What is ITIL ?
First., I'm not an ITIL expert; I made my research and wanted to share it with all of you.
I want to talk about ITIL as it could be good to use in our Open Source life , in managing our Open Source applications/Projects and their support (community support).
I wish that we come with another standard that is Open standard on this issue as ITIL is a proprietary methodology and it's resources and certifications are really expensive.
ITIL is the It Infrastructure Library. ITIL is a Registered Trade Mark and a community Trade Mark of the office of Government Commerce Developed in late 1980s, by the mid 1990's it had become the world wide de facto standard in service management. ITIL has become as popular as it is a public domain framework which is scaleable. Very large organization, very small organizations and everything in between have implemented ITIL processes. ITIL focuses on best practice, and as such can be adapted and adopted in different ways according to each individual organizations need.
ITIL doesn't tell you what to do or how to do your business, but it gives a guide lines and main units that must exist to be able to do the job the right way-at least according to ITIL standards-, but it doesn't tell you how to do it internally. So it is suitable for any organization and any kind of business you are running not only IT.
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of best practices stands for Information Technology (IT) service management. The United Kingdom's Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA) Created ITIL in response to the growing dependence on Information Technology to meet business needs and goals. ITIL provides businesses with a customizable framework of best practices to achieve quality service and overcome difficulties associated with the growth of IT system. ITIL is organized into sets of texts which are defined by related functions: Service Support, Service Delivery, Managerial, Software Support, Computer Operations, Security Management, and Environmental. In addition to texts, ITIL services and products include training, qualifications and software tools, and user groups such as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF)
While owned by the CCTA since the mid-1980s, ITIL is currently maintained and developed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)
The Service Management Section of ITIL is made up of eleven different disciplines, split into two sections, Service Support and Service Delivery:
Service Support
Configuration Management
Change Management
Release Management
Incident Management
Problem Management
Service Desk
Service Deliver
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Financial Management for IT Services
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Configuration Management
The object of Management is to provide a logical model of the It infrastructure by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the version of all configuration items in existence. Configuration Management is used to account for all IT assets, to provide accurate information to support other service management processes, to provide a sound a base for Incident, Problem, change and Release Management, to verify records against infrastructure and to correct exceptions.
There are five basic activities of Configuration Management:
Planning: the configuration Management Plan should cover the next three to six months in details, and the following twelve months in outline. It should be reviewed at least twice a year and will include a strategy, policy, scope, objectives, roles and responsibilities, the configuration Management processes, activities and procedures, the CMBD, relationships with other processes and third parties, as well as tools and other resources requirements.
Identification: the selection, identification and labeling of all CIs. This covers the recording of information about CIs, including ownership, relationships, versions and unique identifiers. CIs should be recorded at a level of detail justified by the business need - typically to the level of "independent change"
Control: This gives the assurance that only authorized and identifiable CIs are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without the appropriate controlling documentation e.g. approved RFC, updated specification. All CIs will be under Change Management Control.
Status Accounting: The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with each CI throughout its life-cycle. It enables changes to CIs and tracking of their records through various statuses, e.g. ordered, received, under test, live, under repair, withdrawn or for disposal.
Verification and Audit: This is a serious of reviews and audits that verifies the physical existence of CIs, and checks that they are correctly recorded in the CMDB. It includes the process of verifying Release and Configuration documentation before changes are made to the live environment.
Change Management:
The object of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of any related incidents upon service. Changes in the IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response to Problems or externally imposed requirements, e.g. legislative changes, or proactively from seeking imposed efficiency and effectiveness or to enable or reflect business initiatives, or from programmes, projects or service improvement initiatives. Change Management can ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures are used for all Changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changed, and maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of Changes.
Change Management is responsible for controlling Changes to all CIs within the live environment. It is not responsible for change within ongoing projects, which are controlled by the project change process. However close liaison between development project managers and the change Manager is expected. Change Management would typically comprise the raising and recording of changes, assessing the impact, cost, benefit and risk of proposed changes, developing business justification and obtaining approval, managing and co-ordinating change implementation, monitoring and reporting on implementation, reviewing and closing RFC.
Release Management
The object of Release Management is to take a holistic view of a change to an IT service and ensure that all aspects of a Release, both technical and no-technical, are considered together.
