ITIL Overview

Presented By: ADNAN ABBAS

Today’s TopicsIT Organizations Current ChallengesIT Organization focus Today vs TomorrowService & IT Service ManagementITIL

HistoryProblem DefinitionWHY ITILTen Core processes of ITILService Lifecycle

Key Concepts to understandCORE ITSM Components

•Service Strategy•Service Design•Service Transition•Service Operation•Continual Service Improvement•Benefits of These Core Components•Change Management Process explained in ITIL•Helpdesk Management Process explained in ITIL•Benefits of ITSM•Conclusions and Recommendations

Today’s Topics

Business Challenges

IT Responsibilities

Minimizing risk in a dynamic business scenario

Minimizing cost & time-to-market

Improving ROI

Increasing Business Performance

IT enables the business to meet its goals

Ensuring a stable & flexible IT environment

Optimizing resources & costs

Minimizing costs & complexity

Adapting quickly to changing needs

IT Organization Current Challenges

The IT organization of the future will have a different

focus

SERVICE

“ A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating the outcomes that customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.”

What is an IT Service?

An "IT Service" is a set of IT-related functions (HW & SW)

User Web Server Application Server Database Server

What is IT Service Management?IT Service Management is the totality

of IT Service Provision, including the management of the infrastructure and the environment

IT Service IT Service IT Service IT Service

INFRASTRUCTURE ENVIRONMENT

Good IT Service Management ensures that Customerrequirements; and expectations are met with consistency.

IT Service Management Objectives

•To align IT Services with the current and future needs of the Business and its Customers•To improve the quality of the IT services delivered•To reduce the long term cost of service provision

Needs

Cost Quality

Key Elements

Customer / End UsersService Manager / Team

PEOPLE Production Acceptance

TeamExecutive Sponsor

Change Control

Hardware

Problem Management Software

PROCESS PRODUCTS

Project Manager / TeamSuppliers / Outsourcers

Capacity Planning

ConfigurationManagement

PARTNERS

Tools / Technology

ITIL : Information Technology Infrastructure Library

• Developed in late 1980s in the UK in response to growing dependence on IT

• Now a public body of knowledge for Service Management best practices

• Helps organizations improve service levels and reduce the cost of IT operations

• A framework, defining ten interlocking processes for service support and service delivery

• Also provides guidance on IT security, business management

• The ten ITIL processes are described in two volumes:

- Service Support focuses on management of essential operational processes

- Service Delivery on strategic management of the IT services

The History behind ITIL

1980s

1990s

2000s

ITIL Version 1 ITIL

Version 2

British civilservice

10+30 books2+N books

The NetherlandsRest of the

world

ITILVersion 3

2+N books

Defining the Problem

WHY ITIL? Because IT is critical to the Business

ITIL is process-oriented

Processes

Roles

People

Subtasks

Leaders

Middle mgmt

Employees

Areas of work

ITIL

Tra

dit

ion

ally

Top-down, controllingareas of responsibilityTask-oriented, non-hierarchical

Ten core processes of ITIL (… and one function)

Service Desk

Incident mgmt

Problem mgmt

Config. mgmt

Change mgmt

Release mgmt

Service Level mgmt

Financial mgmtfor IT-services

Capacity mgmt

IT Services Continuity mgmt

Availability mgmt

ITIL

What ITIL is not?A complete blue-print, but bricks and

material from which you can build your own building depending on your needs.

A quick fix, but a set of processes that you have to build into the mind-set of your employees, and which must be continually updated and improved.

Something you buy, although you can buy help to implement it, the core of the work is changing your own organization and how it thinks and functions.

Another method of control, but a way of setting up your organizaton so that it works towards the goals without controlling management.

ITIL Service Lifecycle

Five Phases of ITILv3

ITIL: the process improvement program

Typical program elements

People • Allocate roles and responsibilities (reorganization?)

