

Today, more than 10,000 companies around the world use ITIL to manage their IT.

3. ITIL

As the library evolved, ITIL changed the number of books and their organization.

Now the third edition of ITIL (ITIL v.3), which was released in May 2007, is relevant. It has been heavily redesigned from the second to support the new "service life cycle format" approach.

ITILv. 3 already contains only 5 books, and not 7, as in the second edition:

• Service Strategy,
• Service Design,
• Service Transition,
• Service Operation,
• Continuous Improvement services (English Continuous Service Improvement).

In addition, this edition includes two more books: The ITIL Review and The Pocket Guide, as well as a set of additional industry best practices.

4. Succeeding with ITIL requires a strong initiator

Implementing ITIL practices is a change corporate culture. In the early stages, users will be dissatisfied with the fact that they have to do everything differently than before, not in the way they are used to. To overcome this skepticism, a strong initiator is needed - a “locomotive” who can convince people and move the project forward, as well as interest businesses in changing IT. Without such a person, realization will not lead to the desired success.

5. ITIL is not a project management tool

ITIL practices are focused on delivering an organization's IT services and the process of continuous improvement of services and the processes that provide them, rather than on managing a company's projects.

6. ITIL libraries don't contain much information

The library contains advanced approaches and best practics to organize an IT service delivery model. It describes some processes and patterns, but does not provide a detailed methodology for implementing the process approach. A company that decides to use ITIL receives general principles, but specific processes must be developed for its infrastructure independently. For a more practical study of building IT according to the ITIL methodology, you can take the new ITIL® Practitioner course, aimed specifically at people who have already mastered the model of providing IT services for business, but do not understand how best to implement their knowledge.

7. ITIL is not a tool

Many professional tools can be used to implement the principles of ITIL, but this is not at all necessary. If your company is small, simple document and spreadsheet templates will suffice, while larger organizations will need specialized software.

8. ITLI does not apply on an all-or-nothing basis

Since ITIL describes approaches from different areas, a company can apply all at once or only some of them - there are no strict regulations.

9. ITIL practices can be implemented in stages

Since there are no rules that all practices must be implemented at once, many companies choose to implement phased implementation over a certain period. This allows you to save resources and achieve sustainable success at each of the intermediate stages.

We have already written about the importance of the phased implementation of ITIL practices using ITSM as an example in a blog.

10. ITIL Certification

There are three main levels of ITIL certification:

• foundation. This level means that you understand the basic terms and have a basic knowledge of the ITIL model.
• Practitioner - Your knowledge of the ITIL model is sufficient to apply specific processes in practice.
• Intermediate - for specialists with in-depth knowledge of individual sections of ITIL.

And there is also the ITIL Expert level, which confirms the ability of its owner to manage all ITSM processes as a single system, and ITIL Master for heads of IT departments.

Knowing these 10 facts will help you understand the basic principles of ITIL, but for deeper knowledge, we recommend that you either take certified courses that will help you decide to use these practices for your organization, or contact a business process automation company and create a service model. according to the ITIL methodology.

Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for new articles that will help you achieve success implementing ServiceNow.

Management in IT knows several approaches. The main difference between them is priorities. One method focuses on technology (IT Systems Management), the other focuses on services (IT Service Management). The latter is abbreviated as ITSM and is often accompanied by another concept: infrastructure library information technologies, or ITIL. In this part of the ITIL series, we will look at the role of best practices in ITSM, as well as take a look at the origins of ITIL and briefly review the methodology.

What came first: ITSM or ITIL?

If we transfer these concepts to the everyday plane, ITSM can be compared with the approach to the work of a bar, all the processes of which are primarily focused on the tastes, preferences and convenience of the client. Then the book about the client approach in the bar business by Jon Taffer, an American consultant and writer, is ITIL.

In other words, ITSM is the way to run an IT business, and ITIL is the best practice. However - and this is important - ITIL is not a recognized standard, but a framework that contains best practices, not step by step instructions mandatory for implementation. According to Steven Weil, Senior Security Consultant at consulting company Seitel Leeds & Associates, "ITIL does not contain specific, detailed descriptions how the processes should be implemented, as they will be different in every organization. In other words, ITIL tells the business what to do, not how to do it.”

It turns out, according to the meaning inherent in these two concepts, the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bservice-oriented IT first arose, which later became the reason for the emergence of an ordered support system.

Essence of ITSM

L.F. Popova in her work “Influence of information technologies on the formation of sustainable development of an enterprise” points to “a reduction in the number of personnel associated with the collection and processing of information, an increase in the quality and speed of communication” under the influence of information technologies on organizational activities. However, sometimes automation leads to an imbalance in the relationship between departments and other departments (or clients).

In this situation, IT departments focus on technology issues, but at the same time, there are at least two other aspects that affect performance: meeting the needs of end users (employees and customers who will receive the IT product) and economic efficiency(the optimal cost of selling the product in accordance with the budget).

ITSM focuses on these aspects and brings a better understanding of what the business needs and why, that is, it acts as a foundation for repeatable and scalable processes, and reduces the distance between end users and the IT department. This sets realistic expectations for customers and minimizes delays between the discovery of problems and their resolution.

Thus, ITSM is focused on processes such as support and delivery of IT services, understanding current state IT infrastructures, searching for best IT management practices by finding a common language between users and performers, as well as creating a technological route for business.