Release Management should be used for large or critical hardware roll-outs, major software roll-outs and building or batching related sets of changes. Release management co-ordinates the many service providers and suppliers involved with a significant Release of hardware, software and associated documentation across distributed environment.
Release Management is responsible for planning and overseeing the successful roll-out of new and changed software and associated hardware and documentation, liaison with Change Management to agree exact content and roll-out plan for the Release, ensuring that all items being rolled out of changed are secure and traceable via the CMDB and managing Customers and Users expectations of Releases and roll-outs.
Incident Management
The object of Incident Management is to restore normal service to operation as quickly as possible with minimum disruption to the business, thus ensuring that the best achievable levels of availability and service are maintained.
Incident Management should be used to ensure the best of use of resources to support the business, to develop and maintain meaningful records relating to Incidents, and to devise and apply a consistent approach to all Incidents reported
Incident Management is responsible for Incident detection and recording, classification of all Incidents, and initial support, investigation and diagnoses, resolution and recovery, incident closure, and incident ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication.
Problem Management
The objective of Problem Management is to minimize the adverse effect on the business of Incidents and Problems caused by errors in the infrastructure, and to proactively prevent the occurrence of Incidents, Problems and errors
Problem Management should be used to resolve problems quickly and effectively, to ensure resources are prioritized to resolve Problems in the most appropriate order based on business needs, to proactively identify and resolve Problems and Known Errors thus minimizing incident occurrences, to improve the productivity of support staff and to provide relevant management information and for sure increases Availability time.
Problem Management is responsible for Problem identification, recording, classification, investigation and diagnosis. Problem Management is also concerned with error identification, recording, assessment, recording of resolution, closure, monitoring resolution progress, assistance with the handling of major incidents, proactive prevention of problems through trend analysis, targeting support action and providing information to the organization, as well as obtaining management information from problem data and completing major problem reviews, and helps the IT Service Continuity Management.
Service Desk
The objective of Service Desk is it acts as the Central point of contact between the USER and the IT Service Management. To handle incidents and requests, and provide an interface for their Service Management activities such as Change, Problem, Configuration, Release, Service Level and IT Service Continuity Management,
The Service Desk, unlike the other ten disciplines (Processes), is a function essential to effective Service Management. More than just a Help Desk, it is the principal operational interface between IT and their Users. A good first impression by each of its Users is predicted upon its performance and attitude. Often a stressful place for staff to work, underestimating its importance, high profile and the skills required to perform the duties well can severely hinder an organizations ability to deliver high quality It Service.
Service Level Management
The object of SLM (Service Level Management) is to maintain and gradually improve business aligned It Service quality, through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, reporting and reviewing IT service achievements and through investigating actions eradicate unacceptable levels of service.
SLM is responsible for ensuring that the service targets are documented and agreed in SLAs and monitors and reviews the actual service levels achieved against their SLA targets, SLM should also be trying to proactively improve all the service levels within the imposed cost constraints. SLM is the process that manages and improves agreed level of service between two parties, the provider and the receiver of a service.
Capacity Management
The objective of Capacity Management is to understand the future business requirements (the required service delivery), the organization's operation (the current service delivery), the IT infrastructure (the means of service delivery), and ensure that all current and future capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are provided cost effectively.
Capacity Management is responsible for ensuring that IT processing and storage capacity provision match the evolving demands of the business in a cost effective and timely manger. the process includes monitoring the performance and the throughput of the It services and supporting IT components, tuning activities to make efficient use of resources, understanding the current demands for IT resources and deriving forecasts for future requirements, influencing the demands of resource in conjunction with other Service Management processes, and producing a capacity plan predicting the IT Resources needed to achieve agreed service levels.
Capacity Management have three main areas of responsibility, First of these is BCM , which sit responsible for ensuring that the future business requirements for IT services are considered, planned and implemented in a timely fashion. These future requirements will come from business plans outlining new services, improvement and growth in existing services, development plans etc...,. This ensures knowledge of existing service levels and SLAs , future service levels and SLRs, the Business and Capacity plans , modeling techniques (Analytical, Simulation, Trending and Baselining), and application sizing methods.
