Consider ITIL to Improve your IT Organization’s Efficiency, Service and Value

by Stephanie Piché, ITIL education evangelist, AmerIT Learning Corporation

The British are coming, the British are coming!
Yes, ITIL (pronounced it-il by the Brits and I-til by the Yanks) is another British invasion, only it is not a rock band – it is an information technology service management (ITSM) framework that brings people, processes and technology together.

Since the late ’80s, ITIL practitioners have grown in numbers with over 100,000 certified professionals worldwide. As the ITIL education evangelist for a training and certification company and the founding member of the Portland itSMF LIG, I am asked many questions about ITIL, from what is it, to how can it help us, and why do I need it? This article will answer the most common questions and act as a primer for those new to ITIL and those who want to network with other ITIL practitioners.

Q. Is ITIL the best solution for our company?

A. It depends what your goals are for your organization. Do you want to:

• Improve the efficiency of your IT organization,
• Deliver higher levels of service to your internal and external customers,
• Raise the value of IT within your organization,
• Gain more visibility of IT spending and budget-forecasting,
• And improve internal communication to ensure that the services we deliver are done so in the most cost-effective way?

If these are some of your goals, then looking at an ITIL adoption for your company is definitely going to be of benefit. ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) consists of nine books that focus on the framework and processes for IT service management. Most of these processes focus on the customer-focused IT service delivery and associated service support which cover the service desk (help desk), incident, problem, configuration, change, release management along with SLA, financial, capacity, availability, security, IT business continuity management.

Q. Why should we consider the implementation of ITIL in our organization?

A. ITIL has been adopted globally by many types of organizations to create structure and consistency in its IT service delivery.

ITIL helps create an organization with customer-focused delivery and support processes where the deliverables from the IT organization are mapped against the customer's requirements and are measured with a balanced scorecard for continuous process improvement. Organizations that have adopted ITIL have benefited from:

• Better alignment of IT services to corporate objectives
• More strategic role for IT in the organization
• More clarity in the return on investment for IT
• Increased accountability of IT spending
• Increased efficiency in IT service delivery activities

Q. How much does it cost to implement ITIL?
A. The answer is different for every organization and depends on the following criteria:

• What is the maturity level of the current end-to-end processes and how do they map against ITIL processes?
• What would you like to achieve with the implementation of ITIL processes and what level of maturity is desirable?
• How large is your organization? (How many IT staff, and how many clients and services?)
• What does the current culture look like? Is there a need for a cultural change?
• How high is the need for "business as usual"?

It is not a one-size-fits-all implementation; it is about cultural change and linking the IT activities to the business objectives.

Q. Which ITIL certification course should I attend?
A. At a minimum, you should attend an ITIL Foundation certificate course, available through the OTN. This is a 2.5-day course that gives you an overview of all ITIL processes and activities and prepares you for the ITIL Foundation certificate exam. This certificate is a prerequisite for the other certification courses.

Other certification courses offered are Practitioner and Service Manager and depending on your role and involvement in the ITIL implementation project vary.

There are also Awareness classes for the organization as a whole, as ITIL is a culture-changing business process and everyone should learn the new lingo and understand the benefits to the organization as a whole.

Simulations for culture change and experiencing ITIL in action
Studies show the effectiveness of different ways of learning, such as if you learn by doing, then 75% of all the knowledge and skills are still present and reproducible, while watching and listening results in only 25%; reading 10%; and listening only 5%.

ITIL simulation workshops take teams through the 10 processes during a day-long simulation. Teams learn to understand the value of a balanced scorecard and continuous process improvement while encouraging increased communication and team building. This helps to break down the silos and help change cultures. Experiencing ITIL in action during these workshops help organizations increase maturity and time to benefit.

Here is the Who’s Who with IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL ®)

• OGC = Office of Government Commerce in the UK, the trademark owners of the acronym ITIL ® and logo. They also own the copyright of the content of the ITIL ® publications.
• TSO = The Stationary Office in the UK, the publishers of the ITIL publications.
• EXIN = EXam INstitute the Netherlands, one of the independent examination organizations that is responsible for the accreditation of course providers and the development of ITIL exams.
• ISEB = Information Services Examination Body, the other independent examination organization and part of the British computer society
• itSMF = IT Service Management Forum, a global user group for organizations that deal with IT Service Management and ITIL implementation issues www.itsmfusa.org
• itSMF LIG = the Local Interest Group for ITSM / ITIL practitioners
• itSMF LIG in PDX = this is our local chapter- we have meetings every month on the 2^nd Tuesday, visit our website www.itsmfinpdx.com

What is new with ITIL?
ITIL Version 3 or ITIL Refresh is one of the keynote topics at the US national itSMF conference this month in Salt Lake City. It is important to know that ITIL, just like an ISO or a Six Sigma, is not static set of books. It is set up with committees of practitioners worldwide that meet and discuss process improvement and the addition of processes such as Security Management, something that was not in the V.1 of ITIL and was added for V.2. At this point, it is another six months or so before the final refresh documents will be available for publication. Recertification will not be necessary – and existing certifications will continue to be valid and recognized worldwide. A fact sheet on the refresh can be found at: http://www.ITIL.co.uk/car3.htm.

About the author
Stephanie Piché is an ITIL Education Evangelist and a founding member of the Portland OR LIG . She is ITIL Certified and has 22 years experience in IT Project Management, Systems Integration, Software Product Management and Marketing. She can be reached at stephanie@ameritlearning.org.