IT Compliance Made Easy
applying ITIL v.3 best practices
to improve IT processes
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wApplying ITIL v.3 Best Practices to Improve IT ProcessesA White Paper by Aldon
Version 1.0: May 2007 Version 1.5: July 2008
IT is under pressure to respond more adeptly to business strategy. To keep pace with rising expectations, a different kind of IT department is required-one that is proactive instead of reactive, one that can anticipate and solve problems before they occur and adapt to changes in the business as quickly as the business itself must. To significantly improve the delivery of IT services across the enterprise, organizations are increasingly turning to best practices. This white paper examines how organizations can apply ITIL v.3 best practices to improve their overall IT processes.
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IntroductionBusiness is growing increasingly reliant on IT. In fact, IT now has the power to make or break business. Users no longer accept interruptions in service due to outages, coding errors, or routine system maintenance. As the world grows increasingly connected, and as more and more businesses seek to meet customer needs through automated services, IT is under pressure to respond more adeptly to business strategy.
To keep pace with these rising expectations, a different kind of IT department is required-one that is proactive instead of reactive, one that can anticipate and solve problems before they occur and adapt to changes in the business as quickly as the business itself must. To significantly improve the delivery of IT services across the enterprise, organizations are increasingly turning to best practices.
The Capability Maturity Model (CMMI), Six Sigma, COBIT, and ITIL are all frameworks to bring consistency, measurement, and rigor to IT shops. But which process or methodology is the right one? The answer is ITIL, the most widely used best practice framework for IT service management in existence.
Applying ITIL v.3 Best Practices to Improve IT Processes2
What is ITIL?ITIL is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library created and owned by the UK's Office of Government Commerce (OGC). A cohesive set of best practices drawn internationally from public and private sectors, ITIL was born in the United Kingdom and has since been adopted worldwide.
ITIL v.3, published in June of 2007, condenses the 10 volumes of v2 into six volumes and subtly repositions ITIL, shifting the emphasis from execution of process to the importance of creating business value. The focus in v.3 is more on lifecycle than on operational process. In general, v.3 strengthens and clarifies the link between ITIL's best practice recommendations and business benefits. Whereas before, ITIL worked to align service management with business strategy, v.3 integrates them into a single environment.
ITIL offers a framework to manage the lifecycle of the services IT provides, resulting in increased system uptime, faster problem resolution, and improved security. As a collection of best practice recommendations, ITIL cannot be audited. However, ITIL helps implement standards that can be, such as ISO 20000, the benchmark for IT Service Management.
The heart of ITIL focuses on ensuring that the customer has access to appropriate services to support business functions. ITIL v.3 combines the service support and service delivery books from v2 into one book titled Service Operation, which introduces, explains, and details delivery and control activities to achieve operational excellence on a day-to-day basis. This white paper concentrates on service support, performed by the service desk and comprised of the following five key processes:
vIncident managementvProblem managementvConfiguration managementvChange management vRelease management
These five processes give companies control of the incident lifecycle from the time an incident ... [download for more]