The second main area of responsibility is SCM, which focuses on managing the performance of the IT services provided to the Customers, and is responsible for monitoring and measuring services, as detailed in the SLA and collecting recording, analyzing and reporting on data. This required knowledge of service levels and SLAs, systems, networks, service throughput and performance, monitoring, measurement, analysis, tuning and demand management.
The Third and final main area of responsibility is RCM, which focuses on management of the components of the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure are monitored and measured, and collected data is recorded, analyzed and reported. This requires knowledge of the current technology and its utilization, future of alternative technologies, and the resilience of systems and services.
Financial Management
The objective of Financial Management for IT Services is to provide cost effective stewardship of the IT assets and the financial resources used in providing IT Services.
Availability Management
The objective of Availability Management is to optimize the capability of the IT infrastructure and supporting organization to deliver a cause effective and sustained level of availability that enables the business to satisfy its objectives.
Availability Management ensures services are available when the customer needs them and is influenced by business demands, the cost required to meet it, the confirmation and complexity of the IT infrastructure including the level of redundancy, the reliability of the infrastructure and its components, and the levels of infrastructure maintenance, the processes and procedures used by the IT Services and the human factors and external events.
IT Service continuity Management
The object of IT Service Continuity Management is to support the overall Business Continuity Management process by ensuring that the required IT Technical and services facilities can be recovered within required and agreed business time-scales.
IT Service Continuity Management is concerned with managing an organization's ability to continue to provide a pre-determined and agreed level of IT services to support the minimum business requirements, following an interruption to the business. This includes ensuring business survival by reducing the impact of a disaster or major failure, reducing the vulnerability and risk to the business by effective risk analysis and risk management, preventing the loss of Customer and User confidence, and producing IT recovery plans that are integrated with and fully support the organization’s overall Business Continuity plan.
IT Service Continuity is responsible for ensuring that the available IT service Continuity options are understood and the most appropriate solution is chosen in support of the business requirements. It is also responsible for identifying roles and responsibilities and making sure these are endorsed and communicated from a senior level to ensure respect and commitment for the process. Finally IT Service Continuity is responsible for guaranteeing that the IT recovery plans and the Business continuity Plans are aligned, and are regularly reviewed, revised and tested.
I want to talk about ITIL as it could be good to use in our Open Source life , in managing our Open Source applications/Projects and their support (community support).
I wish that we come with another standard that is Open standard on this issue as ITIL is a proprietary methodology and it's resources and certifications are really expensive.
ITIL is the It Infrastructure Library. ITIL is a Registered Trade Mark and a community Trade Mark of the office of Government Commerce Developed in late 1980s, by the mid 1990's it had become the world wide de facto standard in service management. ITIL has become as popular as it is a public domain framework which is scaleable. Very large organization, very small organizations and everything in between have implemented ITIL processes. ITIL focuses on best practice, and as such can be adapted and adopted in different ways according to each individual organizations need.
ITIL doesn't tell you what to do or how to do your business, but it gives a guide lines and main units that must exist to be able to do the job the right way-at least according to ITIL standards-, but it doesn't tell you how to do it internally. So it is suitable for any organization and any kind of business you are running not only IT.
ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a set of best practices stands for Information Technology (IT) service management. The United Kingdom's Central Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA) Created ITIL in response to the growing dependence on Information Technology to meet business needs and goals. ITIL provides businesses with a customizable framework of best practices to achieve quality service and overcome difficulties associated with the growth of IT system. ITIL is organized into sets of texts which are defined by related functions: Service Support, Service Delivery, Managerial, Software Support, Computer Operations, Security Management, and Environmental. In addition to texts, ITIL services and products include training, qualifications and software tools, and user groups such as the IT Service Management Forum (itSMF)
While owned by the CCTA since the mid-1980s, ITIL is currently maintained and developed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)
The Service Management Section of ITIL is made up of eleven different disciplines, split into two sections, Service Support and Service Delivery:
Service Support
Configuration Management
Change Management
Release Management
Incident Management
Problem Management
Service Desk
Service Deliver
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Financial Management for IT Services
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Configuration Management
The object of Management is to provide a logical model of the It infrastructure by identifying, controlling, maintaining and verifying the version of all configuration items in existence. Configuration Management is used to account for all IT assets, to provide accurate information to support other service management processes, to provide a sound a base for Incident, Problem, change and Release Management, to verify records against infrastructure and to correct exceptions.
