ITIL - What did it do for you

I strongly suggest you get your university library to purchase the ITIL publications (at least the Service Support, and Service Delivery books).

See http://www.ogc.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1000364 for details.

The two books cover what the organisation needs in order to deliver quality IT service to their customers.

In ITIL, everything starts with CMDB (Configuration Management Database) which basically captures property, relationship and dependency of a CIs (Configuration Items)

This link (http://www.itsmf.com/bestpractice/selfassessment.asp) provides a self assessment in MS Excel format. Take a look at that to see how detail the exam may be.

ITIL has been well accepted in most organizations as a set of excellent ideas for delivering services. The whole basis of ITIL is document what you do and do what you document.

The "Not Invented Here Syndrome" is the most common cause I've seen for organizations not adopting ITIL. And most managers live in abject terror of actually admitting they can't read an ITIL manual and document the processes their organization uses to conduct business. The basic issue is they don't understand the business. They show up to push paper about, hobnob with other managers at meetings and perform other management activities for a certain number of hours per week and go home and collect a nice check. Most management these days are simply worried about lining their own pockets and not making a quality product for consumers and returning value back to the shareholders. The truly scary part of the IT world is how many real life Dilbert managers I've seen in 20 years in this business.

ITIL, Six Sigma and project management methodology rate of adoption is going to increase. Ask yourself why how many organizatons proudly displaying their ISO certs these days? And if the board and share holders aren't aware of the "winging it," when you finally get clear of the place, write them a lovely open letter informing them. I am sure they will appreciate knowing they could save some money with standardized processes.

Who knows they could hire you to implement it with nice office, leather tipped shoes and hobnobbing....

Keep in mind that ITIL is a framework and not a set of instructions that have to be followed.

There are many benefits, one of the most obvious ones is that after the itil foundation class everyone will use the same terminology.

What used to be tickets, helpdesk cases, requests ... is now uniquely identified as RFC, incidents and problems. The differentiation and allowing everyone within your support org to speak the same "lingo" already helps defining your processes.

Jim Davis
myCMDB Sales
>How do you document your network?<
http://www.myCMDB.com

Network Inventory and Configuration Management

I've implemented lots of ITIL processes and also nurtured their efficiency and effectiveness for months afterwards.

What did it do for the business? (rather than me - I got paid!)

Service Desk - higher first time fix rate, faster user experience, lower repeat incoming calls >>> users more productive at doing their jobs.

Problem Management - reduced repeat business impacts of IT faults, instilled the culture of "let's eliminate the root cause" rather than fixing the same things time after time.

Change Management - KEY - stopped problems entering the IT production environment in the first place by proper imp plan walkthroughs, peer level checking of install instructions, improvement cycles to the testing folks, AND having a change freeze at peak times for the business.

I could go on...

Done properly ITIL is brilliant. The trick is to take the people with you.

Cynics, sceptics, nay-sayers, people who want to watch things fail - are all out there. It's a battle and a transformation exercise that not everyone understands or even see's the need to actually do!

Check out www.dritil.com for more info...

LOL

We couldn't do as well as we've done without ITIL.

There are (already) many good comments here about the framework & I could probably write a book about it's features Advantages & Benefits.

Implementing A Change Management Board alone is well worth the effort!

In the last month, a new department has just been created within our company called 'Development'. Myself and two others are responsible for all in house development which goes on. We're a global company with many thousands of employees and we own a good few hundred other companies within the group. We're striving to conform to ITIL standards, although actually getting on the course is looking unlikely for a while.

What we're finding, though, is that the only way we can manage to keep control and keep track of new developments is to have an extremely rigid, structured and quite inflexible approach to development. ITIL provides the perfect framework for this.

Also, conforming to ITIL standards means we also automatically conform to many other standards without which we would be missing out on several hundred thousand pounds of revenue each year.

It's a real pain going through all the change control procedures for every little thing we do, but without it we'd be drowning in a sea of systems, all altered in so many little ways which no-one was a hundred percent sure about.