ITIL as the basis of ITSM

Thus, ITIL was designed to improve the service and at the same time reduce the cost of maintenance. ITIL is now a trademark of AXELOS, a joint venture between the UK Government Office and London-based Capita.

/ photo Witizia

As Amanda Fairbrother, an ITIL expert, tells Quora users, the authorities commissioned a study to identify best practices in use in 2,500 different organizations - large and small, public and private, in all industries. The result of the work was a set of guidelines for Government Information Technology Infrastructure Management, which formed the basis of the first version of ITIL. It was published in 1989 and had forty volumes. A year later, the library began to spread around the world outside the UK.

In 2001, the world saw ITIL v2, where the focus shifted to the process component (from technical aspects), and the number of volumes was reduced to seven. This was preceded by the use of ITIL foundations by Microsoft in 2000 to create its own methodological model Microsoft Operational Framework (MOF).

In 2007, ITIL v3 was released. The number of volumes was again reduced (to five), and the emphasis was on the life cycle of an IT service: strategy, design, transformation, operation, continuous improvement of services. The main message of ITIL v3 in the current edition was the falsity of the “process for the sake of the process” approach.

The commercial potential of ITIL was widely appreciated in the early 1990s, as a number of private organizations and the British College Public Service received the status of training platforms for ITIL methodology. At the same time, the ISEB certification committee, which is part of the British Computer Society (BCS), joined the first tests for the ITIL certificate.

Gradually, organizations from all industries, both private and public, began to realize the benefits of ITIL. This was facilitated by the launch by the UK and the Netherlands in the first half of the 1990s of the IT Service Management Forum association with the aim of spreading the methodology in Europe. As of 2016, it has 6,000 members worldwide.

At this stage, a number of companies such as HP, IBM, Procter & Gamble, and DHL began to invest heavily in ITIL. As for the United States, ITIL "got there" relatively late. However, in his study, Mauricio Marrone, Ph.D. in economics, claims that as of 2009, 45% of respondents from 364 US companies used ITIL, and 15% planned to do so.

ITIL today

Processes also imply a system feedback to evaluate results and improve the quality of services. The final product of this phase is a document fixing detailed description customer needs, potential market and required services, and key inputs to the service design phase. The strategic phase consists of three main processes: financial management, demand management and service portfolio management (SPM).

Service design is the life cycle stage of a new or modified service that is designed and prepared for the transformation phase. The main task here is the development of the final solution to meet the needs of the business. As Alison Cartlidge of the IT Service Management Forum says, service design should be a holistic process and take into account four factors: people (skills and competencies involved in delivering services), products (technology and management), processes (roles and activities ), partners (manufacturers, developers). At the end, this stage involves the formation of a package of documents, called the Service Design Package (SDP), containing a detailed design specification. The SDP will be the guiding document for choosing a solution during the transformation phase.

In the service transformation phase, the necessary service solutions are implemented, which are designed in accordance with the needs of the business. Here is the planning necessary resources in accordance with the estimated cost and quality. The three main processes in this phase are change management, service asset and configuration management (SACM), and service knowledge management. The remaining four processes deal with change and support planning, and release and deployment management.

As for the operational phase, here the main focus is on the conduct and management of ongoing IT activities. The phase contains many processes to support the efficient and smooth operation of IT services. The main attention is focused on current activities, collection of information and recording of irregular violations. The main processes that form this phase are event management, incident management, problem management, access and service request management.

The last stage of the service life cycle is continuous service improvement. The implementation of this stage is not an easy task, as it requires changes in management, attitudes of the staff and the elevation of continuous improvement to the rank of the main value.

In this way, ITIL leads to the establishment of links between IT and customer needs, which translates into improved service delivery and increased customer satisfaction. This leads to lower costs by increasing the efficiency of resource use. For example, according to a Gartner study, a number of Japanese companies that used the ITIL process were able to reduce the human factor in release management by 20% per year and reduce manufacturing costs by 30% in three years. In addition, ITIL methods create transparency when working with IT assets and more stable conditions to support constant business changes.

ITIL is a collection the best experience in the field of ITSM. ITIL is written in the form of a manual, the main task of which is to formulate the presentation of the IT department to enterprises as a quality IT service. In doing so, its functions, processes, and everything necessary to support this representation are considered. The interaction between IT and Business is described here in terms of mutual "dialogue" and cooperation, the purpose of which is to provide quality IT services that provide business value. The concept of value in ITIL is key and underpins all practices. The core of ITIL is the process management and service approach: the way of management is process, and the object of management is the service.

ITIL is currently used by many organizations across a wide range of industries around the world. It is important to understand that ITIL is not a standard, it is a body of knowledge and recommendations that are useful to read and put into practice. ITIL processes and ideas are not an end in themselves, the goal of following the methodology is to improve the interaction between IT and Business. ITIL is the most famous and popular theory for ITSM. It includes a description of all the processes necessary to maintain IT services, at the moment there are 29 of them, 10 of which are basic in terms of the overall ITSM methodology.

