Introduction To ITIL 4

Introduction

ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library.  ITIL is a set of guidelines that helps an IT practitioner in delivering the best services. It provides direction to an organization and its people in utilizing IT as a tool for changing world. Using ITIL best practices organizations can enhances the overall performance of the business and deliver predicted service levels.

 

History And Versions

ITIL was introduced in 1980s by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) a government agency in the United Kingdom as a government initiative.

ITIL keep evolving with changing world and business requirements. Let us take a look at the versions of ITIL.

ITIL - As noted above, the first version of ITIL came in 1980s. It focuses on offering better delivery and support. ITIL comprised a catalog of 30 volumes aimed at providing IT best practices.

ITIL v2 - Int 2000, the first major change occurred in ITIL and Microsoft adopted ITIL as the foundation for their Microsoft Operation Framework (MOF). The 30-volume catalog was now segregated into nine categories. Over the next couple of years, ITIL graduated into the most widely used ITSM tool in the world.

ITIL v3 - To make ITIL more user-friendly, the ITIL glossary was introduced in 2006. The third version of ITIL, called ITIL v3, was published in 2007. This version emphasized IT business integration around the concept of service lifestyle structure. In the third version of ITIL, 26 processes/functions were summaries into five volumes. In 2011, a revised version with some minor updates were again released by AXELOS Ltd. With the aim to resolve the inconsistencies and errors with v3.

ITIL 4 - Finally, the version that is widely used today, ITIL 4 launched in 2019. This version is more focused on providing practical guidance on the usage of ITIL, specifically in collaborative environments. ITIL 4 moves away from the term and concept of unidirectional "delivering value" to bidirectional "creating value."

ITIL 4 provides the guidance organizations need to address new service management challenges and utilize the potential of modern technology. It is designed to ensure a flexible, coordinated and integrated system for the effective governance and management of IT-enabled services.

The key components of the ITIL 4 framework are the ITIL service value system (SVS) and the four dimensions model.

 

The ITIL SVS

The ITIL SVS represents how the various components and activities of the organization work together to facilitate value creation through IT-enabled services. These can be combined in a flexible way, which requires integration and coordination to keep the organization consistent. 

The ITIL SVS facilitates this integration and coordination and provides a strong, unified, value-focused direction for the organization.

The structure of the ITIL SVS is shown in the below figure.

 

The core components of the ITIL SVS are: 

• The ITIL service value chain 
• The ITIL practices 
• The ITIL guiding principles 
• Governance
• Continual improvement. 

The key input to the SVS are opportunity and demand. Opportunities represent options or possibilities to add value for stakeholder or otherwise improve the organization.

Demand is the need or desire for products and services among internal and external consumers.The outcome of the SVS is value that is perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.

Guiding Principles

 The ITIL guiding principles can be used to guide an organization’s decisions and actions and ensure a shared understanding and common approach to service management across the organization. The ITIL guiding principles create the foundation for an organization’s culture and behaviour from strategic decisionmaking to day-to-day operations. 

Governance

The means by which an organization is directed and controlled.

 Service Value Chain

The ITIL service value chain provides an operating model for the creation, delivery, and continual improvement of services. It is a flexible model that defines six key activities that can be combined in many ways, forming multiple value streams. The 6 value chain activities are:

• Plan.
• Improve.
• Engage.
• Design and Transition.
• Obtain/Build.
• Deliver and Support. 

These activities represent the step an organization takes in the creation of value. Each activity transform inputs into outputs.

Plan: The purpose of plan value chain activity is to ensure a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and improvement direction for all four dimensions and all products and services across the organization.

Improve: The purpose of the improve value chain activity is to ensure continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management. 

Engage:  The purpose of the engage value chain activity is to provide a good understanding of stakeholder needs, transparency, and continual engagement and good relationships with all stakeholders.

Design and transition : The purpose of the design and transition value chain activity is to ensure that products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs, and time to market. 

Obtain/build: The purpose of the obtain/build value chain activity is to ensure that service components are available when and where they are needed, and meet agreed specifications. 

Deliver and support: The purpose of the deliver and support value chain activity is to ensure that services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholders’ expectations.

