What is ITIL? Your guide to ITIL service management

What is ITIL?

ITIL, or the IT Infrastructure Library, is a well-established framework designed to improve IT service management. It’s more than just a set of technical guidelines; it's a strategic approach to making sure that IT operations are closely aligned with business goals.

In today’s rapidly changing business landscape, where priorities and strategies can shift quickly, ITIL provides a consistent method for IT to keep up with these changes. It offers a structured way to manage and improve IT services, ensuring they support the evolving needs of the business.

ITIL focuses on best practices to streamline service delivery, mitigate risks, and prioritize customer satisfaction. It’s versatile enough to be applied across various organizational scales, whether you’re part of a multinational corporation or a smaller, emerging company. Essentially, ITIL helps ensure that your IT services not only keep up with but also enhance your business objectives.

What is service management in Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)?

Poorly executed IT processes cause issues between an IT organization and its leaders. It is essential for organizations to measure business goals, limitations, and organizational culture to make the right use of ITIL service management practices.

There are five key steps that form the IT service life cycle so you can ensure it fits your business’s needs: 

1. Service strategy

This is where your ITIL services life cycle starts. Here you’ll outline business goals and customer requirements to ensure your ITIL processes fit your goals.

2. Service design

Here you can begin planning strategies into actionable items to help the business. Plan and design the ITIL processes to implement based on your organization’s needs.

3. Transition

Now you can begin implementing ITIL processes within your business environment. Transitioning is important here—processes need time to be properly implemented.

4. Service operation

At this point, start pushing ITIL processes into a live environment for end users to interface with.

5. Service improvement

Your journey doesn’t stop here—throughout your ITIL processes lifecycle, you’ll continually look to improve or revise systems to deliver better service.

The table below explains the sub-categories of the five extensive modules, categorizing them as ITIL processes or ITIL functions.

ITIL vs. ITSM: Key differences explained

The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework of practices to deliver IT services. It facilitates organizations to manage and alleviate risk, mend customer relationships, create economical practices, and stabilize the IT setting for better growth, scale, and renovation.

When was the Information Technology Infrastructure Library developed?

Developed by the British government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) during the 1980s, the ITIL, in the beginning, consisted of over 30 books cataloging best practices in IT collected from various sources. The library’s dependability and efficacy soared over time. In 2005, its practices were added to the ISO/IEC 20000 service management standard—the first international standard for IT service management.

Has the ITIL been updated?

ITIL v1

In 2000, the original 30 books of the ITIL were first edited to seven books, then integrated as five volumes consisting of 26 ITIL processes and utilities. In 2011, another modification—ITIL 2011—was made under the Cabinet Office. While unrefined, it still included benchmark guidance on problem management, change management, helpdesk management, and other core competencies related to IT.

ITIL v2

In the late ’90s to early 2000s, ITIL was challenged by other ITSM standards such as ISO. To remain relevant, the first significant update was made. By 2002, there were seven available volumes for ITIL spanning service support through to security management and software asset management. 

Further work was needed, however, with a supporting glossary to clear up unclear terms. While v2 was more complete and accessible than v1, there were many areas for it to improve.

ITIL 3

In 2007, ITIL v3 introduced the IT service lifecycle in a consciously organized and comprehensive update. There were five volumes, titled:

• Service Strategy

• Service Design

• Service Transition

• Service Operation

• Continual Service Improvement

ITIL 4

ITIL v4 represents a significant shift in the way companies utilize ITSM. Launched in February 2019, ITIL v4 is the largest update to the framework so far. It revolves around and factors in four critical considerations:

• Organizations and people

• Value streams and processes

• Information and technology

• Partners and suppliers

ITIL v4 introduces a new cornerstone: the Service Value System (SVS) rather than placing emphasis solely on IT services management.

ITIL key principles

ITIL consists of nine regulatory principles for organizational change management, communication, and measurement and metrics. These principles encompass:

• Focus on value

• Design for experience

• Start where you are

• Work holistically

• Progress iteratively

• Observe directly

• Be transparent

• Collaborate

• Keep it simple

These processes supplement collaboration and problem management between IT and other subdivisions, as other business units progressively rely on technology for daily tasks. It also places importance on customer opinion, as it’s easier than ever for companies to figure out their public outlook, satisfaction, and discontent.

How does ITIL service management help?

ITIL service management is universally the most widely established approach to manage and deliver IT services.

ITIL service management helps organizations combat inefficiency by providing an unblemished focus on the total cost of ownership (TCO) and other related activities in their division.

