home Ideas ITIL – best practices for organizing the work of IT departments. See what "ITIL" is in other dictionaries What is IT at itil

ITIL – best practices for organizing the work of IT departments. See what "ITIL" is in other dictionaries What is IT at itil

ITIL is a collection of best practices in ITSM. ITIL is written in the form of a manual, the main task of which is to formulate the presentation of the IT department to enterprises as a quality IT service. It looks at its functions, processes, and everything needed to support that vision. The interaction between IT and Business is described here in terms of mutual “dialogue” and collaboration, the purpose of which is to provide quality IT services that provide business value. The concept of value in ITIL is key and it underlies all practices. The core of ITIL is process management and a service approach: the method of management is process, and the object of management is service.

ITIL is currently used in many organizations across a wide range of industries around the world. It is important to understand that ITIL is not a standard; it is just a body of knowledge and recommendations that are useful to familiarize yourself with and apply in practice. ITIL processes and ideas are not an end in themselves; the purpose of following the methodology is to improve the interaction between IT and Business. ITIL is the most famous and popular theory for ITSM. It includes a description of all processes necessary to maintain IT services, currently there are 29 of them, 10 of which are basic from the point of view of the general ITSM methodology.

The beginning of the formation of ITIL dates back to 1986-1989, when the first version of the methodology was published, which was called GITIMM, which stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Management Method. The latest version of the ITIL v3 methodology was released in 2011. It includes five books, which are divided according to the stages of the service life cycle:

· Service Strategy (Strategy for IT services)

SS is a stage of the life cycle, the main one of which is a combination of four elements: perspective, current position, plans and demand models. At this stage, an analysis and assessment of the market, opportunities on it and a search for development paths are carried out. Strategy for IT services includes the following processes: IT service strategy management, IT service portfolio management, IT financial management, IT demand management, IT-Business relationship management;

· Service Design (IT service design)

SD is based on technology, people, partners and processes. At this stage, the IT service is designed and edited in accordance with business requirements. IT service design is divided into the following processes: IT service design coordination, IT service catalog management, service level management, capacity management, continuity management, reachability management, information security management, supplier management;

· Service Transition (Implementation of IT services)

ST is responsible for the implementation of IT services, which includes planning capacity and resources in accordance with business requirements and implementing changes. At this stage of the service life cycle, the following processes are defined: planning and implementation support, change management, release management, configuration and IT asset management, testing management, knowledge management;

Service Operation (Maintaining IT services)

SO considers the “visible” part of the ICS; this stage provides the greatest interaction with the user. The key objects of this stage are technology, service, people and processes. Only at this stage does the concept of function appear. By function here we mean a department and its tools that are used to perform work and achieve goals, quantitative and qualitative results. Processes supporting IT services: incident management, request management, event management, problem management and access management. The functions of the system are Service Desk, Technical management, Application management and IT-operational management, the latter of which is divided into IT Operations control and Facilities management;

· Service Implementation (Continuous improvement of IT services)

SI drives IT services to continually change to meet business requirements. KPIs play an important role here.

The article by Belgian IT service management expert Tom Seegers - “ITIL Pro and contra - 10 things that would make us love ITIL even more” - is the winner of the second prize in the 2013 international article competition organized by the International IT Service Management Forum itSMF International ( 2013 International Whitepaper Competition).

Introduction

Over the past decades, the ITIL library has become the de facto standard in the IT industry. Today, this British government-developed methodology for IT support and IT service management has become a well-known brand associated with a focus on quality and control. Almost any self-respecting IT manager or IT services consultant will say that they are very familiar with ITIL concepts and terminology and that they use ITIL “best practices.” When offering commercial IT services, any supplier will certainly mention ITIL methods in the description, but will almost always note that they are combined with special, more practical approaches.

Meanwhile, the methodology itself is evolving. In the new version of 2007 and improvements in 2011, a number of well-known concepts were translated into the modern context of “creating value” through services. ITIL now takes into account the use of outsourcing and its impact on strategic IT support decisions. It is clearer that by varying the way tools are implemented, efficiency can be improved. A more dynamic approach to continuous improvement is proposed compared to the outdated principles of “customer focus” and “quality management”. Each of the five 300-page books contains many other improvements that improve ITIL over previous versions.