• Align skills to business needs

• Organize ITIL training and motivation

• Project/change management

Processes • Define processes and process tasks and document

• Define process metrics/KPIs

• Integrate process information

• Initiate customer survey cycle

Tools • Process automation, process integration

• Asset management repository

• Configuration management database (CMDB)

• Business service definition and mapping

“ Think of ITIL not as a destination, but as a vehicle you can use to help you travel more quickly and efficiently on your ongoing journey of continuously improving service levels”

ITIL is a CATALYST for transforming IT.Traditionally IT has operated in functional silos with separate goals and objectives. But in Today’s environment, IT is changed with transforming itself into a service oriented culture, where cross functional teams are unified in the common pursuit of service excellence and business alignment.

ITIL is DESCRIPTIVE versus

PRESCRIPTIVE

ITIL describes what needs to be done to improve service,BUT

It does not explain how to do it.

Key ConceptsConfiguration Management System (CMS)

Tools and databases to manage IT service provider’s configuration data

Contains Configuration Management Database (CMDB)Records hardware, software, documentation and anything else

important to IT provision

ReleaseCollection of hardware, software, documentation, processes

or other things require to implement one or more approved changes to IT Services

Key ConceptsIncident

Unplanned interruption to an IT service or an unplanned reduction in its quality

Work-aroundReducing or eliminating the impact of an incident without

resolving itProblem

Unknown underlying cause of one or more incidents

Key Concepts

Processes(s): are structured sets of activities designed to achieve a specific objective. Function(s): are self-contained subsets of an organization intended to accomplish specific tasks. They usually take the form of a team or group of people and the tools they use.

“Processes help organizations accomplish specific objectives often across multiple functional groups”whereas“Functions add structure and stability to organization”

•Roles: are defined collections of specific responsibilities and privileges. Roles may be held by individuals or teams. Individuals and teams may hold more than one role. ITIL® emphasizes a number of standard roles include, most importantly: •Service Owner -- Accountable for the overall design, performance, integration, improvement, and management of a single service. •Process Owner -- Accountable for the overall design, performance, integration, improvement, and management of a single process. •Service Manager -- Accountable for the development, performance, and improvement of all services in the environment. •Product Manager – Accountable for development, performance, and improvement of a group of related services.

Key Concepts

More RolesBusiness Relationship ManagerService Asset & Configuration

Service Asset ManagerService Knowledge ManagerConfiguration ManagerConfiguration AnalystConfiguration LibrarianCMS tools administrator

CORE ITSM COMPONENTS

What are we going to provide? Can we afford it? Can we provide enough of it? How do we gain competitive advantage? Perspective

Vision, mission and strategic goals Position Plan Pattern

Must fit organisational culture

Resources Things you buy or pay for IT Infrastructure, people, money Tangible Assets

Capabilities Things you grow Ability to carry out an activity Intangible assets Transform resources into Services

Prioritises and manages investments and resource allocation

Proposed services are properly assessed Business Case

Existing Services Assessed. Outcomes: Replace Rationalise Renew Retire

Service Design

• How are we going to provide it?• How are we going to build it?• How are we going to test it?• How are we going to deploy it?

Processes in Service Design

• Availability Management• Capacity Management• ITSCM (disaster recovery)• Supplier Management• Service Level Management• Information Security Management• Service Catalogue Management

Service Level Management• Service Level Agreement

– Operational Level Agreements• Internal

– Underpinning Contracts• External Organisation• Supplier Management

– Can be an annexe to a contract– Should be clear and fair and written in easy-to-

understand, unambiguous language• Success of SLM (KPIs)

– How many services have SLAs?– How does the number of breaches of SLA change over

time (we hope it reduces!)?

Things you might find in an SLA

Types of SLA

• Service-based– All customers get same deal for same services

• Customer-based– Different customers get different deal (and

different cost)

• Multi-level– These involve corporate, customer and service

levels and avoid repetition

Right Capacity, Right Time, Right Cost!

• This is capacity management• Balances Cost against Capacity so minimises

costs while maintaining quality of service

Is it available?

