ITIL Version 3: What you need to know |
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Wednesday, 05 September 2007 19:00 |
Information Technology Infrastructure Library
(ITIL) Version 3 is a move to tie IT and business functions closer
together, according to Ottawa-based chief architect Sharon Taylor.
"We went to all stakeholders and talked to them about what they felt
truly reflected best practices of today and what would make ITIL
better," says Taylor. "The entire structure is new, and it reflects a
move by the public to take a more business-centric approach."
The result of a two-and-a-half-year development process, ITIL Version 3
looks to build on a thorough set of guidelines presented in previous
releases by concentrating on the life-cycle management of IT services,
rather than merely the execution of processes.
This means "looking at things like the capabilities and resources you
have within a service portfolio - both those delivered today and what
you have the capability to deliver in the future."
When compared to Version 2, "there is a much broader focus on the
planning elements and looking to see what markets as a service provider
you should be in, which you shouldn't be, and what capabilities and
resources you want to develop," Taylor adds.
Forrester analyst J.P. Garbani
believes Version 3 is a good reflection of the technological times.
Some processes included in Version 2 have simply proved themselves
outdated because many software offerings have made them redundant, he
says.
"[Today's software products] provide more intelligence than the
products we had 10 years ago. This changes the process because they may
completely skip a step in the previous (ITIL) process, as the product
provides more intelligence right out of the box," Garbani says.
This new life-cycle orientation to ITIL allows all involved parties to
get a firm idea of how the guidelines are affecting the organization
and the return on investment in technology, Taylor says.
For those contemplating an ITIL implementation, Taylor advises that it
involves cultural change and has to be done with a careful amount of
planning and forethought.
"You can't ram and refine ITIL," she says. "Some organizations have
taken the path of saying, 'We are adopting ITIL and thou shalt do this
or that.' But when you don't deal with the cultural sensitivities
around ITIL, you tend to lose traction because people are your
strongest success factor."
Wynnan Rose, director of service management for the IT Services group, Ontario Ministry of Government Services,
agrees and adds that the right kind of leadership is essential to ITIL
success. Rose's organization is an amalgamation of eight previously
decentralized clusters that provided IT services to various ministries.
Bringing eight separate groups together, each with their own level of
best practices and their own way of doing things, has hardly been a
snap-of-the-fingers task, according toB Rose.
"It's a huge undertaking with lots of complexities and challenge," she
says, but adds that ITIL, on which the government standardized in 2000,
has been invaluable in making the process go as smoothly as possible.
"It has really allowed us to put some discipline and methodology into a
very chaotic environment."
Her group, which has used Version 2, is charged with three primary
objectives: to consolidate all service desks; to set up an
enterprise-wide order desk for infrastructure services; and to set up
five ITIL services that the group thought were most important,
including incident management, change management, release management,
service level management and configuration management.
The project is slated to be completed next March. "A standard,
consistent process for delivering services through the service desk is
now in place and followed," she says. "ITIL is very powerful. I have
metrics that are enterprise-wide and I can see how we're doing and
demonstrate to the clients how we're doing."
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