Friday, February 28, 2014

ITIL Foundation V5.5 (Part-2)


In Part-1, i had given the gist of ITIL foundation certification and exam oriented sections and now let us see the details and sub processes of Key Principles and Models which put together into 5 volumes.

ITIL Key Principles and Models (The Five Volumes):


  • ITIL Service Strategy (SS): understands organizational objectives and customer needs.
  • ITIL Service Design (SD): turns the system strategy into a plan for delivering the business objectives.
  • ITIL Service Transition (ST): develops and improves capabilities for introducing new services into supported environments.
  • ITIL Service Operation (SO): manages services in supported environments.
  • ITIL Continual Service Improvement (CSI): achieves services incremental and large-scale improvements.


Service Strategy:

The center and origin point of the ITIL Service Life-cycle, the ITIL Service Strategy (SS) volume provides guidance on clarification and prioritization of service-provider investments in services. More generally, Service Strategy focuses on helping IT organizations improve and develop over the long term. In both cases, Service Strategy relies largely upon a market-driven approach. Key topics covered include service value definition, business-case development, service assets, market analysis and service provider types.

List of covered processes:
- IT service management
- Service portfolio management
- Financial management for IT services
- Demand management
- Business relationship management


Service Design:

The Service Design (SD) volume provides good-practice guidance on the design of IT services, processes, and other aspects of the service management effort. Significantly, design within ITIL is understood to encompass all elements relevant to technology service delivery, rather than focusing solely on design of the technology itself. As such, service design addresses how a planned service solution interacts with the larger business and technical environments, service management systems required to support the service, processes which interact with the service, technology, and architecture required to support the service, and the supply chain required to support the planned service. Within ITIL, design work for an IT service is aggregated into a single service design package (SDP). Service design packages, along with other information about services, are managed within the service catalogs.

List of covered processes:
- Design coordination 
- Service Catalog management
- Service level management
- Availability management
- Capacity Management
- IT service continuity management
- Information security management system
- Supplier management

Service Transition:

Service transition (ST), as described by the ITIL service transition volume, relates to the delivery of services required by a business into live/operational use, and often encompasses the "project" side of IT rather than business as usual (BAU). This area also covers topics such as managing changes to the BAU environment.

List of ITIL processes in service transition:
- Transition planning and support
- Change management
- Service asset and configuration management
- Release and deployment management
- Service validation and testing
- Change evaluation
- Knowledge management

Service Operation:

Service Operation (SO) aims to provide best practice for achieving the delivery of agreed levels of services both to end-users and the customers. Service operation, as described in the ITIL Service Operation volume, is the part of the life-cycle where the services and value is actually directly delivered. Also the monitoring of problems and balance between service reliability and cost etc. are considered. The functions include technical management, application management, operations management and service desk as well as, responsibilities for staff engaging in Service Operation.

List of processes:
- Event management
- Incident management
- Request fulfillment
- Problem management
- Identity management

Continual Service Improvement:

Continual service improvement (CSI), defined in the ITIL continual service improvement volume, aims to align and realign IT services to changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to the IT services that support the business processes. It incorporates many of the same concepts articulated in the Deming Cycle of Plan-Do-Check-Act. The perspective of CSI on improvement is the business perspective of service quality, even though CSI aims to improve process effectiveness, efficiency and cost effectiveness of the IT processes through the whole lifecycle. To manage improvement, CSI should clearly define what should be controlled and measured.
CSI needs to be treated just like any other service practice. There needs to be upfront planning, training and awareness, ongoing scheduling, roles created, ownership assigned,and activities identified to be successful. CSI must be planned and scheduled as process with defined activities, inputs, outputs, roles and reporting. Continual Service Improvement and Application Performance Management (APM) are two sides of the same coin. They both focus on improvement with APM tying together service design, service transition, and service operation which in turn helps raise the bar of operational excellence for IT.


Improvement initiatives typically follow a seven-step process:

- Identify the strategy for improvement
- Define what you will measure
- Gather the data
- Process the data
- Analyse the information and data
- Present and use the information
- Implement improvement

High Level View of Service Model/Processes for Reference: 




ITIL Foundation V5.5 (Part-1)


ITIL is the most recognized framework for IT service management in the world. Delivering a cohesive set of best practice guidance drawn from public and private sectors internationally, ITIL helps service providers with best practice guidance on the provision of quality IT services, and the processes, functions and other capabilities needed to support them.

ITIL Benefits:

ITIL provides a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT services. Adopting its guidance offers users a huge range of benefits, including:
- Reduced costs
- Improved value creation
- Improved IT services through the use of proven best-practice processes
- Improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
- Alignment with business needs, including the development of a business perspective
- Improved productivity
- High-quality IT services that benefit the business customer
- A balanced and flexible approach to service provision
- Well-designed services which meet customers' needs - now and in the future
- Ability to adopt and adapt to reflect business needs and maturity.

Target Group:

The target group of the ITIL Foundation certificate in IT Service Management is drawn from:
- Individuals who require a basic understanding of the ITIL framework and how it may be used to enhance the quality of IT service management within an organization.
- IT professionals that are working within an organization that has adopted and adapted ITIL who need to be informed about and thereafter contribute to an ongoing service improvement program.

This may include but is not limited to, IT professionals, business managers and business process owners.

Learning Objectives:

Candidates can expect to gain knowledge and understanding in the following upon successful completion of the education and examination components related to this certification.
- Service management as a practice (comprehension)
- The ITIL service life cycle (comprehension)
- Generic concepts and definitions (awareness)
- Key principles and models (comprehension)
- Selected processes (awareness)
- Selected functions (awareness)
- Selected roles (awareness)
- Technology and architecture (awareness)
- Competence and training (awareness)

Foundation syllabus:

The syllabus will guide the design, development and use of training materials as well as training aimed at raising individual’s understanding of, and competence in, IT service management as described in the
ITIL Service Strategy, 
ITIL Service Design, 
ITIL Service Transition, 
ITIL Service Operation, 
ITIL Continual Service Improvement, 
ITIL Introduction and ITIL Glossary publications.

Candidates for the ITIL Foundation certificate in IT service management have to complete all units and successfully pass the corresponding examination to achieve certification.


Format of the Examination:

This syllabus has an accompanying examination at which the candidate must achieve a pass score to gain the ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management.

Type - Multiple choice, 40 questions. The questions are selected from the full ITIL Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management examination question bank.
Duration - Maximum 60 minutes for all candidates in their respective language
Provisions for additional time relating to language - Candidates completing an exam in a language that is not their mother tongue have a maximum of 75 minutes to complete the exam and are allowed the use of a dictionary.
Prerequisite - Accredited ITIL Foundation training is strongly recommended but is not a prerequisite.
Supervised - Yes
Open Book - No
Pass Score - 26/40 or 65%
Delivery - This examination is available in Online or Paper based format.


Potential Pitfalls:

- May involve drastic change in business culture - a long ramp-up
- Risk of over-engineering and bureaucratic overhead
- Baseline data is critical to analyze results/improvement
- Commitment is needed from all levels of business
- Can't isolate task to single team, committee or department
- Investment and resources must be available and costs can inflate quickly
- Must understand ITIL is a framework of best practices and not a document/bible