• Ensure that IT services matches or exceeds agreed targets

• Lots of Acronyms– Mean Time Between Service Incidents– Mean Time Between Failures– Mean Time to Restore Service

• Resilience increases availability– Service can remain functional even though one or

more of its components have failed

ITSCM – what?

• IT Service Continuity Management• Ensures resumption of services within agreed

timescale• Business Impact Analysis informs decisions

about resources– E.g. Stock Exchange can’t afford 5 minutes

downtime but 2 hours downtime probably wont badly affect a departmental accounts office or a college bursary

Standby for liftoff...

• Cold– Accommodation and environment ready but no IT

equipment

• Warm– As cold plus backup IT equipment to receive data

• Hot– Full duplexing, redundancy and failover

Information Security Management

• Confidentiality– Making sure only those authorised can see data

• Integrity– Making sure the data is accurate and not

corrupted

• Availability– Making sure data is supplied when it is requested

Service Transition

Build Deployment Testing User acceptance Bed-in

Good service transition

Set customer expectations Enable release integration Reduce performance variation Document and reduce known errors Minimise risk Ensure proper use of services Some things excluded

Swapping failed device Adding new user Installing standard software

Knowledge management

Vital to enabling the right information to be provided at the right place and the right time to the right person to enable informed decision

Stops data being locked away with individuals

Obvious organisational advantage

Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom

Wisdom cannot be assisted by technology – it only comes with experience!

Service Knowledge Information Management System is crucial to retaining this extremely valuable information

Service Asset and Configuration Managing these properly is key Provides Logical Model of Infrastructure

and Accurate Configuration information Controls assets Minimised costs Enables proper change and release

management Speeds incident and problem resolution

Configuration Management System

BASELINE

A Baseline is a “last known good configuration”

But the CMS will always be a “work in progress” and probably always out of date.

Current configuration will always be the most recent baseline plus any implemented approved changes

Change Management – or what we all get wrong! Respond to customers changing business

requirements Respond to business and IT requests for

change that will align the services with the business needs

Roles Change Manager Change Authority

Change Advisory Board (CAB) Emergency CAB (ECAB)

80% of service interruption is caused by operator error or poor change control (Gartner)

Change Types

Normal Non-urgent, requires approval

Standard Non-urgent, follows established path, no

approval needed Emergency

Requires approval but too urgent for normal procedure

Change Advisory Board

Change Manager (VITAL) One or more of

Customer/User User Manager Developer/Maintainer Expert/Consultant Contractor

CAB considers the 7 R’s Who RAISED?, REASON, RETURN, RISKS,

RESOURCES, RESPONSIBLE, RELATIONSHIPS to other changes

Release Management

Release is a collection of authorised and tested changes ready for deployment

A rollout introduces a release into the live environment

Full Release e.g. Office 2007

Delta (partial) release e.g. Windows Update

Package e.g. Windows Service Pack

Phased or Big Bang?

Phased release is less painful but more work

Deployment can be manual or automatic

Automatic can be push or pull Release Manager will produce a release

policy Release MUST be tested and NOT by

the developer or the change instigator

Service Operation

• Maintenance• Management• Realises Strategic Objectives and is where the

Value is seen

Processes in Service Operation

• Incident Management• Problem Management• Event Management• Request Fulfilment• Access Management

Functions in Service Operation

• Service Desk• Technical Management• IT Operations Management• Applications Management

Service Operation Balances

Incident Management

• Deals with unplanned interruptions to IT Services or reductions in their quality

• Failure of a configuration item that has not impacted a service is also an incident (e.g. Disk in RAID failure)

• Reported by:– Users– Technical Staff– Monitoring Tools

Event Management

• 3 Types of events– Information– Warning– Exception

• Can we give examples?• Need to make sense of events and have

appropriate control actions planned and documented

Request Fulfilment

• Information, advice or a standard change• Should not be classed as Incidents or Changes• Can we give more examples?