But is it worth the effort to actively work with ITIL, including core books and additional materials? Undoubtedly. ITIL books are a source of necessary and important knowledge for almost every IT specialist and therefore should be present in the personal library along with other management books. Like many accredited instructors, I teach the ITIL Foundation course in multiple versions, languages, and regions to professionals across a wide range of IT industry sectors. They all invariably learn something useful from these courses. The ITIL Foundation course probably deserves to be one of the standard components of the modern curriculum for any IT professional.

When it comes to teaching the fundamentals of IT support and ITSM to diverse groups of IT professionals, ITIL is still the best body of knowledge available today. Even in the very first ITIL books, a number of basic concepts appeared that even inexperienced IT specialists can get a general understanding of technical support functions and more. Examples:

focus on the customer when solving business problems (your own enterprise or an external customer);
focus on providing integrated services, and not on the hardware platforms that are used for this;
hide the difficulties of organizing technical support from the user - they should not concern him;
use special tools to organize collaboration in technical support teams;
expand the scope of support tasks to include not only service restoration, but also proactive analysis of the root causes of failures, ensuring readiness and necessary capacity, as well as other aspects.

All of these concepts are still important and are common sense. Mastering ITSM remains relevant, and ITIL acts as an industry guide here. In addition, ITIL best practices can be combined with other methodologies such as Lean for IT, ISO standards and various project management and strategic leadership bodies of knowledge.

But students of ITIL courses and practitioners also ask questions about what limitations ITIL has in comparison with other methodologies and taking into account the realities of enterprises of various sizes, types and maturity levels. The benefits of ITIL are well documented in a major set of books, and many papers have attempted to evaluate the benefits of operating according to the best practices given in ITIL. But there is essentially no discussion of the inherent limitations of the ITIL model, although many professionals seem to be aware of them.

What needs to change so that we can love ITIL even more - today and in the near future? In this article, we'll look at ten areas for improvement, based on personal experience and discussions with other experts.

1. ITIL is not only about infrastructure

Businesses today are evolving at an accelerating pace, made possible in large part by integrated IT services. For the user, an IT service is valuable at the level of functionality and applications. The move to integrated IT services means that technical support teams and application and hardware maintainers must collaborate as closely as possible at all levels. This is perhaps one of the most pressing issues facing IT departments today from an organizational perspective.

Some companies need to clearly divide employees into infrastructure and application specialists, while others may choose a different organizational structure. Services consumed from the cloud can be at the infrastructure level, platform level, or application level. The integration of such SaaS services comes with new challenges. But even in the case of internal or private cloud and dedicated IT environments, managed independently or with the help of partners, careful coordination between all components and the business functions running on them is key to delivering maximum value to the user.

“Today it is no longer relevant to focus only on individual parts of the puzzle. What matters is the big picture, which is perfectly enshrined in the current version of ITIL. But the name remains the same, ITIL has become a victim of its own brand value.”

From this point of view, it looks strange to use a methodology that is still called “IT Infrastructure Library”. Initially, the task was really to organize infrastructure management, but today IT service management is viewed much more broadly. Application support and functional support are just as important as ensuring hardware functionality. There have been attempts to rename ITIL "Application Services Library" and "Business Information Services Library" - both of which are actually subsets of ITIL. But today it is no longer relevant to focus only on individual parts of the puzzle. It's the big picture that matters, which is perfectly enshrined in the current version of ITIL. But the name remained the same, ITIL became a victim of its own brand value.

2. Translation of terminology into everyday language

IT has spread everywhere. They are available to specialists in all areas, and now we could talk about IT and technical support in normal human language.

In addition, in the post-PC era, electronic devices and online services have entered everyday life. Over the past few years, the distinction between consumer and professional IT has become blurred. Devices originally created for personal needs are brought to work by employees. Users want to use their personal devices to access work-related information - read email on a smartphone, open documents on a tablet, etc. In turn, devices designed for professional use, such as laptops, have long been purchased for home use. More home users have access to fast network connections, allowing them to work from home or other locations in virtual teams.

The IT community has expanded, increasingly blurring the lines between professional and consumer technologies. Commonly used terminology has emerged, used in conversations about IT and services, service management and technical support, known even to people who were not previously familiar with computers.

