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Developed in the late 1980's, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has become the world-wide de facto standard in Service Management. Starting as a guide for UK government, the framework has proved to be useful to organisations in all sectors through its adoption by many Service Management companies as the basis for consultancy, education and software tools support. Today, ITIL is known and used worldwide.
The reasons for its success are explained in the remainder of this section:
From the beginning, ITIL has been publicly available. This means that any organisation can use the framework described by the CCTA in its numerous books. Because of this, the IT Infrastructure Library guidance has been used by such a disparate range of organisations, local and central government, energy, public utilities, retail, finance, and manufacturing. Very large organisations, very small organisations and everything in between have implemented ITIL processes.
The IT Infrastructure Library documents industry best practice guidance. It has proved its value from the very beginning. Initially, CCTA collected information on how various organisations addressed Service Management, analysed this and filtered those issues that would prove useful to CCTA and to its Customers in UK central government. Other organisations found that the guidance was generally applicable and markets outside of government were very soon created by the service industry.
Being a framework, ITIL describes the contours of organising Service Management. The models show the goals, general activities, inputs and outputs of the various processes, which can be incorporated within IT organisations. ITIL does not cast in stone every action you should do on a day-to-day basis because that is something which will differ from organisation to organisation. Instead it focuses on best practice that can be utilised in different ways according to need.
Thanks to this framework of proven best practices, the IT Infrastructure Library can be used within organisations with existing methods and activities in Service Management. Using ITIL doesn't imply a completely new way of thinking and acting. It provides a framework in which to place existing methods and activities in a structured context. By emphasising the relationships between the processes, any lack of communication and co-operation between various IT functions can be eliminated or minimised.
ITIL provides a proven method for planning common processes, roles and activities with appropriate reference to each other and how the communication lines should exist between them.
By the mid-1990s, ITIL was recognised as the world de facto standard for Service Management. A major advantage of a generally recognised method is a common language. The books describe a large number of terms that, when used correctly, can help people to understand each other within IT organisations.
An important part of IT Infrastructure Library projects is getting people to speak that common language. That is why education is the essential basis of an implementation or improvement program. Only when the people involved use a common language can a project be successful.
In the past, many IT organisations were internally focused and concentrated on technical issues. These days, businesses have high expectations towards the quality of services and these expectations change with time. This means that for IT organisations to live up to these expectations, they need to concentrate on service quality and a more Customer oriented approach. Cost issues are now high on the agenda as is the development of a more businesslike attitude to provision of service.
ITIL focuses on providing high quality services with a particular focus on Customer relationships. This means that the IT organisation should provide whatever is agreed with Customers, which implies a strong relationship between the IT organisation and their Customers and partners.
Tactical processes are centred on the relationships between the IT organisation and their Customers. Service Delivery is partially concerned with setting up agreements and monitoring the targets within these agreements. Meanwhile, on the operational level, the Service Support processes can be viewed as delivering service as laid down in these agreements. On both levels you will find a strong relationship with quality systems such as ISO9000 and a total quality framework such as European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). ITIL will support these quality systems by providing defined processes and best practice for the management of IT Services, enabling a fast track towards ISO certification.
Appendix D provides more information on quality management. Generic benefits include:
Business case for using the ISO9000 quality standardsMany companies require their suppliers to become registered to ISO9001 and because of this, registered companies find that their market opportunities have increased. In addition, a company's compliance with ISO9001 ensures that it has a sound Quality Assurance system. Registered companies have had dramatic reductions in Customer complaints, significant reductions in operating costs and increased demand for their products and services. ISO9000 registration is rapidly becoming a should for any company that does business in Europe. Many industrial companies require registration by their own suppliers. There is a growing trend toward universal acceptance of ISO9000 as an international standard. |
Of course this applies to other standards, for example the British Standards, and in fact most European and many other standards world-wide have been consolidated in the new ISO9000-2000 standards.
The itSMF (IT Service Management Forum) was set up to support and influence the IT Service Management industry. It has through its very large membership been influential in promoting industry best practice and driving updates to ITIL.
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