5 Reasons why you should go for ITIL v3?
If I were the CIO of any organization carrying the responsibility of putting IT in order, would I take resort to the highly proclaimed best practice framework – ITIL version 3? I do not know. Having studied the ITIL version 3 books more than a couple of times, the one reason why I would think twice before taking the decision is – the practices within five ITIL version 3 books seem exhaustive and too voluminous to comprehend easily! However, a deeper reflection on ITIL version 3 principles, processes, concepts and techniques provide interesting insights in to its value addition.
Considering an IT setup of average maturity, with ambitions to adopt ITIL best practices, one would want to know the specific value addition that the ITIL v3 provides.
In my opinion, there are primary five reasons why an organization should go for ITIL v3:
1. Better Transition Planning & Support
Managing transition of application / infrastructure changes from development to support teams has always been a challenge for most organizations. The “Transition Planning & Support” process in the Service Transition lifecycle stage of ITIL v3 provides guidance to plan and manage this transition.
2. Focus on Monitoring
Operations monitoring is a core area for IT infrastructure management. ITIL V2 or any other framework did not provide much guidance in this area. ITIL v3 has brought a good focus on this topic by providing best practices for –
a) Event Management, a separate process (it was earlier clubbed within Incident Management) b) Four different functions in operations area – IT Operations Management, Technical Management, Network Management and Directory Services Management
3. Concrete steps for Continual Improvement
Although Service Improvement was talked about in ITIL v2, there was no specific guidance on structured improvement. By having a whole lifecycle stage on Continual Service Improvement, organizations adopting ITIL V3 will find useful processes and step by step approach for continual improvement.
4. Increased Service Orientation
The service lifecycle stages in ITIL V3 assist in providing a service oriented structure to manage IT Services. IT Service packages pass through stages of Strategy, Design, Transition and Operations to provide better quality and customer focused deliverables.
5. Practices enabling stronger coupling between IT and Business
While IT leadership understands the need for increased alignment between IT and Business, there is very less guidance on how to achieve this. New concepts and techniques introduced in ITIL v3 provide good practices enabling increased coupling between the two. Examples of such practices are – Patterns of Business Activity (PBA), Service Portfolio, 4 P’s of Service Strategy, Market Spaces, Core Service Packages, Service Level Packages and many more.
These are not the only benefits or reasons to turn to ITIL v3, but only indicative ones which I feel are important from a Business and IT management perspective.
The key to reducing apprehension for ITIL v3 among ITSM professionals is to learn to use the ITIL v3 books as “How-To” guides for your major pain points and target focused improvement in those areas that affect you most. ITIL v3 should be looked at as best practice guidelines for service improvement and implementation. Choice is left to users as to which practices to adopt and to what extent.
In my next blog, we will look at some tips and tricks for doing a quick ITIL v3 self assessment and some interesting insights from my experience with an ITIL v3 assessment.