However, ITIL is still famous for its own specific vocabulary, compiled to ensure the integrity of the terminology. “ITIL people” cannot say that someone contacted technical support with a problem: they will say that there was a request regarding an “incident”. This cannot be called a problem, since this word is reserved for another purpose. Mixing “Itil” with colloquial in everyday speech is difficult, this leads to misunderstandings. Adding to the confusion are artificial official translations of ITIL into other languages, in which English terminology is often more in use anyway.

"ITIL continues to be renowned for its own specific vocabulary, compiled to ensure the integrity of the terminology"

And in the latest versions, the library “assigned” new words to itself - for example, “event”, “alert”, “access” and “transition” - and gave them new meanings “ for our own." At the same time, with each new edition of ITIL the situation seems to be getting worse. We had barely gotten used to referencing CI (Configuration Items) in the CMDB (Configuration Management Database) in accordance with the SLA (Service Level Agreement) discussed at the CAB (Change Board) in connection with SLM (Service Level Management), when it turned out that now the CMDB along with the IMDB (Incident Management Database), PMDB (Problem Management Database) and KEDB (Known Error Database) are only part of the CMS (Configuration Management System), which in turn is part of the SKMS (Management Management System) knowledge of IT services) and EKMS. Okay, DHS (Hardware Reference Store) seems to be gone from the latest version - at least with one less three-letter acronym.

3. Convergence of process principles and their practical implementation

Over the years, understanding of the role of technical support and IT operations in general has improved. Even small or decentralized IT platforms are equipped with advanced, user-friendly management tools. Modern management tools from various vendors provide high flexibility and speed, but at the same time an acceptable level of control. All are designed to control and reduce total cost of ownership for increasingly complex IT environments. Every technology platform has developed generally accepted best practices to help you use it as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We have a general understanding of typical tasks performed by technical support department specialists. For example, when employees responsible for operational services come to work in the morning, they check backups and batch processing results. Non-critical notifications received on the dashboard are reviewed and, possibly based on error analysis, tool settings are adjusted to eliminate false positives and false negatives. To do this, we check documentation from suppliers, as well as notes from colleagues and our own on similar tasks; It is possible to correct these notes. A meeting may be held with the project team regarding a bug that has been reproduced at least once, but behaves differently in the test environment. Discussing progress on the issue with the business user is an indication of moving to a higher level of business support. On the same day, the user can be helped in drawing up a complex report that requires writing special scripts.

All of the above examples are typical tasks performed in real organizations. Therefore, they could be included in operations reference guides, sysadmin manuals, process documentation, etc. However, for almost all of these examples it would be difficult to find an appropriate ITIL process. ITIL processes appear to be described at a higher level of abstraction than the typical tasks of today's technical support teams. Core ITIL topics are relevant when it comes to getting different teams to work together. But these processes are not designed to cover all the tasks that are performed to ensure the performance of IT services in general or on specific platforms. In fact, if you try, you can link the above tasks to almost all ITIL processes and just as well argue that these tasks are not covered by any of the processes. And drawing up a real value chain of tasks corresponding to each ITIL process may not be so obvious.

Even in the mainframe world, which is associated with the days when the ITIL process set was just beginning to emerge, it is difficult to establish a clear connection between the day-to-day tasks of an IT department and the various underlying ITIL processes. ITIL has the concept of “operations management”, but it is difficult to reconcile it with the process approach, which is the basis of all ITIL. Even if you define operations management as an organizational structure along with customer service, application management, and technical support management, it is difficult to clearly differentiate these structures.

“The problem is more with how ITIL is applied, rather than with the limitations of the methodology itself.”

Some ITIL consultants have spent months (and organizational dollars) trying to translate just one ITIL process into the real world of an IT department. Others have spent even more time arguing about the "correct" implementation or the "correct" interpretation. Naturally, the problem here is more about how ITIL is applied, rather than about the limitations of the methodology itself. Some consultants and managers have found a pragmatic way to use ITIL as a launching pad for creating lightweight, efficient service delivery structures. They avoid confusion by simplifying everything for the teams they work with. Is it possible to somehow make this connection between ITIL and reality an integral part of the methodology itself?