Problem Management

• Aims to prevent problems and resulting incidents• Minimises impact of unavoidable incidents• Eliminates recurring incidents• Proactive Problem Management

– Identifies areas of potential weakness– Identifies workarounds

• Reactive Problem Management– Indentifies underlying causes of incidents– Identifies changes to prevent recurrence

Access Management

• Right things for right users at right time• Concepts

– Access– Identity (Authentication, AuthN)– Rights (Authorisation, AuthZ)– Service Group– Directory

Service Desk• Local, Central or Virtual• Examples?• Single point of contact• Skills for operators

– Customer Focus– Articulate– Interpersonal Skills (patient!)– Understand Business– Methodical/Analytical– Technical knowledge– Multi-lingual

• Service desk often seen as the bottom of the pile– Bust most visible to customers so important to get right!

Continual Service Improvement

• Focus on Process owners and Service Owners• Ensures that service management processes

continue to support the business• Monitor and enhance Service Level

Achievements• Plan – do –check – act (Deming)

Service Measurement

• Technology (components, MTBF etc)• Process (KPIs - Critical Success Factors)• Service (End-to end, e.g. Customer Satisfaction)• Why?

– Validation – Soundness of decisions– Direction – of future activities– Justify – provide factual evidence– Intervene – when changes or corrections are needed

Benefits of ITIL Service Strategy Alignment of new & changing services to

organizational strategy Supports business cases for investment Resolves conflicting demands for services Improves service quality by strategic planning Ensures that organizations can manage the costs

and risks associated with their Service Portfolios

Benefits of ITIL Service Design Agreeing service level agreements with

internal departments and external third party suppliers

Measuring IT quality in business terms Reduced total cost of ownership

Improved quality/consistency of service

Improved IT governance

More effective Service Management

Benefits of ITIL Service Transition Align the new or changed service with the

Organization’s requirements & business operations

Ability to adapt quickly to new service requirements

Improved success rate of changes Improved organisational agility and flexibility Provides a consistent & rigorous framework for

evaluating the service capability & risk before a new or changed service is released

Benefits of ITIL Service Operation• Delivering & managing services at agreed

levels to Organizational customers & users• Management & monitoring of the technology

that is used to deliver & support services• Management of Incidents, including Major

Incidents, & ensuring recovery of service• Ensuring the appropriate IT organisation is in

place to support the overall service requirements of the Organization

• Cost-effective Service Delivery

Benefits of ITIL Continual Service Improvement

Commitment to ongoing service quality Ongoing improvements to service & supporting

processes Review & implementation of appropriate

business-focused service measures ROI (Return on Investment) VOI (Value on Investment) Continual improvement becomes part of

“Business as Usual”

Change Management process explained in ITIL

• It is one of the most central and most important ITIL processes

• Everything that changes a status in a CI in CMDB in ITIL• Change mgr should have a good broad overview, some

in-depth knowlegde in key areas, and know lots of the local history.

Relationship to other processes

Changemgmt

Releasemgmt

Config.mgmt

Problem mgmt

Incident mgmt

Capacity mgmt

Availability mgmtIT servicecont mgmt

Service levelmgmt

Goal

• Ensure that all changes are performed in a structured, documented and well-planned process.

• Balance between flexibility (what needs to be done right now) and stability (so that changes does not break anything.

Rôles

• Change manager• Change coordinator• Change Advisory Board (CAB)

– Change mgr, Service Level mgr, repr/service desk, repr/problem mgmt, management, business rep, user reps, development rep, system administrators, vendor reps.

• CAB/Emergency Commitee (CAB/EC)– Only the most essential members of CAB.

ActivitiesRFC submission, Recording

Acceptance; filtering RFCs

Confi

gura

tion

mgm

t pro

cess

es in

fo

and

mon

itors

the

stat

us o

f CIs

Classification, category and priority

Urgent?