The beginning of the formation of ITIL dates back to 1986-1989, when the first version of the methodology was published, which was called GITIMM, which stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Management Method. The latest version of the ITIL v3 methodology was released in 2011. It includes five books, which are divided according to the principle of service life cycle stages:

Service Strategy (Strategy for IT services)

SS is a life cycle stage, the main of which is a combination of four elements: prospects, current position, plans and demand models. At this stage, an analysis and assessment of the market, opportunities on it and a search for ways of development are carried out. Strategy for IT Services includes the following processes: IT Service Strategy Management, IT Service Portfolio Management, IT Finance Management, IT Demand Management, IT Business Relationship Management;

Service Design (Design of IT services)

SD is based on technology, people, partners and processes. At this stage, an IT service is designed and edited in accordance with business requirements. IT Service Design is divided into the following processes: IT Service Design Coordination, IT Service Catalog Management, Service Level Management, Capacity Management, Continuity Management, Reachability Management, Management information security, supplier management;

Service Transition (Introduction of IT services)

ST is responsible for the implementation of IT services, within it is the planning of capacities and resources in accordance with business requirements, the implementation of changes. At this stage of the service life cycle, processes such as: implementation planning and support, change management, release management, configuration and IT asset management, test management, knowledge management are defined;

Service Operation (Maintenance of IT services)

SO considers the “visible” part of the ISIS, this stage provides the most interaction with the user. The key objects of this stage are technology, service, people and processes. Only at this stage does the concept of a function appear. The function here means the unit and its tools, which are used to perform work and achieve the goal, quantitative and qualitative results. The processes that support IT services are incident management, request management, event management, problem management, and access management. The functions of the system are Service Desk, Technical management, Application management and IT-operational management, the latter of which is divided into IT Operations control and Facilities management;

Service Implementation (Continuous improvement of IT services)

SI drives IT services to continually change in line with business requirements. This is where KPIs play an important role.

ITIL® 4.0 Foundation

Fundamentals of ITIL® 4.0. IT Service Management according to ITIL® 2019 standards

The course is accredited by PeopleCert, an AXELOS certification exam partner. Additionally, preparation for the ITIL® Foundation 4.0 certification test will be considered.

Need to improve the efficiency of your IT service? Is there a task to improve the quality of services in IT? Do you want to debug the work of the company in accordance with generally recognized world standards? Leading teachers with international experience will help you to solve these problems.

ITIL® 4.0 is no longer a knowledge library in its former format, now it is framework. This means that new opportunities and more effective approaches to solving the problems you face are emerging. You will be able to get first-hand information about all the changes - our teacher is a member of the ITIL® 4.0 reviewers group, has the status of ITIL® Expert.

As part of the course program, the issues of IT infrastructure management based on ITIL® 4.0. The experience of teachers and a proven methodology allow for three training days to consider approaches, management practices, value streams in the course of developing and providing IT services to customers. The applied part contains the implementation of practical cases. You'll get necessary knowledge and skills for effective organization work of the IT department according to standards ITIL® 4.0. The course provides examples of using software based on Microsoft System Center Service Manager.

The course will be especially useful IT directors, heads of IT departments, support specialists, managers of the enterprise's IT service, as well as employees whose duties include analyzing the effectiveness of IT infrastructure management processes, developing and providing services in this area, and interacting with customers.

After completing the course, you will be able to:

• effectively organize the work of the IT service of the enterprise;
• use specialized software to support ITIL® processes;
• describe the purpose, implementation process and key indicators efficiency across all domains;
• optimize the processes of managing the technical support service;
• describe the purpose, implementation process, and key performance indicators of Service Desk;
• justify the need to implement and improve the processes of managing the technical support service according to the methodology described in the IT Infrastructure Library.

Upon completion of the training, you will be able to confirm the level of knowledge gained and pass the ITIL certification exam. It is paid separately and is available immediately upon ordering the course. Students have two attempts to pass the exam.

Prepare to take the ITIL® Foundation: ITIL® FOUNDATION certification test.

Specialists who have received ITIL Foundation certification are in demand in Russian and international campaigns and earn from 130,000 rubles per month. in Russia and about 120 thousand dollars/year abroad (according to hh.ru and pcmag.com).

Get knowledge from the best professionals international level. Come to study "Specialist" - the leading educational IT center of the country!

*ITIL® is a registered trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

*Based on AXELOS ITIL® material. Reproduced under license from AXELOS

The Swirl logo™ is a trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

The article by the Belgian IT service management expert Tom Seegers - "ITIL Pro and contra - 10 things that would make us love ITIL even more" - is the winner of the second prize in the international competition of articles in 2013, organized by the International IT Service Management Forum itSMF International ( 2013 International Whitepaper Competition).

Introduction

Over the past decades, ITIL has become the de facto standard in the IT industry. Today, this British government-developed IT support and IT service management methodology has become a well-known brand associated with a focus on quality and control. Almost any self-respecting IT manager or IT services consultant will say that they are perfectly familiar with ITIL concepts and terminology and that they use ITIL “best practices”. When offering commercial IT services, any vendor will certainly mention ITIL in the description of the ITIL methodology, but will almost always note that they are combined with special, more practical approaches.

The methodology itself is evolving in the meantime. AT new version 2007 and the revisions of 2011, a number of well-known concepts were translated into the modern context of “value generation” through services. ITIL now takes into account the use of outsourcing and its impact on strategic IT support decisions. It is clearer that by varying how tools are implemented, efficiency can be improved. A more dynamic approach to continuous improvement is proposed compared to the outdated principles of "customer orientation" and "quality management". Each of the five 300-page books contains many other improvements that improve ITIL over previous versions.

