What is ITIL? | Best Practice Training

Even though ITIL has been around for decades and there have been many articles written about it, I still get asked this question frequently both in and out of the class room. ITIL which stands for the Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of books which contain a set of best practices in the field of Service Management.

People often consider ITIL a theory about how things should be managed within IT. They also believe that you must suspend your current understanding of IT and get into some make believe place called “ITIL island”, where everything is perfect and ideal for ITIL to work. Of course such a place doesn’t exist and you don’t need to live in a perfect world for ITIL to be of value.

It’s usually about this point in time that I remind them that ITIL is a set of best practices in service management. The thing about best practices is that they are actually in use. They are are being used in an industry or industries that have been tried and have been proven to be successful. It is not a theory or something that people might want to try and see if it works for them.

ITIL has been refined and improved over better than 30 years. It is currently in its 4th revision and represents the most current thinking about how to create more value for money from IT by delivering high quality services that support both Customer and Business outcomes. It is not something that was conceived in a back room of an organization that has supernatural powers. It is not something that came out of the head of a mad scientist who was out of touch with reality. It is the product of research involving hundreds and thousands of IT organizations. These organizations share insight about activities they perform which contributes directly to their success. Think of it like getting a peek at someones secret recipe.

Skeptics of ITIL

Skeptics often think the ITIL framework is a standard and that all of the processes in the framework must be applied. They claim that the cost of implementing everything would far exceed its benefit and that many of the processes discussed hold no value.

Several arguments I hear frequently include “I’m sure ITIL will work for other companies but our company is unique”. I ask them questions about their company like “Does your Business complain about the increasing cost of IT?”, “Do you have problems supporting services once they are live and operational?”, or “Do your Customer complain about the quality of service they receive?”. They always answer yes. The response I give is “ITIL will work for you”.

The truth is ITIL is like a giant buffet of good ideas. An individual or an organization is free learn about these ideas and to use as much or as little of the principles and concepts in the framework as they need to benefit their company. An organization can take the ideas they like and implement them in a way that makes sense for their organization and leave the rest.

ITSM tools influence perception of ITIL

Some organizations think that ITIL is limited to supporting live services by using operational processes like incident management, problem management, and request fulfillment. They become aware of ITIL because of an organizational initiative rolling out a new ITSM tool which supports the processes listed above. These tools are created to automate the workflow of many operational processes and claim to be based on ITIL best practices.

Organizations who implement ITIL usually choose to start out focusing on operational processes because, in most cases these processes present the greatest opportunity to show some return on the investment. The Business expects to see some benefit on the money it spends to stand up these best practices in an organization. Unfortunately many organizations consider the investment in ITIL to be limited to the purchasing an ITSM tool. IT staff get introduced to these processes as part of this initiative and learn about ITIL to support the roll out and use of the tool.

ITSM tools and ITIL are not the same thing. ITSM tools are used to support various ITIL processes which are used by a Service Provider to create value for their Customers in the form of services. In theory and in practice, you could have a tool installed and not be following best practices.

Because of this, once the tool is implemented, many organizations struggle to show return on that investment and the ITIL initiative suffers a lack of funding and management support which, usually leads to their ITIL program dying a slow and painful death. To the uninformed, ITIL then becomes some not-so best practices “we tried once and they didn’t really work out”.

ITIL is much more than a handful of operational processes that are partially automated by an expensive ITSM toolset. The ITIL framework is a complete model for IT organizations to follow which covers how to manage investments that the Business makes in IT Services from ideas for investment and refinement, design, creation, testing, deployment, delivery, and ultimately its retirement. It contains valuable insight which can be combined with other frameworks to transform IT from a group of hardworking technical resources into a team that thinks, acts, and behaves like a Service Provider. Everyone works together as if IT were running its own little Business within the Business. Focus is transformed into value creation as opposed to technical consideration as a primary concern within IT.

ITIL is applicable for organizations great and small. It applies to IT organizations that provide services to internal customers, external customers, or both. Companies that require services from IT to achieve their strategic goals and objectives benefit from IT following a structured, logical, and methodical approach. For most organizations this will be a welcome change. ITIL is a proven, time tested model to help IT transform.