Planning; Impact and Resources

Coor

dina

tion

Build Test

Implement Working

Evaluation and Close

Rejection,possibly new RFC

Start back-outplan

Urgent procedures

Yes

No

Registration of an RFC

• Identification number• References to problems and known errors• Description and references to CIs involved• Rationale for the change• Current and future CIs that will be changed• Name and contact info for the person that

suggested the RFC• Date etc• Overview of resource usage and time estimates

Acceptance

The process of accepting an RFC, has as its goal to filter out proposed changes that are

incomplete, impractival, impossible, too expensive, unclear, that is untimely (must

wait to a better time), or that has unwanted consequences.

Further information in an RFC

• Data on categorization and priority• Estimate on how it will affect the rest of the system• Recommendations from change mgr• History of the handling of this RFC, including acceptance and

autorization• Plans for backup• Requirements for maintenance• Plan for implementation• Roles for the implementation phase, including casts• Timing for the implementation• Timing for evaluation• Test results and observed problems• If the change is rejected, a reason why• Information on scenarios and evaluation

Classification

Priority:• Low (postponable)• Normal • High • Urgent (must do

now)

Categories• Low impact• Significant impact• Great impact

Planning and Acceptance

Three levels of acceptance:• Financial (can we

afford this? Cost/benefit?)

• Technical (is it doable and is it smart to do it?)

• Business (is it constructive compared to focus of what we do as an organization?)

• Forward Schedule of Change (FSC): overview over future, planned changes

• CAB should discuss: 1. Unautorized changes2. Autorized changes that

shortcut the CAB3. RFCs for review in CAB4. Changes that is open or that

was recently closed. 5. Review of changes that have

been implemented.

Coordination

Key notions:• Iterative process• Should be tested in a

laboratory• Holistic view: SW, HW,

docs, procedures etc…• RFC is the plan that

controls the changes• No change without a RFC

Build

Test

Implement

Evaluation

There should be a Post-implementation Review (PIR) after the completion of the change. This must be governed by the CAB.

• Was the goals for the change achieved?

• What is (if relevant) the satisfaction of the users?

• Was any side effects discovered after this change?

• Was the change on budget and on time?

• Are there any points to follow up?

Standard changes

• For small, structured, frequent, trivial and easily understandable changes, it is possible to give acceptance in advance – as a standard change.

• Std chg are like templates or procedures which are to be used in certain, predefined situations with-out further process.

• Std chg must be logged, but Change mgr is not involved in each specific case.

Emergency changes

• If absolutely necessary, every non-essential, non-technical stage can be circumvented …

• … but the procedures for such must be defined for the organization in advance:– CAB/EC is a sub-set of CAB and it is easier to arrange for

a meeting – Change mgr can make decisions by himself– Testing, documentation etc can be done post factum.

• Important: all shortcuts must be evaluated afterwards.

Reporting

Reports:• Number of changes pr time

unit and pr CI• Overview of origin for

changes and RFCs• No of successful changes• No of back-outs• No of incidents that can be

related to changes• Graphs and trends

Performance indicators:• No of changes pr time unit.• Avg time to perform a

change• No of rejected changes• No of incidents that can be

related to changes• No of back-outs• Costs related to changes• Share of changes that is

within time and budget

Input and output

Changemgmt

RFC

CMDB

FSC (forward schedule of change)FSC

History

Reports

Triggers for other proc

HelpdeskIT-sysadmin-

staffCustomers

Single point ofentry

E-mailPhysicalaccess

TelephoneWebChatPorjects Interrupt-

controlled

To maintain control over the speed To make things more uniform for the users To prioritize between different tasks To get an overview over which tasks

remains To limit interruptions to a small part of

the organization Centralize expertize on user

communication

Not everybody is suitable for work there …

Consider interior and location Estimate sufficient staffing Announce it actively, target user groups Monitor it for performance Use relevant tools to support the

helpdesk

If we stopped caring about the customers, maybe they would stop bothering us?