There are five basic activities of Configuration Management:
Planning: the configuration Management Plan should cover the next three to six months in details, and the following twelve months in outline. It should be reviewed at least twice a year and will include a strategy, policy, scope, objectives, roles and responsibilities, the configuration Management processes, activities and procedures, the CMBD, relationships with other processes and third parties, as well as tools and other resources requirements.
Identification: the selection, identification and labeling of all CIs. This covers the recording of information about CIs, including ownership, relationships, versions and unique identifiers. CIs should be recorded at a level of detail justified by the business need - typically to the level of "independent change"
Control: This gives the assurance that only authorized and identifiable CIs are accepted and recorded from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without the appropriate controlling documentation e.g. approved RFC, updated specification. All CIs will be under Change Management Control.
Status Accounting: The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with each CI throughout its life-cycle. It enables changes to CIs and tracking of their records through various statuses, e.g. ordered, received, under test, live, under repair, withdrawn or for disposal.
Verification and Audit: This is a serious of reviews and audits that verifies the physical existence of CIs, and checks that they are correctly recorded in the CMDB. It includes the process of verifying Release and Configuration documentation before changes are made to the live environment.
Change Management:
The object of Change Management is to ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and prompt handling of all changes, in order to minimize the impact of any related incidents upon service. Changes in the IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response to Problems or externally imposed requirements, e.g. legislative changes, or proactively from seeking imposed efficiency and effectiveness or to enable or reflect business initiatives, or from programmes, projects or service improvement initiatives. Change Management can ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures are used for all Changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changed, and maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of Changes.
Change Management is responsible for controlling Changes to all CIs within the live environment. It is not responsible for change within ongoing projects, which are controlled by the project change process. However close liaison between development project managers and the change Manager is expected. Change Management would typically comprise the raising and recording of changes, assessing the impact, cost, benefit and risk of proposed changes, developing business justification and obtaining approval, managing and co-ordinating change implementation, monitoring and reporting on implementation, reviewing and closing RFC.
Release Management
The object of Release Management is to take a holistic view of a change to an IT service and ensure that all aspects of a Release, both technical and no-technical, are considered together.
Release Management should be used for large or critical hardware roll-outs, major software roll-outs and building or batching related sets of changes. Release management co-ordinates the many service providers and suppliers involved with a significant Release of hardware, software and associated documentation across distributed environment.
Release Management is responsible for planning and overseeing the successful roll-out of new and changed software and associated hardware and documentation, liaison with Change Management to agree exact content and roll-out plan for the Release, ensuring that all items being rolled out of changed are secure and traceable via the CMDB and managing Customers and Users expectations of Releases and roll-outs.
Incident Management
The object of Incident Management is to restore normal service to operation as quickly as possible with minimum disruption to the business, thus ensuring that the best achievable levels of availability and service are maintained.
Incident Management should be used to ensure the best of use of resources to support the business, to develop and maintain meaningful records relating to Incidents, and to devise and apply a consistent approach to all Incidents reported
Incident Management is responsible for Incident detection and recording, classification of all Incidents, and initial support, investigation and diagnoses, resolution and recovery, incident closure, and incident ownership, monitoring, tracking and communication.
Problem Management
The objective of Problem Management is to minimize the adverse effect on the business of Incidents and Problems caused by errors in the infrastructure, and to proactively prevent the occurrence of Incidents, Problems and errors
Problem Management should be used to resolve problems quickly and effectively, to ensure resources are prioritized to resolve Problems in the most appropriate order based on business needs, to proactively identify and resolve Problems and Known Errors thus minimizing incident occurrences, to improve the productivity of support staff and to provide relevant management information and for sure increases Availability time.
Problem Management is responsible for Problem identification, recording, classification, investigation and diagnosis. Problem Management is also concerned with error identification, recording, assessment, recording of resolution, closure, monitoring resolution progress, assistance with the handling of major incidents, proactive prevention of problems through trend analysis, targeting support action and providing information to the organization, as well as obtaining management information from problem data and completing major problem reviews, and helps the IT Service Continuity Management.
