Author: Silke Radde, BMC Software
Service Management or ITIL? If that’s the question you’re asking yourself, then you may be barking up the wrong tree! Because: Service Management is about how you manage the services you provide to your business partners or customers. ITIL is just one of many tools you have in your toolbox to make this happen.
In case you are wondering, I intentionally wrote service management and not IT Service Management (ITSM). All services today are enabled, at least in some way, by technology, so it’s more appropriate now to simply talk about how we manage services, not specifically IT services. IT is now so intertwined with everything we do that it is simply a commodity, like electricity or water.
All services need to be managed. Proven best practice frameworks help you do this efficiently and effectively. In this article, you’ll learn important information about service management and ITIL, and how a conscious approach to both can contribute to the success of your IT organization.
Understanding ITSM and ITIL
Before we get into the details, we need to understand what Service Management is as a discipline and ITIL as a framework for best practices.
Service Management (ITSM)
Service Management refers to how you manage the information systems that deliver value to your customers. It’s a general term and you don’t have to choose a specific methodology for service management. If you run IT systems, you inherently perform service management. As a collective term, service management encompasses all activities (including policies, processes, and procedures) that an organization performs to design, plan, deliver, operate, maintain, and control IT-enabled services. Examples of service management include, but are not limited to, the following activities:
- Planning and managing system changes to avoid business interruptions or downtime.
- Troubleshooting IT problems before and when they occur
- Managing the IT budget so you can pay bills or make purchases
Originally, the term ITSM referred to the way we manage technology, but more recently it has become shorthand for providing valuable services to customers. Examples of customer-centric service management include topics such as:
- Using automation to improve the service desk
- Creating processes for effective change management
Your hardware, software and IT-enabled services need to be managed – that’s what we call service management.
ITIL
The way we manage our IT-enabled services can vary. There are many frameworks for service management, some more successful than others. Of the dozens of service management frameworks that exist, ITIL is the most widely used.
Historically, ITIL was short for Information Technology Infrastructure Library, but the acronym has outgrown the term in the four decades since its inception. Until recently, ITIL was a registered trademark of AXELOS, a joint venture with the U.K. government that produced a series of best practices and related publications and audits. In June 2021, AXELOS and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) announced that ITIL and the other elements of the best practice product suite, such as PRINCE2, had been sold to PeopleCert, the examination body responsible for managing ITIL and other certifications.
ITIL has been adopted by many organizations large and small around the world, and there are millions of certified ITIL professionals worldwide. ITIL’s goals include promoting efficiency and effective organization so that organizations are not hindered by their IT goals, but instead are moved forward by strong, deliberate IT management.
The latest version, ITIL 4, was released in April 2019. Its core components include the Service Value System and the Four-Dimensional Model. The components of ITIL’s Service Value System include:
- Service value chain
- Practices
- Guiding principles
- Governance
- Continuous improvement
In implementing the service value system, ITIL focuses on these four dimensions:
- Organizations and people
- Information and technology
- Partners and suppliers
- Value streams and processes
Benefits of implementing ITIL
ITIL is, simply put, a collection of best practices for service management based on the experience of numerous professionals currently working in the field. Organizations that adopt appropriate parts of the ITIL framework report that it helps them with the following tasks:
- Align IT with their business and deliver services that better meet the needs of their customers
- Increase the quality of IT services delivered by understanding the levels of availability, security, capacity and continuity required and then planning solutions that can meet those requirements
- Reduce the cost of delivering IT services by cutting unnecessary overhead
- Focusing on doing things right the first time
- Promote continuous improvement
Should you use ITIL?
In principle, you do not have to adopt ITIL as the basis for managing your IT-enabled services. In fact, many organizations have other established frameworks in use. Some have even built a library of their own best practices that they use successfully. A lot of experience and knowledge has gone into the development of ITIL over the last four decades. It would be very difficult to develop something new, something original, that even comes close to what a well-planned adoption of ITIL practices can do.
Like any framework, ITIL is not perfect and has its critics, many of whom point to outdated practices that do not reflect the new ways of working. The release of ITIL 4, however, has done much to invalidate these criticisms. A new focus on agility brings it in line with the way many organizations work today.
Using ITIL for ITSM: Adopt and adapt
The benefits of adopting ITIL practices depend on how well you adapt them to the specifics of your own organization. There is no universal solution. Instead, you need to
- find out what works (and what doesn’t) for you, and
- adopt the practices that work for you.
The wrong way is to adopt a fixed set of processes without developing an understanding of what you’re trying to accomplish, or without creating a culture that embraces those values. If organizations adopt ITIL practices without taking this into account, they will almost always fail and likely blame ITIL. As a result, they may abandon the ITIL framework and revert to what “worked” (or didn’t) before.
Any approach to adopting best practices, regardless of the framework chosen, should follow the principle of “adopt and adapt”:
- Adopt only the parts you need.
- Adapt the ideas to your environment.
IT organizations that use ITIL decide for themselves which aspects they want to adopt. Many IT organizations only use the operational processes such as incident management and change management (change enablement). On their own, these obviously provide some value, but they are only a small part of the overall ITIL framework. If your organization has made the decision to adopt a best practice framework, you should find out which approach fits well with your corporate culture and integrate it into your own management system in the best way.
Is ITIL the only option? Other ITSM frameworks
When it comes to ITSM, ITIL is not the only framework that can be effective. Even though ITIL is the most widely used and understood around the world, some of the most successful organizations use a variety of frameworks and best practices in addition to ITIL. This can be very effective, as each approach brings something different to the mix.
Other common ITSM frameworks include:
- COBIT: COBIT is a very good framework for governance, audit and compliance. It is much stronger than ITIL in these areas, and the two work very well together.
- Agile and DevOps: Agile and DevOps together help an IT organization deliver new business capabilities quickly. Both often conflict with ITIL because there are cultural differences between the people who use them, but they can work well together if the IT organization recognizes their value.
- Lean: Lean can be used for continuous improvement and elimination of unnecessary effort. It is a great fit with ITIL’s continuous improvement.
If the last few years and pandemic have taught us one thing, it’s that we need to take an agile approach to managing our services. ITIL 4 gives you the tools you need to make this happen for your own organization. If you are in the service management business, you should adopt ideas that will make you effective, efficient, agile and deliver value to your business partners as well as your customers.
This blog article was provided by our technology partner BMC Software. BMC Software is a leading provider of software solutions for ITSM and IT Operations Management. It counts 92 of the 100 Forbes Global companies among its customers. BMC Software’s products are scalable, modular solutions that enable complex IT environments to be operated and continuously developed.