Location An area where lots of people pass by Preferably a neutral area

Interior: Sufficient room (space and air) Friendly colors and furniture No ’hang-arounds’, ’old friends’ or

’pentioneers’

Ratio between helpdesk staff and users depends on the situation:

University environment (emploees): 50-100

Students: 300-2000 ISP: 5000-50000Note: these numbers are only examples

(and they change all the time)

“Nobody” read thedocumentation

Docs must beEspecially designed

Location

Timing

Repetition

Variation

Focus

Briefness

Comprehensible Relevance &Usefulness

Number of customers by helpdesk staffer

Volume of contact, and the change over time to this volume

Degree of fulfillment of SLA Need for personalized training and

education Share of incidents that is escalated

Problem

Symptom

Error message

First feedback

Analysis

Fixing Final feedback

Closure

1 minute

10 minutes

1 hour

Note: the timesgiven is just examples for discussion

Priority Ownership Contact-info and

customer info Timestamps Refs to CIs Status Categorizations History

Connect similar cases Close old cases Dispatch cases Make statistics Search in old cases Prioritize between

cases Escalate cases

Coverage – How many are covered by the error (1 – 5 – 100 – all)?

Severity – what is the consequence if the error is not corrected (beauty-error – inconvenience – error – crisis)?

Frequency – how often does this error ocurr? (continually – daily – monthly – once)?

Status – how important is the reporter of the error (your boss -- paying – non-paying)

New

Open

More info

Archived

ClosedWait

In work

Analysed

Which machines and applications Who can contact the helpdesk Where can they get help When can they get help How long must they expect to wait How is the incident escalated

WelcomeProblem

identificationPlanning and

execution Verification

Greet them ClassificationDescriptionVerification

AlternativesSelection a

SolutionImplementation

By sysadminBy userClosure

This phase is often under-estimated (But, it is just a nice ’hello’)

It is often a critical phase – it is a first impression, and some users can easily feel dismissed.

If done well, it will facilitate the next message from that user.

1. Classification – which area is this problem within. Might be partly automatic

2. Description – Make a short and explicit description of the incident,

3. Verification – check that the problem is reproducible

Suggest different solutions – maybe on temporary for ’today’ and a possible permanent for the future. Often a task for experts

Select a solution – prioritize between the solutions, involve the user, and a suitable solution.

Execution – let a sysadmin execute the solution if neccessary, or otherwise help the user

Sysadm-verification – Let those who have changed something or suggested a solution test it before forwarding it to the user

User-verification – Let the user himself test the solution, and come with feedback on whether the solution worked or not.

The bogeyman – frightens the user away … no workThe forwarder – sends the user somewhere elseThe assumptionist – knows what the problem is, even

without having studied the problem and symptomsThe conceptualist – who fixes minor things by

changing ’everything’ The typo-ist – who never is able to write docs,

commands, or scripts without typos.Hit-and-run-Sysadm – comes, writes commands, runs

(doesn’t tests)The Sandman – closes ticket – nice and quetly

The Benefits of ITSMCut IT costs•Streamline IT support through automation of processes•Optimize resource usage through better visibility and planning•Measure, monitor and reduce cost of service provision

Maximize productivity and customer retention through better services and support•External IT support is more responsive and consistent, increasing customer satisfaction and retention•Internal IT support is more effective, keeping business users productive and increasing capacity to generate revenue

Gain a competitive edge through increased agility•Become more responsive to the needs of the business•Streamline IT support and drive a transformation from reactive to proactive IT•Take new lines of business to market quicker through faster delivery of supporting IT services

Mitigate risk and ensure business continuity•Plan changes and assess impact•Escalate decision-making to management

Conclusions and recommendations

ITIL is an enabler for process improvementA combination of processes/people/tools is requiredOnly tools can provide effective automationThe tool investments will generate ROI, not the “ITIL

project”Always measure your progress by measuring before and

after process improvementsIT process planning tool — other departments may

already have a tool to plan/measure business processes

ITIL v3 Certification Roadmap

Thank You