What is ITIL? Everything you Need to Know

These days, it goes without saying that the worlds of business and technology are inextricably linked. In order to stay competitive, a company needs to be able to evolve both its corporate objectives and IT capabilities, no matter how painful or awkward this process may be.

Naturally, this kind of change cannot start with a blank canvas. The development of IT services should be driven by an awareness of current processes and management practices within an organization. Without this, an IT Service Management (ITSM) process will inevitably waste time, money and effort, giving competitors a chance to lure customers away with more efficient offerings.

The ‘Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)’ is a set of ITSM practices utilized by some of the most high-profile organizations in the world, including HSBC, IBM and even NASA. Originally released as a series of books, ITIL was designed to standardize the procedures for good IT management, helping businesses to avoid the most common pitfalls in order to deliver the best quality services possible.

Split over several levels and modules itil foundation covers everything from service strategies to continuous improvement, enabling practitioners to not only adapt IT service infrastructures, but also prepare for further changes down the line. This can help to foster sustainable productivity for businesses and create a better, more consistent experience for customers.

Since the late 1980s, the ITIL practices have become highly renowned, with tens of thousands of practitioners becoming certified around the world. It is now owned by AXELOS, a joint venture created by the Cabinet Office in 2013.

So What Exactly is ITIL?

The ‘Information Technology Infrastructure Library’ is a set of best practices for creating and improving an ITSM process. It is designed to help businesses manage risks, strengthen customer relations, establish cost-effective practices and build stable IT environments for growth, scale and change. In short, an ITIL Practitioner is an expert in continually shaping IT service development processes.

The main strength of ITIL likes in its versatility. The practices are scalable and flexible, allowing organizations to take on as much or as little of them as they like. ITIL can even be adapted to work in conjunction with other practices, including COBIT, Six Sigma and TOGAF.

An important thing to keep in mind is that ITIL is not built around a specific business model. Rather, it is based on the collective experience of IT professionals. It has been applied across multiple industries, helped mainly by the fact that virtually every industry in the world now relies on IT in one form or another.

So, what is ITIL? It is a series of processes for refining and improving an IT service lifecycle. It helps to boost the capabilities of organizations, processes and people, ensuring that when changes to technology or business practices leave them vulnerable, they can adapt quickly and stay on top of the competition.

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How Does ITIL work?

The ITIL framework consists of five books, each focusing on a different element of the IT service lifecycle. They all support each other, providing practical guidelines for planning, instigating, and improving service or product development processes.

Service strategy – This is all about what you want your business to achieve and how. ITIL will help you to ally your IT department with your core business processes, including service portfolio management, financial management, and relationship management. It will help you to define the requirements of your organization, while also giving you the perspective required to predict how changes may impact your IT operations

Service design – This focuses on the design of IT services, including architectures, processes, policies, documentation, and continuity. It will help you to evaluate your services so that you can make sure that they meet the requirements of your organization. Crucially, you will also learn how to make it so that the services can be adapted whenever major changes or emergencies occur

Service transition – This stage looks at the steps between the end of an IT service development cycle and the point when the service goes live for users. For example, if you were updating hardware, would you also need to instigate software updates to make the transition go off without a hitch? The steps revolve around testing, evaluating and documenting changes, as well as knowledge management to ensure good decision making

Service operations – This is all about the day to day operations and management of your product or service, ensuring that you can provide it in accordance with the requirements established earlier on. The steps revolve around the principles, processes, operational activities, and functions required to ensure your service can perform. It will even help you to create a service level agreement (SLA) framework for your IT service desk. Keep in mind that in any IT endeavor, faults of some kind or another are usually inevitable. This phase will ensure that you have a well-founded problem management process in place for when this happens

Continual service improvements – Effective ITSM is not about completing a service development project and leaving it as-is. Instead, you should prepare yourself for continuous and ongoing improvements by capturing any repeatable processes and evaluating how they can be refined. To help with this, the final module of ITIL provides tools and guidance to evaluate risks and success factors within a service or product

For a full breakdown of the ITIL V3 certifications, take a look at our article – A Comprehensive Guide to ITIL V3 Certifications

What are the Differences Between ITIL V3 and ITIL 4?

In a nutshell, ITIL 4 is a refinement of ITIL V3 which aims to marry the framework more cleanly with modern ITSM. It is far more flexible, with a greater focus on customization and collaboration. It is also community-driven, with ITIL practitioners helping to update the framework by constantly factoring in additional developments in the world of IT.

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