But is it worth the effort active work with ITIL, including core books and additional materials? Undoubtedly. ITIL books are a source of necessary and important knowledge for almost every IT professional and therefore should be present in the personal library along with other books on management. Like many accredited instructors, I teach the ITIL Foundation course in multiple editions, languages, and regions to professionals across the IT industry. All of them invariably learn something useful in these courses. The ITIL Foundation course deserves to be one of the standard components of the modern curriculum for any IT professional.

When it comes to teaching the basics of IT support and ITSM to different groups of IT professionals, ITIL is still the best body of knowledge available today. Even in the very first ITIL books, there were a number of basic concepts that even inexperienced IT professionals help to gain general idea about technical support functions and more. Examples:

• focus on the customer when solving business problems (own enterprise or external customer);
• focus on providing integrated services, and not on the hardware platforms that are used for this;
• hide from the user the complexity of organizing technical support - they should not bother him;
• use special tools for organizing collaboration in technical support teams;
• expand the coverage of support tasks to include not only restoration of service, but also proactive analysis of the root causes of failures, ensuring availability and necessary capacities, and other aspects.

All of these concepts are still important and are expressions of common sense. Mastering ITSM does not lose its relevance, and ITIL acts as an industry guide here. In addition, ITIL best practices can be combined with other methodologies such as Lean for IT, ISO standards, and various project management and governance bodies of knowledge.

But students of the ITIL course and practice also ask questions about what ITIL has limitations in comparison with other methodologies and taking into account the realities of enterprises of various sizes, types and levels of maturity. The benefits of ITIL are well documented in a core set of books, and many papers have attempted to evaluate the benefits of operating according to the best practices given in ITIL. But there is essentially no discussion of the internal limitations inherent in the ITIL model, although many professionals seem to be aware of them.

What needs to change so that we can love ITIL even more - today and in the near future? In this article, we'll look at ten areas for improvement based on personal experience and discussions with other experts.

1. ITIL is not just about infrastructure

Businesses today are evolving at an accelerating pace, made possible in large part by integrated IT services. For the user, an IT service is valuable at the level of functionality and applications. The transition to integrated IT services means that technical support teams and application and hardware maintainers must work together as seamlessly as possible at all levels. This is perhaps one of the most pressing issues for IT departments today from an organizational point of view.

In some companies, there is a need to clearly divide employees into infrastructure and application specialists, in others they may choose a different organizational structure. Services consumed from the cloud can be infrastructure layer, platform layer, or application layer. The integration of such SaaS services comes with new challenges. But even in the case of an internal or private cloud and dedicated IT environments managed independently or with the help of partners, careful alignment between all components and the business functions that run on them is key to delivering maximum value to the user.

"Today it is no longer relevant to focus only on individual pieces of the puzzle. The big picture matters, which is perfectly enshrined in the current version of ITIL. But the name has remained the same, ITIL has become a victim of its own brand value"

From this point of view, it looks strange to apply a methodology that is still called the “IT Infrastructure Library”. Initially, the goal was really to organize infrastructure management, but today IT service management is considered much more broadly. Application support and functional support are just as important as hardware uptime. There have been attempts to rename ITIL to "Application Services Library" and "Business Information Services Library" - both are actually subsets of ITIL. But today it is no longer relevant to focus only on individual pieces of the puzzle. The big picture matters, which is well captured in the current version of ITIL. But the name has remained the same, ITIL has become a victim of its own brand value.

2. Translation of terminology into everyday language

IT has spread everywhere. They are available to specialists of all directions, and now it would be possible to talk about IT and technical support in normal human language.

In addition, in the post-PC era, electronic devices and online services have entered everyday life. In recent years, the distinction between consumer and professional IT has blurred. Devices originally created for personal needs are brought to work by employees. Users want to use their personal devices to access information at work — read email on a smartphone, open documents on a tablet, etc. In turn, devices designed for professional use, such as laptops, have long been bought for the home. More home users have access to fast network connections, allowing them to work from home or other locations in virtual teams.

The IT community has expanded, increasingly blurring the lines between professional and consumer technology. Common terminology used to talk about IT and services, service management and technical support has emerged, known even to people who were not previously familiar with computers.

Nevertheless, ITIL is still famous for its own specific vocabulary, compiled to ensure the integrity of the terminology. "ITIL people" can't say that someone contacted support with a problem: they will say that there was a call about an "incident". It cannot be called a problem, since this word is reserved for another purpose. Mixing "IT" with colloquial in everyday speech is difficult, it leads to misunderstandings. Artificial official translations of ITIL into other languages ​​add confusion, in which English terminology is often more common anyway.

"ITIL is still famous for its own special vocabulary, compiled to ensure the integrity of the terminology"

And in the latest versions, the library “assigned” the next words to itself - for example, “event” (event), “notification” (alert), “access” (access) and “transformation” (transition) - and gave them new meanings for their own." At the same time, with each new edition of ITIL, the situation seems to be getting worse. As soon as we got into the habit of referring to CIs (configuration items) in the CMDB (configuration management database) in accordance with the SLA (service level agreement) discussed at the CAB (change board) in connection with SLM (service level management), it turned out that CMDB, together with IMDB (Incident Management Database), PMDB (Problem Management Database) and KEDB (Known Error Database) are now only part of the CMS (Configuration Management System), which in turn is part of the SKMS (Management Management System knowledge of IT services) and EKMS. Okay, DHS (Reference Hardware Storage) seems to be gone from the latest version - at least one less three-letter abbreviation.

