How does ITIL v3 help improve IT services?

October 3, 2009 Digest

The ITIL v3 revised guidance was published on May 30th 2007, with updated content including new concepts, revised processes, terms and definitions pertaining to the management of IT services based upon a lifecycle approach.

The intention, was to bring ITIL and IT fully up to date and in line with changing business needs as the industry matures, and business demands are greater than ever for high quality service delivery.

With all that said, approximately 80 percent of IT budgets are still consumed by “keeping the lights on” – maintaining day-to-day operations, so it makes sense, particularly in these times of extreme cost challenges, to make this the slickest, leanest and most efficient area within IT.

Through implementation of the ITIL Service Support processes, you can realise some of the key benefits of a best practice approach; which include elimination of re-work, downtime caused by unplanned changes and the resultant reactive and stressful workloads. How? By working to minimise the adverse effect of incidents, reducing the number of repeat incidents, and reducing the number of total incidents through the Problem & Change Management process. If 70 percent of Incidents are caused by changes you need to look at ways to reduce this percentage – think of the cost savings and reduction in downtime that could be achieved.

Effective implementation of the ITIL processes really can reduce costs, reduce the risk of operational failure and increase customer satisfaction. So the content of the ITIL courses should be aimed at helping you to achieve this. IT management and service management teams need to identify the issues specific to your organisation, then understand what needs to be done to improve the current state, define and communicate the vision of the future and educate your teams to perform within a service-driven culture.

Pink Elephant strongly believes that the purpose of ITIL education is to enable an organisation to empower its employees with specialist knowledge in order that they can return to the workplace with an understanding of the best practice framework and talking a common language. The Lifecycle courses are for management know-how with regards to the different stages of the lifecycle approach. Applying the principles and making ongoing service improvements, is the role of the professional practitioners and is required to sustain IT as a successful part of any organisation. This is where the Capability courses provide value.

“Add value” means making practical improvements to IT services. Those improvements then enable the business to either reduce or contain costs, reduce risk (of downtime – which by its nature will reduce costs), and increase customer satisfaction through making IT services more service-focused. Adopting the ITIL framework can deliver all of these benefits, and people who understand ITIL can make it happen (needed especially in today’s economy!) But the emphasis should not be about driving people towards an overwhelming ‘Expert’ programme that will take at least two to three years – and probably longer for most people – to complete.

Twenty two points for an individual does not equate to service Improvement for IT. So let’s get back on track with the ITIL Certification scheme – it’s not about the number of examinations the examination institutes can sell, it’s about delivering knowledge to individuals who can then make a difference in their organisations. And it’s not just about having an ITIL ‘Expert’ Certificate, it’s about gaining real, practical knowledge. What we need is more carefully targeted education and training aimed, primarily, at delivering value to the organisation.

Any large organisation these days will have responsibilities spread across multi-person teams – so why not train them all up to be part of a ‘Management Expert Team’ or a ‘Practitioner Expert Team’, rather than focusing on individuals obtaining Expert status.

These days, an organisation needs to see real and immediate benefits from their investment in education. Pink Elephant’s courses have all been designed to include practical and proven ‘how to’ and ‘recommended implementation plans’ that you can take away and start applying the day you return to work. We don’t just teach what needs to be done, we also show you how to do it. Our improved Capability courses aimed at the practitioners who perform the process roles, provide the detail, structure and exercises to enable improvements to be initiated upon return to work.

With Pink Elephant you can be sure to receive top class training from the world’s best team of ITIL Experts. Remember, all Pink Elephant consultants have already attained the ITIL v3 Expert designation. We don’t have ‘lecturers’ – chalk and talk specialists who are just able to deliver a syllabus, we have ‘Consultative Trainers’ – people who have a practical knowledge of the subject, and who are able to help individuals with individual issues they may have ‘back at the ranch’.

Your role and objectives both personal and professional will dictate which courses you need to attend and which will give you the most appropriate outcome. We see certification as being relevant for 3 distinct groups:

1. Teams.

- Depending on whether they have a strategic or tactical/operational focus.

2. Individual practitioners.

- Depending on their role or project.

3. Consultants or service management champions.

- Depending on whether they have a strategic or tactical/operational focus.

Pink Elephant has revised the titles of its ITIL v3 Intermediate courses to better reflect the roles individuals perform in organisations, and to help guide IT professionals along the most appropriate education path in the ITIL certification scheme.

To simplify things, our recommendation for those seeking the ITIL Expert certification is to focus on the ITIL Manager path – where you will gain the widest breadth of ITIL knowledge and gain all the credits you’ll need. For those who need education to support a specific project or tactical role – choose the individual ITIL Practitioner courses.

The five lifecycle stream courses cover each book and are renamed ‘ITIL Manager’ courses, as follows:

• ITIL Manager: Service Strategy

• ITIL Manager: Service Design

• ITIL Manager: Service Transition

• ITIL Manager: Service Operation

• ITIL Manager: Continual Service Improvement

The four capability stream courses are renamed ‘ITIL Practitioner’ courses, as follows:

• ITIL Practitioner: Operational Support & Analysis

(Service Desk, Incident, Request, Access, Event, Problem Management. Includes Technical, Applications & Operations Management)

• ITIL Practitioner: Release, Control & Validation

(Change, Release & Deployment Management, Service Validation & Testing, Service Asset & Configuration Management, Service Evaluation & Knowledge Management)

• ITIL Practitioner: Service Offerings & Agreements

(Service Portfolio Mgmt, Service Catalogue Mgmt, Service Level Mgmt, Demand, Supplier & Financial Mgmt)

• ITIL Practitioner: Planning, Protection & Optimization

(Capacity, Availability & IT Service Continuity Management. Information Security, Demand & Risk Management)

Adding to all this confusion is a complex certification scheme that allows for the mixing and matching of v2 and v3 courses to earn credits – but with rules describing limitations because of content overlap. There is overlap which exists between v2 and v3 Practitioner courses, but also between v3 Manager (lifecycle) courses and the v3 Practitioner (capability) courses. This table has been designed to try and help you identify which courses should not be combined due to the overlap in content.

Manager Courses(Lifecycle Stream)	Practitioner Courses(Capability Stream)	V2 Practitioner Courses
Service Strategy	N/A	N/A
Service Design	SOA: Service Offerings & Agreements	IPAD: Agree & DefineSLM & Finance
Service Transition	RCV: Release, Control & Validation	IPRC: Release & ControlChange, Release, Configuration
Service Operations	OSA: Operational Support & Analysis	IPSR: Support & RestoreService Desk, Incident, Problem
	PPO: Planning, Protection & Optimisation	IPPI: Plan & ImproveAvailability, Capacity, Continuity
Continual Service Improvement	N/A	N/A