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IT Service Management - Introduction
IT service management (ITSM) is a philosophy.
ITSM helps the company's IT department achieve three fundamental goals:
Achieve customer satisfaction, exceed customer expectations and manage customer perceptions.
While exact definitions may vary somewhat, experts agree that those fundamental goals are at the core of what ITSM.
It's no coincidence that each of the goals includes the word "customer," since ITSM demands a customer-centric view of IT.
Rather than focusing on whether a given server or router is functioning properly,
ITSM is a set of processes and procedures that help organizations ensure end users are getting what they need from the IT organization.
The traditional view of IT has more often been one of providing the components and the application that rides on top,
but never really looking at how they provide an end-to-end service.
It's all about having a way to deliver IT services that meet the requirements of the organization.
While there are tools that play a role in the ITSM effort,
most any expert will tell you that it all starts with putting proper processes in place.
Often those processes are based on models described in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL),
a set of documentation that describes best practices for achieving ITSM.
The processes break down into three distinct areas: strategic, tactical and operational.
Together, the three describe how to manage the relationship between IT and its business customers.
Strategic processes involve setting policies and procedures, and forming architectural controls and committees to help the organization
achieve its long-term goals.
Tactical processes are those involved in actual service delivery, including service level management,
which he says is one of the keys to proper ITSM.
Service level management requires that IT understand business requirements and negotiate for levels of IT service that match those requirements,
using measurements including service availability, capacity and cost.You can develop infrastructure for a high level of availability,
but it might be more expensive than what the business requires. Service level management also provides guidance for capacity
management, making sure you have the right amount in the right place at the right time for the right cost.
Operational processes cover the support functions that are performed on a day to day basis, such as incident management, problem management and change management. Incident management, for example, involves coordinating the restoration of service after a problem occurs, while problem management is finding the root cause of the problem and fixing it.
Change management is another important process, since an inordinate number of IT failures result from changes gone awry.
Change management should involve two objectives: make sure there is a business benefit to any change you make,
and have processes in place to minimize risk when making a change, such as test procedures and a fallback to a known good state.
If you can even come close to reducing the number of change-induced problems by a half or two-thirds,
then you'll have made significant improvements overall.
Chances are your organization has at least some of these processes in place, but may not call it service management or have
the "rigor and accountability that service management brings.
ITIL describes how to approach ITSM in a consistent way across the entire organization,
to produce the appropriate inputs and outputs between the various processes.
It is crucial, then, to educate IT staff about those ITIL processes and methodologies.
That doesn't mean each member has to become an ITIL expert, but they should be familiar with the concepts.
You need to get people to understand that they've got to go spend time with their customers and internal business partners,
to understand what they do on a daily basis.
It's not just about response time and availability, it's about providing services that meet a business need.
To read more about IT Service Management, click on one of the following topics:
ITSM Organizations;
ITSM Processes (ITIL);
ITSM Software;
ITSM Education;
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IT Service Management