3. Convergence of process principles and their practical implementation

Over the years, the understanding of the role of technical support and IT operations has generally improved. Even small or decentralized IT platforms come with advanced, user-friendly controls. Modern management tools from various vendors provide high flexibility and speed of work, but at the same time an acceptable level of control. All are designed to control and reduce the total cost of ownership for increasingly complex IT environments. For each technology platform, generally accepted best practices have emerged, allowing you to use it as efficiently and effectively as possible.

There were common ideas about the typical tasks performed by the specialists of the technical support department. For example, when they arrive at work in the morning, the operations team checks the backups and batch processing results. Reviews non-critical notifications that hit the dashboard and, possibly based on error analysis, adjusts tool settings to address false positives and false negatives. For this, documentation from suppliers is checked, as well as notes from colleagues and one's own on similar tasks; These notes may be corrected. A meeting may be held with the project team regarding a bug that has reproduced at least once but behaves differently in a test environment. Discussing the progress of this issue with the business user is an indication of moving to a higher level of business support. On the same day, the user can be assisted in compiling a complex report that requires writing special scripts.

All of the above examples are typical tasks performed in real organizations. Therefore, they could be included in operations reference manuals, sysadmin manuals, process documentation, etc. However, for almost all of these examples, it will be difficult to find an appropriate ITIL process. It seems that ITIL processes are described at a higher level of abstraction than the typical tasks of today's technical support teams. Key ITIL topics are relevant when you need to get different teams to work together. But these processes are not designed to cover all the tasks that are solved to ensure the health of IT services in general or on specific platforms. In fact, if you try, you can tie the above tasks to almost all ITIL processes and just as well argue that these tasks are not covered by any of the processes. And putting together a real value chain of tasks corresponding to each ITIL process may not be so obvious.

Even in the mainframe world associated with the early days of the ITIL process set, it is difficult to establish a clear link between the day-to-day tasks of an IT department and the various core ITIL processes. ITIL has the concept of "management operating activities”, but it is difficult to align with the process approach, which is the basis of all ITIL. Even if you define operations management as an organizational structure along with help desk, application management, and technical support It is difficult to clearly distinguish between these structures.

"The problem is more with how ITIL is applied than with the limitations of the methodology itself"

Some ITIL consultants have spent months (and money from the organization's budget) trying to translate at least one ITIL process into the language of actual IT department tasks. Others spent even more time arguing about the "correct" implementation or the "correct" interpretation. Naturally, the issue here is more about how ITIL is applied than about the limitations of the methodology itself. Some consultants and managers have found a way to pragmatically apply ITIL as a launch pad to create lightweight, efficient service delivery structures. They avoid confusion by making things simple for the teams they work with. Is there some way to make this ITIL connection to reality an integral part of the methodology itself?

4. No need to build a "Great Wall of China" between business and IT

The ubiquity of IT is changing the boundaries between the traditional IT department and the rest of the organization. Most production and supply chains can be automated with equipment that actively interacts with IT. Cooperation with partners and suppliers is carried out through IT services. Business processes are dynamically adapted by integrating applications that have interfaces that are as clear as possible to users. Office equipment - telephony, building access control systems, security infrastructure, etc. becomes integrated. Communication with customers and not only now takes place online using IT systems. Business users can quickly tackle new challenges with IT services that are available anywhere, inside and outside the organization, including in public clouds. Personal devices are used so massively in the service that it seems as if users are already completely independent of traditional internal IT structures. New opportunities thanks to market competition change the company from the inside.

Naturally, all this should work together with the support of key users, specialists in the relevant field and everyone else who clearly understands their place and responsibilities. And for this complex environment, there needs to be some sort of control in service contracts, budgets, and business strategy. Some believe that IT has partially turned into public service, which can be obtained from anywhere. Others believe that there is no longer a place in the world for business strategies that do not consider IT creativity as a strategic asset. AT modern world the boundaries between IT and business lose their meaning. Business and application maintenance teams have become virtual, spread across multiple departments that work together to keep business processes running and continuously adapting to new needs. These virtual teams can even span multiple organizations. In the most dynamically developing enterprises, IT and business are closely intertwined with each other.

"In today's world, the boundaries between IT and business lose their meaning"

The traditional organizational structure according to ITIL is a closed system with two large modules, business and IT. The business is a client of the IT department and perceives it as a "black box". An IT department may have a complex internal structure that is hidden from the business. A business can also have a complex structure, but it has nothing to do with the IT structure. Having clear interfaces between different parts of the organization is meant to improve control and clarity for everyone. If everyone makes sure that his unit does its job well, then the whole organization will work successfully. But is it so today? Effective and close interaction between traditional business professionals and traditional IT professionals today is perhaps no less important than the cooperation of IT employees among themselves. The interaction between IT and business these days is often more than just a contract.

5. Flexible application of the model based on a single point of contact

Today's youth have grown up with access to new communications technology such as cell phones, Mobile Internet, social media, instant messaging, web search, online communities, etc. The result is new generations of new, more creative ways of joint work. They build networks of friends made up of co-workers and other internal and external contacts that help them get the job done. In exchange, they share their knowledge and experience with their network, receiving valuable feedback. Informal channels help the new generation to solve some problems in more flexible and efficient ways than was done before in traditional strictly hierarchical institutions.