4. There is no need to build a “great wall of China” between business and IT

The ubiquity of IT is changing the boundaries between the traditional IT department and the rest of the organization. Most production and supply chains can be automated using equipment that actively interacts with IT. Cooperation with partners and suppliers is carried out through IT services. Business processes are dynamically adapted by integrating applications that have interfaces that are as clear as possible to users. Office equipment - telephony, building access control systems, security infrastructure, etc. - becomes integrated. Communication with customers and others now takes place online using IT systems. Business users can quickly solve new problems with IT services that are accessible from anywhere, within and outside the organization, including in public clouds. Personal devices are used so widely for work that it seems as if users are already completely independent of traditional internal IT structures. New opportunities due to market competition change the company from the inside.

Naturally, all this must work together with the support of key users, relevant specialists and everyone else who clearly understands their place and responsibilities. And for this complex environment, some controls need to be built into service contracts, budgets and business strategy. Some believe that IT has become partly a utility service that can be obtained from anywhere. Others believe that there is no longer any place in the world for business strategies that do not consider IT creativity as a strategic asset. In the modern world, the boundaries between IT and business become meaningless. Business and application teams have become virtual, distributed across multiple departments that work together to keep business processes running and continually adapt to new needs. These virtual teams can even span multiple organizations. In the most dynamic enterprises, IT and business are closely intertwined.

"In the modern world, the boundaries between IT and business are losing meaning"

The traditional organizational structure according to ITIL is a closed system with two large modules, business and IT. The business is the client of the IT department and perceives it as a “black box”. The IT department may have a complex internal structure that is hidden from the business. A business can also have a complex structure, but it has nothing to do with the IT structure. Having clear interfaces between different parts of the organization is designed to improve control and clarity for everyone. If everyone makes sure that their department copes well with its responsibilities, then the entire organization will work successfully. But is this true today? Effective and close collaboration between traditional business professionals and traditional IT specialists today is perhaps no less important than the cooperation of IT department employees with each other. The interaction between IT and business these days is often more than just a contract.

5. Flexible application of the model based on a single point of contact

Today's youth have grown up with access to new communication technologies such as cell phones, mobile Internet, social media, instant messaging, web search, online communities, etc. The result is that new generations are approaching life in new, more creative ways. working together. They build networks of coworkers and other internal and external contacts that help them get through their work. In exchange, they share their knowledge and experience with their network, receiving valuable feedback. Informal channels help the new generation solve some problems in more flexible and efficient ways than were previously done in traditional, strictly hierarchical institutions.

New ways of working require communication within the organization that goes beyond calls to single points of contact (SPOs) created for certain needs. In some traditional organizations, there seem to be even more such outlets than there are employees themselves. Employees cannot directly contact their contacts in the marketing or HR departments; this must be done through the official ETC. In the latter, they make sure that the transmitted message corresponds to their specialization, edit it and, possibly, transfer it to the right person in the appropriate structure. Or it may turn out that the wrong ETC was used, that the message was transmitted through the wrong channel or not according to the rules. It looks as if this system was created only to prevent colleagues from solving their problems together. Some ETC implementations raise rather than lower barriers to access to tools.

The same thing can happen if you create an overly inflexible structure of the Service Desk and associated ETC in accordance with ITIL. There are cases when the need to contact the Service Desk service was difficult to justify, since the users themselves did not see any convenience in it. Yet IT management forced the service on users, simply insisting that it would be better this way. There were also implementations in which the ETC was useless, that is, there was additional cost for something that did not improve either service or interaction.

In other cases, contact channels and procedures lack flexibility. Example - you cannot come to the support service yourself until you receive a request number. Or, you may be forced to use only phone, email, or a web form as your only support communication channel. In such cases, there is a risk of increasing explicit and hidden costs and not improving the service for either the organization or individual users. And in an environment with several partners, where each party has its own UTC, you have to create another UTC to control the others.

“Today, communication with technical support should be focused on the user’s needs, and the support chain should be extremely simple”

So while the idea of lowering barriers to access through clearly defined, flexible ways to contact support is still valuable, the way we implement this idea could definitely use a radical overhaul. Today, communication with technical support should be focused on the needs of the user, and the support chain should be extremely simple, both within one organization and between several.