What is surprising (although maybe it shouldn't be) is that it is quite simple to conform to the standards. They point you in the 'logical' way of doing things. Also (even if this isn't the ideal reason for conforming) because there is so much time taken up in documenting what's going on and what changes are being made, people are far less likely to get blas? about asking for changes which they haven't thought through fully. For example the new method of booking holidays online which I've been developing - a simple thing but one which requires our HR department to start using the position management part of our MIS system. A change that means a LOT of work for them which they've just decided they can't be arsed doing. They hadn't thought through what they were asking for but thanks to proper procedure, I didn't have to do much work before this became clear.

If anyone is going to be managing any projects, conforming to this standard will make life much easier, even if it seems like a lot of fuss.

Just wanted to point out some of the Datapoint research blog postings you may be interested in checking out for additional ITIL information:

40% of US organizations to adopt ITIL by 2007
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Research/index.php?p=80

Think big...begin small for ITIL success
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Research/index.php?p=65

ITIL adoption underway, but road to maturity long
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Research/index.php?p=60

Thanks.
Chris Jablonski

As a consulting company, many of our clients use ITIL, some use CobiT and some both. ITIL is a bit heavy and doesn't deal with the business issues very well - it's OK for managing the engine room of a big ship. CobiT is strong on governance issues and is beng implemented in support of SOX compliance. If all you want is quick policies and procedures, check out GEE's IT Policies and Procedures (Gee Publishing, UK) - they are cheap (a few hundred dollars) and pretty reasonable, in hard copy and on CD.

Andrew Hiles
ahiles@kingswell.net

I work in an organisation of 100,000+ employees and we are midway through a Global project to embed ITIL processes in our IT functions. Any implementation on this scale is going to have some problems, but already the benefits are becoming clear. To say it is ?too cumbersome? shows (in my opinion) either a lack of understanding of the processes or a lack of imagination regarding an implementation approach. A lot of the areas ITIL covers are areas your organisation will have to deal with anyway (or should be dealing with!), so it?s not as if you can avoid all the issues ITIL can help you with. I would strongly recommend a re-assessment.

ITIL framework being highly aligned to the business, certainly brings in business benefits. I am part of a leading IT services company & we are offering Infrastructure Management services to our customers, which are ITIL aligned.

If you wish to implement ITIL in your organization, please note that this will mean aligning the SD structure to ITIL & may also mean culture change. The Management team should be open for these challenges.

- Sudhir Pakhare

I consider ITIL very useful for handling the IT infrastructure. For handling business applications services and support I would use the Application Services Library (ASL) framework.

ASL has a process approach geared specifically to applications. I learned ITIL and ASL fit nicely together enhancing service management even further. ASL is public domain and can be found at http://www.aslfoundation.org/.

Hubert Vellekoop
Netherlands

Exams:
I have completed the Masters (Managers) certificate in ITIL and found it very challenging and not just a walk in the park. It has opened significant doors for me and holds a high level of credibility in the industry because it takes a lot of effort to achieve.

Implementing ITIL:
Your IT director doesn't know much about ITIL if she thinks it is too cumbersome. I commenced implementing the Service Desk Function and the incident management process (1 out of the 10 processes) and we are probably only at a maturity level of 2 out of 5. The result? Double our call-taking and resolution throughput with no additional staff. I have a service desk team of 8 handling over 58000 calls per year and resolve over 90% at first level! But ITIL is no silver bullet and mostly requires a 'mindset' or cultural change. I wouldn't bother implementing it at where you are, because the most critical thing you need is management commitment and it sounds like you don't have it. Gain your ITIL qualification, the find a company who values it and work for them.

Her real reason could other than stated. If this was the top person in IT who did she report to? That person might have said we have no funds for stuff like that. Do other areas of the organization have as poor documentation? If so it could be a cultural thing. What part of ITIL are they thinking of implementing? It is important to build on a foudation that is understood and achieveable. I have been part of ITIL implementation and can assure it works well if implemented properly. It is a long process with many interations but in the end will make the management of an organization easier. Think of it as a play book for some sport. All players know what the play (procees) is and what is expeted of them and how to do their part. If thing like SLA's are implemented the customer knows what to expect and life should be easier for IT personnel. As others have stated, if this is the persons attitude she might be happier woking elsewhere. I would suggest you contact companies that have implemented ITIL and chat with them. ITIL will certainly benefit all departments of a company if implemented correctly. Again, do not rely on this person alone as testamony to the worth of ITIL.