New ways of working require communication within the organization that goes beyond the call to single points of contact (STCs) created for one need or another. In some traditional organizations, there already seem to be even more such points than the employees themselves. Employees cannot directly contact their acquaintances in the marketing or personnel department - it is necessary to do this through the official ETC. In the latter, they make sure that the transmitted message corresponds to their specialization, edit it and, possibly, transmit the right person in the appropriate structure. Or it may turn out that the wrong ETK was used, that the message was transmitted through the wrong channel or not according to the rules. It looks as if this system was created only to prevent colleagues from working together to solve their problems. Some ETK implementations raise rather than lower barriers to accessing tools.

The same thing can happen if you create an overly inflexible structure for the Service Desk and associated ETKs in accordance with ITIL. There are cases when the need to contact the Service Desk was difficult to justify, since the users themselves did not see any convenience in it. Nevertheless, IT management forced the service on users simply by insisting that it would be better that way. There were also implementations where the ETC was useless, that is, there were additional costs for something that did not improve either the service or the interaction.

In other cases, there is a lack of flexibility in contact channels and procedures. An example is that you cannot come to the support service yourself until you receive a ticket number. Or, only the phone can be forced to be used as the only supported communication channel, Email or web form. In such cases, there is a risk of increasing explicit and hidden costs and does not improve the service to either the organization or individual users. And in a multi-partner environment, where each side has its own ETC, you have to create another ETC to control the rest.

"Today, communication with technical support should be focused on the needs of the user, and the support chain should be as simple as possible"

So, on the one hand, the idea of ​​lowering barriers to access through well-defined flexible ways to contact the help desk is still valuable, on the other hand, the ways to implement this idea definitely could not be prevented by a radical update. Today, communication with technical support should be focused on the needs of the user, and the support chain should be extremely simple, both within one organization and between several.

6. Applying ITIL in Multi-Customer and Partner Environments

In this era of outsourcing and partnerships, there are no IT departments that are a separate "island". In organizations of all sizes, IT integration has become more complex than traditional centralized systems or environments based on components from the same vendor. At the same time, budgets allocated to support new complex systems and applications are tightly regulated. Compared to the past, more organizations are choosing to manage business complexity by expanding collaboration with external partners who perform tasks that are not the primary focus of the original organization. And this means that part of the IT support processes are carried out by external companies, which in turn provide IT support to many different customers. They work in a highly competitive market, competing with other participants, each of which has its own advantages. Thus, IT support organizations today operate in a multi-client/multi-partner environment, and naturally, this comes with some challenges.

What tasks, contracts, or teams should be brought together into one big structure, and which tasks, contracts, and teams should be given priority? How to achieve economies of scale, and in what cases will scale be more of a disadvantage? How to find the optimal balance between standardization leading to economies of scale and meeting the individual needs of each customer? How to share experience and knowledge with customers without sacrificing confidentiality and trust? How to guarantee customers priorities, taking into account various commercial and technical forces? How to use and adapt tools to meet both corporate standards and the individual requirements of each customer?

A number of commercial IT service providers have developed their own approaches to address these challenges while still adhering to ITIL terminology and the customer interfaces defined in the library. Some services are provided by such companies as "black boxes", others are optimized and integrated together with the customer and other interested parties.

Effective collaboration across a complex chain or web of partnerships may require linking or integrating relevant support processes across organizations. For example, a first line support toolkit may contain information that needs to be communicated to one or more second line support teams in other organizations, which in turn may involve the involvement of third line specialists. Each of these teams may use different tools from different vendors. How can they share information about cases and other support events? The more practices taken from ITIL are used in one of these teams, the more complex the interaction can become. Calls can be classified by type or priority, tied to information about the user, application, service, as well as the corresponding infrastructure components. Meanwhile, the database structure for managing similar information in another organization may be quite different.

"Today, the integration and optimization of IT support processes across the entire chain is probably at the same level of maturity that e-mail was at in the days of the mainframe"

Today, integrating and streamlining IT support processes across the entire value chain is probably at the same level of maturity that email was in the days of the mainframe. Within each company or organizational structure there are specific agreements, but the systems and models they regulate have not yet been adapted to collaborative work that crosses organizational boundaries. Individual companies have begun direct integration of systems with each other. Implementing cross-organizational processes is key to delivering IT support as efficiently and effectively as possible. A single methodology or standard could become a guiding star in this case. ITIL recognizes the need for partners to work together and emphasizes the importance of appropriate clear interfaces and agreements. But ITIL does not offer a practical platform that would allow organizations to translate these common concepts into real life.

7. The need for scientific justification

Competing forces have emerged in the field of IT support. Managers are looking for creative ways to reduce costs for every process and every organizational unit without sacrificing the continuity and performance of IT services. Knowledge in the field of management has increased enormously in recent decades. More and more companies are going radical organizational changes to continue delivering maximum customer value at a lower cost. Organizations today are looking for ways to achieve economies of scale, optimize interactions, and do more with less.

Some IT services are considered key assets in a business strategy to help innovate and bring products to market quickly. Standard IT services, in turn, support core business processes, and this happens in much the same way in many organizations. These IT services require well-documented best practices that deliver maximum results with minimum effort and overhead. The shortcut, in the form of proven approaches that have proven to work, can help business leaders achieve their goals. In organizations that have already reached a sufficient level of maturity to provide efficient work services, the focus is shifting to improving performance. Today, ITIL is not perceived as a source of methods for maximizing the operation of systems and services when the budget has been reduced, say, by 50%. ITIL is used more as a justification for a particular method of improving performance than as a source of proven ways to keep costs to a minimum while achieving high quality.