The service value chain is flexible enough to be adapted to multiple approaches, including DevOps and centralized IT, to address the need for multimodal service management. The adaptability of the value chain enables organizations to react to changing demands from their stakeholders in the most effective and efficient ways. The flexibility of the service value chain is further enhanced by the ITIL practices. Each ITIL practice supports multiple service value chain activities, providing a comprehensive and versatile tool-set for ITSM practitioners.

Practices 

Sets of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. 

Continual Improvement

A recurring organizational activity performed at all levels to ensure that an organization's performance continually meet stakeholders expectations. ITIL 4 supports continual improvement with the ITIL continual improvement model. 

The four dimensions model 

To ensure a holistic approach to service management, ITIL 4 outlines four dimensions of service management, from which each component of the SVS should be considered. 

The four dimensions are: 

• Organizations and people 
• Information and technology 
• Partners and suppliers 
• Value streams and processes. 

These four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole SVS, including the entirety of the service value chain and all ITIL practices. The four dimensions are constrained or influenced by several external factors that are often beyond the control of the SVS.

 Organizations and people

The first dimension of service management is organizations and people. The effectiveness of an organization cannot be assured by a formally established structure or system of authority alone. The organization also needs a culture that supports its objectives, and the right level of capacity and competency among its workforce. It is vital that the leaders of the organization champion and advocate values which motivate people to work in desirable ways. Ultimately, however, it is the way in which an organization carries out its work that creates shared values and attitudes, which over time are considered the organization’s culture. 

People (whether customers, employees of suppliers, employees of the service provider, or any other stakeholder in the service relationship) are a key element in this dimension. Attention should be paid not only to the skills and competencies of teams or individual members, but also to management and leadership styles, and to communication and collaboration skills.

Information and technology

The second dimension of service management is information and technology. As with the other three dimensions, information and technology applies both to service management and to the services being managed. 

Partners and suppliers

The third dimension of service management is partners and suppliers. Every organization and every service depend to some extent on services provided by other organizations.Relationships between organizations may involve various levels of integration and formality. This ranges from formal contracts with clear separation of responsibilities, to flexible partnerships where parties share common goals and risks, and collaborate to achieve desired outcomes.

Value streams and processes

The fourth dimension of service management is value streams and processes. Like the other dimensions, this dimension is applicable to both the SVS in general, and to specific products and services. In both contexts it defines the activities, workflows, controls, and procedures needed to achieve agreed objectives.

External factors

Service providers do not operate in isolation. They are affected by many external factors, and work in dynamic and complex environments that can exhibit high degrees of volatility and uncertainty and impose constraints on how the service provider can work. To analyse these external factors, frameworks such as the PESTLE (or PESTEL) model are used. PESTLE is an acronym for the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors that constrain or influence how a service provider operates. Collectively, these factors influence how organizations configure their resources and address the four dimensions of service management. 

 

Key Terminologies

Service management:  A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.

Value: The perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something.

Organization: A person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities, and relationships to achieve its objectives.

Customer: A person who defines the requirements for a service and takes responsibility for the outcomes of service consumption. 

User: A person who uses services. 

Sponsor: A person who authorizes budget for service consumption.

Services: A means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks. 

Product: A configuration of an organization’s resources designed to offer value for a consumer.

Service offering: A formal description of one or more services, designed to address the needs of a target consumer group. A service offering may include goods, access to resources, and service actions.

Output: A tangible or intangible deliverable of an activity.

Outcome: A result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs. 

Cost: The amount of money spent on a specific activity or resource.

Risk: A possible event that could cause harm or loss, or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. Can also be defined as uncertainty of outcome, and can be used in the context of measuring the probability of positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes.

Warranty : A warranty is an assurance provided by the service provider to the customers/stakeholders that their products/services meet the agreed-upon requirements. It focuses on "How the service performs" and to find whether services are "fit for use."

Service Desk: The service desk acts as a point of contact between the service provider and the users. It act as a communication point where users can report operational issues, queries and other requests.

Workaround: A workaround is a temporary solution that resolves issues temporarily.

Incident: Any unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service. 

Known Error: A problem state with known root cause and workaround.

Value stream: A series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to consumers.