Yes we have implemented ITIL and yes it has worked for us. What it did for us what to tighten up our process and gave us the ability to truly define roles within our dept. We are a small arm of the federal government and we took the recommended path of implementing incident management first as it was something that we as an IT desktop support department knew what we were currently doing enough to add ITIL flavor to our current process. I would say that the strongest influence that ITIL has had on us is to really define what it is that we are doing. Performing the ITIL assesment forced us to take a hard look at how low we had scored on it. It was a good wake up call, because as most of you know, many IT departments are currently suffering from the "good enough" syndrome and it is not because that's all we want to do, it's usually because there isn't a budget to implement these niceties. ITIL is worth the effort and even if the Microsoft version takes over (MOF) it still is something that IT departments desperately need and will benefit from. Also - ITIL is the only mandatory course we impose on new hires. All of our dept are ITIL Foundation Level certified.

Greets,
I have had the joy and the pain to have been involved in several ITIL implementations over the past 8 years. Some have been successful, others have not.

If you think that ITIL (any framework or methodology) is going to be a cure-all, easy patch, guess again. ITIL and it's cousins are frameworks that layout at a high level how things should look, work and flow. It is not a governance instruction set or a box of predefined procedures. You still have to develop policies, processes, procedures, standards, etc. But you are developing them with the same goals in mind.

What ITIL provides is a common starting point for everyone in the organization, and a guide book on how things will fit together towards the common goals.

ITIL, COBIT, ISO, whatever your flavour, are all intended to create uniform, repeatable, auditable processes and procedures. They are as cumbersome as you make them. The fact that you are winging it, and have no clear processes and procedures is an indicator that you could benefit from ITIL or any other framework. Not understanding the framework seems to be your management team's largest issue. This seems to be common.

When it has been done successfully, the companies spent money up front, on training the management teams at each site, and training their trainers, who in turn brought an understanding of ITIL to those who need it most. The staff and administrators.

Cheers,
Mark

mercury software seems to have a bunch of itil software which is supposed to be alot easier to use than the freeware versions. (mercury.com)

looks like they are big on preventing network problems with config mgmt, sw testing, etc. I've attended a bunch of their webinars to keep up with automation trends but haven't used any of their products.

there is no way that doing this kind of thing could not save your company money, but you have to output some money to save money, and be more disciplined in changes, documentation, etc. and someplaces not ready for that or spending the money.

After going through the ITIL Foundation and some of the service delivery / management courses we started to implement components of ITIL in phases. This was and worked great from a service delivery viewpoint and allowed us to measure components that we previously couldn't.

However, from a Technology Support / Services viewpoint I was left wondering if there was more. Well there is. The latest iteration of ITIL, yes even it has versions and releases, contains the ITIL ICT Infrastructure Managers Cert. This is the missing bit for all those technologists out there. It fills the gap and discusses how technology teams can deliver on those services. (Open to interpretation obviously).

Have a read and enjoy.

Our enterprise implemented ITIL change management just on a year ago. It has been a big success and we are now implementing incident and problem management along with the CMDB. It has really aided us and I love it as it has stopped our rogue network admin from consistently making changes and not telling anyone. Sounds like your IT exec is not into best practise management skills.

Hi There,
What your manager needs is the ITIL Foundation Certificate or at least an awareness session. Probably good for all your IT mgt.
We are implementing a regimen of all IT staff gainig the Foundations at least. I am the only one here with the Manager's certificate and this knowledge has allowed me to put forward a better way of doing things and back it up as well.
I work for a State Governemnt dept IT branch and we started with the Incident Mgt and Change functions. I look after the Change side of things.
The one major thing we found was that people were thinking their changes through more than they did before and this in itself stopped a lot of unnecessary downtime and regressions.
Whatever framework you use, there will be a lot of work documenting your procedures and processes because, again, they have to be thought through from one end to the other. Maybe the cost is something she is not willing to contemplate, but in the long run, it is worth every penny.
Our next stage is a CMDB to keep track of everything better than we are now. Our systems are becoming more complex as time goes on and we can't afford not to implement something to track it all, neither can you.
If she doesn't listen, maybe you should find somewhere else that is using ITIL or one of it's related frameworks, for your own peace of mind.
C