Some traditional ITIL implementations are perceived as too costly and lead to inflexible organizational models with a lot of overhead. Some implementation projects spent years or months spending budgets allocated for consultants and training. The introduction of "heavy" tools and command structures increases the direct cost of the project and personnel. Creation of additional horizontal managerial functions increases the burden on business leaders. Some of the enhancements proposed or pushed by ITIL implementation teams are objected to by users and IT staff. Change is sometimes seen as a move to increase administrative costs, waste time and productivity, and move away from proven ways of doing business. As a result, there was a perception that strict adherence to ITIL principles deprives an organization of competitive advantage rather than giving them to her.

In short, implementing ITIL principles comes with the difficult task of justifying that these changes will actually bring improvements, as opposed to alternative approaches. But ITIL books are written as guides explaining how to "should" solve certain problems based on anonymous so-called "best practices". The whole concept of best practices is based on the idea that there are "good" operating principles that have proven useful in various organizations. Specific organizations where such methods have brought a measurable positive result are not indicated in the books. They do not describe real use cases that could be tested. There are practically no references to scientific literature in them. The reader himself is invited to make a judgment about whether it makes sense to use what is written in a given situation. As a result, these publications are perceived as an expression of the subjective opinion of a group of reasonable, but invisible authors.

Some provisions are justified on the basis that their application will reduce costs or improve performance. Most of the processes and approaches proposed in ITIL come with a high cost of implementation and change, in exchange for a promise to return the investment through the improvements they bring. The introduction of various “sell-for-sale” structures as a step towards an overall improvement in operational efficiency. But will it be achieved? There is very little comprehensive research, real evidence, and calculations available to the general public that can support each of the ITIL statements. Clear references to the sources, allowing to check the validity of certain statements, could help the reader to find out what the various provisions of the books are based on. But it is clear that for any thorough methodology, finding such evidence will not be an easy task.

"A truly workable methodology for the future should include ways to evaluate and validate the various recommendations, as well as a system for sharing research that supports or refutes the validity of various "best practices" in managing IT organizations"

The absence of such references further complicates the application of ITIL principles in practice - any failure can be attributed either to the wrong approach to implementation, or to a defect in the methodology itself. A clear scientific rationale would make it easier to include in ITIL new knowledge that has emerged in the years that have passed since the release of the first versions of the library that made it popular. A truly workable methodology for the future should include ways to evaluate and validate the various recommendations, as well as a system for sharing research that supports or refutes the validity of various “best practices” in managing IT organizations.

8. Increasing the role of the community

Social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and others, help people unite in groups of supporters of an idea or, say, a brand for the sake of being close to like-minded people. In this era of global knowledge sharing, the emergence of large-scale communities helps to gain more objective knowledge about common problems. The Internet and other new media have created platforms that allow community members to solve problems more effectively joint forces. A community can be a group of people associated with a commercial entity, such as contributors to an open source project or employees of research institutions. Some information is offered for money, others are available for free. Along with the traditional exchange of information based on copyright laws, alternative ways of communicating information are available on the Internet.

So where is the community that will bring the concept, or at least the ITIL brand, to life? How can ITIL evolve in line with new trends in IT and society? Now ITIL and related materials from the British government are developing as a deep authority structure focused on stability and protection, and not as a platform for active evolution and the exchange of ideas. The books themselves are too expensive to be afforded by private individuals and are heavily copyrighted. Exchange of books or copying in paper or electronic form prohibited. The use of the concepts described in the books for educational materials and other purposes is subject to special rules, and again not free. Electronic platforms licensed to use ITIL and related materials are designed to protect their proprietary status, not to accept contributions from the community. Even large user groups like itSMF are perceived as having only limited influence "from below" on the content and evolution of core content.

"The potential for ITIL development is limited by the well-defined group that is the source of ITIL ideas and the commercial motives of the community that applies and promotes these ideas"

As a result, the model for changing ITIL books can be perceived as inflexible and out of date, just like the principles of work proposed by the methodology. ITIL runs counter to conventional wisdom about how actual market standards are created, being relatively inaccessible to most users and evolving uninfluenced by their community. This means that the potential for ITIL development is limited by the well-defined group that is the source of ITIL ideas, and the commercial motives of the community that applies and promotes these ideas. The benefits of having an influential community are clear, especially given the difficulty of separating proven facts from conventional wisdom.

9. Be simpler and more accessible

In recent versions, ITIL has been partly adapted to some of the realities of the modern world. At the same time, everything that was transferred to them from previous editions is defended in the books. This includes concepts such as help desk and service level agreements, the difference between incident and problem management, the use of the configuration management database and other tools, as well as ITIL functions and processes, service principles and service management.

The way these concepts were presented in previous versions of ITIL echoed the ideas of the time; an example is a certain point of view on total quality management, a strong argument in favor of a focus on customer satisfaction, and the encouragement of a cross-functional process model in the IT organization as in traditional automotive manufacturing. All these concepts have been preserved, but translated into modern language. Supplier control has been replaced by "web of value" management, and traditional "quality management" has become something broader, "continuous service improvement." And dynamic service portfolio optimization based on strategic assets and market needs has taken the place of simply negotiating a service level agreement with an internal customer.