Service Desk
The objective of Service Desk is it acts as the Central point of contact between the USER and the IT Service Management. To handle incidents and requests, and provide an interface for their Service Management activities such as Change, Problem, Configuration, Release, Service Level and IT Service Continuity Management,
The Service Desk, unlike the other ten disciplines (Processes), is a function essential to effective Service Management. More than just a Help Desk, it is the principal operational interface between IT and their Users. A good first impression by each of its Users is predicted upon its performance and attitude. Often a stressful place for staff to work, underestimating its importance, high profile and the skills required to perform the duties well can severely hinder an organizations ability to deliver high quality It Service.
Service Level Management
The object of SLM (Service Level Management) is to maintain and gradually improve business aligned It Service quality, through a constant cycle of agreeing, monitoring, reporting and reviewing IT service achievements and through investigating actions eradicate unacceptable levels of service.
SLM is responsible for ensuring that the service targets are documented and agreed in SLAs and monitors and reviews the actual service levels achieved against their SLA targets, SLM should also be trying to proactively improve all the service levels within the imposed cost constraints. SLM is the process that manages and improves agreed level of service between two parties, the provider and the receiver of a service.
Capacity Management
The objective of Capacity Management is to understand the future business requirements (the required service delivery), the organization's operation (the current service delivery), the IT infrastructure (the means of service delivery), and ensure that all current and future capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are provided cost effectively.
Capacity Management is responsible for ensuring that IT processing and storage capacity provision match the evolving demands of the business in a cost effective and timely manger. the process includes monitoring the performance and the throughput of the It services and supporting IT components, tuning activities to make efficient use of resources, understanding the current demands for IT resources and deriving forecasts for future requirements, influencing the demands of resource in conjunction with other Service Management processes, and producing a capacity plan predicting the IT Resources needed to achieve agreed service levels.
Capacity Management have three main areas of responsibility, First of these is BCM , which sit responsible for ensuring that the future business requirements for IT services are considered, planned and implemented in a timely fashion. These future requirements will come from business plans outlining new services, improvement and growth in existing services, development plans etc...,. This ensures knowledge of existing service levels and SLAs , future service levels and SLRs, the Business and Capacity plans , modeling techniques (Analytical, Simulation, Trending and Baselining), and application sizing methods.
The second main area of responsibility is SCM, which focuses on managing the performance of the IT services provided to the Customers, and is responsible for monitoring and measuring services, as detailed in the SLA and collecting recording, analyzing and reporting on data. This required knowledge of service levels and SLAs, systems, networks, service throughput and performance, monitoring, measurement, analysis, tuning and demand management.
The Third and final main area of responsibility is RCM, which focuses on management of the components of the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure are monitored and measured, and collected data is recorded, analyzed and reported. This requires knowledge of the current technology and its utilization, future of alternative technologies, and the resilience of systems and services.
Financial Management
The objective of Financial Management for IT Services is to provide cost effective stewardship of the IT assets and the financial resources used in providing IT Services.
Availability Management
The objective of Availability Management is to optimize the capability of the IT infrastructure and supporting organization to deliver a cause effective and sustained level of availability that enables the business to satisfy its objectives.
Availability Management ensures services are available when the customer needs them and is influenced by business demands, the cost required to meet it, the confirmation and complexity of the IT infrastructure including the level of redundancy, the reliability of the infrastructure and its components, and the levels of infrastructure maintenance, the processes and procedures used by the IT Services and the human factors and external events.
IT Service continuity Management
The object of IT Service Continuity Management is to support the overall Business Continuity Management process by ensuring that the required IT Technical and services facilities can be recovered within required and agreed business time-scales.
IT Service Continuity Management is concerned with managing an organization's ability to continue to provide a pre-determined and agreed level of IT services to support the minimum business requirements, following an interruption to the business. This includes ensuring business survival by reducing the impact of a disaster or major failure, reducing the vulnerability and risk to the business by effective risk analysis and risk management, preventing the loss of Customer and User confidence, and producing IT recovery plans that are integrated with and fully support the organization’s overall Business Continuity plan.
IT Service Continuity is responsible for ensuring that the available IT service Continuity options are understood and the most appropriate solution is chosen in support of the business requirements. It is also responsible for identifying roles and responsibilities and making sure these are endorsed and communicated from a senior level to ensure respect and commitment for the process. Finally IT Service Continuity is responsible for guaranteeing that the IT recovery plans and the Business continuity Plans are aligned, and are regularly reviewed, revised and tested.
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