ITIL Core Concepts

ITIL Core Concepts

Services : Services are a means of delivering value to customers without requiring the customer to own specific of the costs and risks.

Service Management :Service Management is a set of specialized capabilities for delivering value to customers in the form of services. ITIL® is a framework for IT Service Management.

ITIL as a Good Practice Framework : Good practices are best practices which have gained wide acceptance and adoption. In short, Good Practices have withstood the test of time. Good Practices may come from a number of sources including:

 Standards

 Public frameworks

 Academic research

 Proprietary knowledge

The Service Lifecycle :The core of ITIL® is structured around a Service Lifecycle which consists of the five phases shown in the illustration below. Each lifecycle phase is discussed in more detail later in this study guide. The Service Lifecycle organizes activity around services as the services move from concept through the live environment and into retirement. The ITIL® ‘core’ documentation consists of five volumes representing each of the phases of the Service Lifecycle

Processes : Processes are structured sets of activities designed to achieve a specific objective.

Processes have four basic characteristics:

1. They transform inputs into outputs

2. They deliver results to a specific customer or stakeholder

3. They are measurable

4. They are triggered by specific events

ITIL® addresses a number of specific processes associated with each lifecycle phase, but also discusses processes in terms of their generic structure shown in the three-layered model below.

 Process Control, such as process policies, ownership, documentation, review programs, etc.

 The Process itself including process steps, procedures, work instructions, roles, triggers, metrics, inputs, and outputs.

 Process Enablers such as resources and capabilities required to support the process.

ITIL Processes by Lifecycle Phase

Lifecycle Phase		Processes
Service Strategy :		 Service Strategy  Service Portfolio Management  Demand Management  Financial Management
Service Design :		 Service Catalog Management  Service Level Management  Availability Management  Capacity Management  Service Continuity Management  IT Security Management  Supplier Management
Service Transition :		 Change Management  Service Asset and Configuration Management  Release and Deployment Management  Transition Planning and Support *  Service Validation and Testing *  Evaluation *  Knowledge Management *
Service Operation :		 Incident Management  Problem Management  Event Management  Service Request Fulfillment  Access Management
Continual Service Improvement		 The Seven Step Improvement Process

Functions : Functions 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. Whereas processes help organizations accomplish specific objectives--often across multiple functional groups--functions add structure and stability to organizations. Functions generally map fairly directly to the organizational chart of an organization and are usually supported by budgets and reporting structures. Processes, by contract, typically do not have budgets and reporting structures. Both functions and processes involve roles.

Roles : 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.