New realities of the modern world, such as outsourcing and other options for providing services, have been added to the updated ITIL books. The presentation of how modern service tools can help in automation has been updated. Some processes have been added that were not in previous books, such as monitoring-based activities. In addition to clarifying the differences between functions and processes, emphasis was placed on the distinction between service views, service lifecycle, and service chain. Many processes, function definitions, activities, and tasks have been added to link these views, resulting in not two, but five books built around the concept of the life cycle, not the principle of decision making.

"Methodology looks like a set of concepts and theories that require a multi-dimensional space with complex relationships to visualize"

However, the level of abstraction still remains, as a result, the methodology looks like a set of concepts and theories, for a visual representation of which a multidimensional space with complex connections is needed. While the concepts, applicability, and shortcomings of the previous version of ITIL could have been explained even to junior IT professionals in a two-day basic course, the new version has made it more difficult. In a three-day course, some students learn only a mountain of technical terminology and traditional concepts, gaining only a general idea of ​​​​how it all fits together.

Proprietary approaches to ITIL implementation, such as the Microsoft Operations Framework and schemas offered by commercial IT service providers, have attempted to simplify theories from ITIL with varying degrees of success. The ISO 20000 standard, which is considered a subset of ITIL suitable for assessing and certifying organizations, has incorporated only 13 elements out of hundreds that are presented in ITIL itself.

10. Documented compatibility with other standards

ITIL is not positioned as a formal standard, and there is no process for certifying organizations to ITIL compliance. But the level of maturity of IT departments in comparison with others must be somehow assessed, and commercial organizations you need to somehow demonstrate adherence to generally accepted methods. One of the ways to solve these problems is training and certification of specialists. In addition, it is possible to certify organizations for partial compliance with the principles of ITIL according to the generally accepted international standard ISO 20000. Conversely, the implementation of ITIL is a pivotal way to transition to principles of work in accordance with ISO standard 20000. There have been many publications on the overlaps and discrepancies between ISO 20000 and ITIL. Other methodologies that have been combined with ITIL include PRINCE2, PMBOK, CMM/CMMi, ISO9000, and COBIT. AT latest versions ITIL included some of the main provisions of these methodologies.

"Although in practice ITIL can be used in conjunction with other management theories, methodologies and standards, there is very little practical advice on how to apply them together in various sources"

Although in practice ITIL can be used in conjunction with other management theories, methodologies, and standards, there is very little practical advice on how to apply them together in various sources. In ITIL version 2 there were 10 or 11 core processes, and in version 3, which came out in different releases from 2007 to 2011, there were at first 26, and then even more. For comparison, in ISO 20000 version 2005, 13 processes are regulated, and in version 2011 - from 13 to 17. COBIT has 34 processes, while MOF v3, MOF v4, ASL and BISL have a different number. All use different names and definitions. There is no single version of the truth, so recommendations from various sources, including ITIL, need to be combined and creatively applied to specific situations as needed.

Conclusion

So, is ITIL coming to an end? Definitely not. ITIL occupies an important place among other sets of "best practices", "body of knowledge", standards and approaches to management. Most of the books and related materials on ITIL, including training course Foundation can be used as a source to form a point of view. Many well-known concepts documented in ITIL can become valuable knowledge for specialists of various categories. Although self-evident, these concepts help to structure what was already understood on an intuitive level. Standards and methodologies promote collaboration in teams by providing a common reference and terminology. And thanks to improvements, the latest versions of ITIL have become as close as possible to modern realities. However, even the best methodologies have their limitations, and what is advantageous in one situation may be a limitation in another.

Actually, the whole difficulty lies in applying the methodologies to the place and reasonably. In today's world, ITIL principles need to be applied to a specific situation and used where necessary, based on pragmatism and real experience in applying effective solutions. The tools offered by ITIL and other methodologies are still needed on the desktop, although choosing the right tools and the right way to use them has become more difficult today. The purpose of this publication is to list the known limitations of the toolkit, to explore those aspects of ITIL that increasingly need to be supplemented with other knowledge. This will expand the possibilities of application and bring the described tools closer to reality.

This is exactly how ITIL itself proposes to use the methodology: there are no universal solutions, each situation requires own decision. In the meantime, while waiting for the next version, you can still get the most out of the current one.

Summary

The article offers an overview of the potential limitations of traditional implementations of the ITIL methodology, taking into account the impact of new trends and realities on IT and business. Restrictions are divided into ten categories.

The world moves on, and inflexible IT service providers are becoming irrelevant. Business and IT are closely intertwined, and different enterprises use different models.

The recognized benefits of ITIL continue to be realized in many contexts. Getting more than the standard methodologies in use today requires creativity in bringing together knowledge from different sources.

The report raises the question of what role future versions of ITIL can play in establishing a dynamic, flexible, standards-based interaction between all participants in IT service management within traditional structures and between organizations.

Tom Seagers ( [email protected]) is a certified ITIL Expert, Service Delivery Manager for RealDolmen, one of the largest IT service providers in Belgium. He has been with the company for about 6 years and in the IT industry for about 15 years.

The paper was first presented at the ITSMF 2013 conference in Belgium; This edition has been prepared with valuable feedback from the audience.

Tom Segers. ITIL Pro and contra - 10 things that would make us love ITIL even more

All rights reserved. The translation is published with the permission of itSMF International as part of the partnership between the Open Systems publishing house and itSMF Russia (www.itsmforum.ru)