Benefits of implementing ITIL processes

• A superior expert approach to delivering services, bringing about improved customer satisfaction

• Best practice processes for enriched IT services

• Improved ROI of IT

• Improved delivery of third-party services through the specification of ITIL

• Increased proficiency, productivity, and skill of IT staff

• Reduced training outlays

• Better staff retention

• Reduced unknown costs

• A better view of IT spending, costs, and assets

• Enhanced capacity to manage and alleviate business risk, service interruption, or failure

• Delivering efficient services to clients, thus resulting in improved and progressive relationships with customers

• Reduced redundant work and improved utilization of resources

• Maintaining performance gauges for benchmarking and direction

Implementing ITIL processes or ITIL frameworks

ITIL processes and frameworks can vary, as they include many facets of IT. It’s essential for organizations to define their key needs rather than hosting the full set of ITIL service management commendations together.

ITIL provides supervision that can be reviewed to suit the needs of a certain organization. Here are three collective approaches for establishments looking to implement ITIL service management:

• Providing better support

• Enabling business change

• Providing better services

Role of ITIL service management

ITIL service management sanctions the measurement of performance compared to a set of definitive yardsticks and monitors the overall success of IT providers.

Therefore, all other departments in a business benefit from incorporating ITSM. After all, most operational business divisions follow a set of recommendations and are driven by processes. By adopting an ITSM framework, these processes and recommendations can be measured for efficiency. For example, HR or finance departments could all adopt the ITSM philosophy and use it to not just measure their performance but also to deliver real value to the business.

ITIL service management advantages

Why Is ITIL service management pertinent to IT organizations

ITIL has a strong base as the most important international framework for IT service management. As the leading international standard for IT service management, its commendations have guided the development and processes of IT organizations worldwide, from the largest Fortune 500 companies to smaller businesses. Even with the rise of Lean, Agile, and DevOps, ITIL remains to provide valuable and demonstrated guidance for obligatory processes such as incident management, service catalog management, and request fulfillment.

ITIL service management notifies the ISO standards for ITSM

As the International Standards Organization (ISO) moves toward the publication of an international standard and best practices for IT service management, ITIL processes continue to reinforce much of the guidance offered by this high-status organization. As IT changes, ITIL service management will evolve with it, but ITIL is certainly here to stay.

ITIL service management is implemented by global IT professionals

ITIL is one of the biggest worldwide certifying bodies for ITSM specialists. With over a million ITIL certificates issued across the globe, ITIL service management has become the collective language of IT professionals all over. The processes have exceeded expectations in organizations in which they are implemented and become involved in the global IT culture.

ITIL service management is embraced by leading software developers

ITIL service management is a set of best practices and practice guidance, but not a tool by itself. Yet ITIL has educated the development of the most widely executed IT tools available today. Several thousand companies around the world have placed their conviction in ITIL service management, furthering their organizational efficiency and saving millions in the process.

What does the future hold for ITIL service management?

There have been many influences in the progression of IT service management. Organizations are now riding on a new wave, realizing ITIL service management is much more than process frameworks. ITIL service management needs to be a discipline, a revolution in the organization. While they’ve implemented facets of ITIL, most companies have not yet gotten where they thought they would.

Companies are now renovating ITSM to meet their digital makeover efforts and looking to expand it into fields like HR, legal, finance, and more.

In the future, we can possibly expect extremely process-intensive manual practices to become automated, or an arduous governance process to become simplified.

Procedures and practices can be tweaked, new services can be attuned when portfolios change, and service structures can be modified. There are now roles like vice president of ITIL service management, which leads to a greater impact on the overall business value.

This is a trend that IT organizations will see more of in the future. As organizations look to position themselves to drive better business outcomes in a world of digital revolution, they will look to develop their competences in all the above-described areas, which requires enterprise-wide governance and an enduring service management approach that is continuously analyzed and measured.

Choosing the right ITIL service for your business

Choosing the best ITIL service management platform for your business is essential. An effective ITIL service desk can help to effectively optimize and automate your ITIL operations and capabilities. This condenses the amount of manual work required by a service provider and helps employees to follow and smoothly implement processes as well as record and utilize data.

With an increased focus on processes and technology to deliver high service levels to end users, it’s essential to integrate a solution to help your IT service desk.

With the correct framework in place and the right assistance, you can easily realize your company’s objectives.

Discover how Freshservice can assist your business today.