The IT Infrastructure Library - ITIL

ITIL is the only global, vendor-neutral source of best practice information on IT Service Management. It is developed and maintained by the UK Office of Government Commerce in the UK (originally the CCTA), with extensive input from user companies, consulting firms and management tool vendors. See also external links relating to ITIL.

ITIL provides:

• A set of documentation, primarily the two books Service Support and Service Delivery.
• Training and formal certification for individuals, at various levels.
• A new code of practice and certification approach for organisations, BS15000.

The value of ITIL

I'm a strong believer in ITIL. It provides “best practice” guidance in ITSM that can be used by all organisations, without prescribing rigid standards. You do not have to implement the whole of it to start getting benefits. You do not have to commit to a single vendor (of tools or process models) to use it. You can grow incrementally from your current environment.

ITIL provides a common language for ITSM projects, and therefore makes it easier to recruit staff and suppliers and to use tools. The recognition of ITIL qualifications is growing in South Africa, and major tools vendors are beginning to align their tools with ITIL.

The ITIL guidance is relevant to all sizes of organisation, and, while it is aimed at IT providers, it also has value to IT customers in an outsourcing relationship.

ITIL promotes a process-driven approach to enhancing ITSM, which I believe is vital to IT - business alignment.

The scope of ITIL

The ten core disciplines of ITIL are:

• Service Delivery
• Service Level Management
• Financial Management
• IT Service Continuity
• Availability Management
• Capacity Management
• Service Support
• Configuration Management
• Release Management
• Change Management
• Problem Management
• Incident Management