6. Apply ITIL in environments with multiple customers and partners

In the current era of outsourcing and partnerships, there are no IT departments that are an “island” separate from everyone else. In organizations of all sizes, IT integration has become more complex than traditional centralized systems or single-vendor environments. At the same time, budgets allocated to support new complex systems and applications are tightly regulated. Compared to earlier times, more organizations are choosing to cope with business complexity by expanding collaboration with external partners who perform tasks that are not the primary focus of the original organization. And this means that some of the IT support processes are carried out by external companies, which in turn provide IT support to many different clients. They operate in a highly competitive market, competing with other participants, each of which has its own advantages. Thus, today's IT support service organizations operate in a multi-tenant/multi-partner environment, and naturally this comes with its own challenges.

Which tasks, contracts, or teams should be consolidated into one larger structure, and which tasks, contracts, and teams should be given priority? How to achieve economies of scale, and in what cases will scale be more of a disadvantage? How to find the optimal balance between standardization, leading to economies of scale, and meeting the individual needs of each customer? How to share experience and knowledge with customers without sacrificing confidentiality and trust? How can we ensure that customers get priority given the different commercial and technical forces? How to use and adapt tools to meet both corporate standards and the individual requirements of each customer?

A number of commercial IT service providers have developed their own approaches to solve these problems, while at the same time adhering to ITIL terminology and the customer interfaces defined in the library. Some services by such companies are provided as “black boxes”, others are optimized and integrated together with the customer and other interested parties.

Effective collaboration across a complex chain or web of partnerships may require communication or integration between relevant support processes in different organizations. For example, a first-line support toolkit may contain information that needs to be shared with one or more second-line support teams in other organizations, which in turn may involve third-line support. Each of these teams may use different tools from different vendors. How can they share information about tickets and other support events? The more practices taken from ITIL are used in one of these teams, the more complex the interaction can become. Requests can be classified by type or priority, linked to information about the user, application, service, as well as relevant infrastructure components. Meanwhile, the database structure for managing similar information in another organization may be completely different.

“Today, the integration and optimization of IT support processes across the chain is probably at the same level of maturity as email was in the days of the mainframe.”

Today, the integration and optimization of IT support processes across the chain is probably at the same level of maturity that email was in the days of the mainframe. Specific agreements exist within each company or organizational structure, but the systems and models governed by them have not yet been adapted to collaboration across organizational boundaries. Some companies have begun to directly integrate systems with each other. Implementing cross-organizational processes is key to delivering IT support as efficiently and effectively as possible. A single methodology or standard could be a guiding light in this case. ITIL recognizes the need for partners to work together and emphasizes the importance of appropriate, clear interfaces and agreements. But ITIL does not provide a practical platform that allows organizations to translate these general concepts into real life.

7. The need for scientific justification

Competing forces have emerged in the IT support space. Leaders are looking for creative ways to reduce costs for every process and every organizational unit without sacrificing IT service continuity and productivity. Knowledge in the field of management has increased enormously in recent decades. More and more companies are making radical organizational changes to continue delivering maximum value to customers at lower costs. Today, organizations are looking for ways to achieve economies of scale and optimize interactions, and the ability to do more with less.

Some IT services are considered key assets in business strategy, facilitating innovation and bringing products to market quickly. Standard IT services, in turn, support core business processes, and this happens in much the same way across many organizations. Such IT services require well-documented best practices that deliver maximum results with minimum effort and overhead. Shortcuts in the form of proven approaches that have proven their effectiveness can help business leaders achieve their goals. In organizations that have reached a sufficient level of maturity to provide effective services, the focus shifts to improving performance. Today, ITIL is not perceived as a source of methods for maximizing the operation of systems and services when the budget has been reduced, say, by 50%. ITIL is used more as a rationale for a specific method for improving the quality of activities than as a source of proven ways to reduce costs to a minimum while achieving high quality.

Some traditional ITIL implementations are perceived as being too expensive and leading to inflexible organizational models with large amounts of overhead. Some implementation projects consumed consultant and training budgets for years or months. The introduction of “heavy” tools and command structures increases direct project and personnel costs. The creation of additional horizontal management functions increases the burden on managers of different business areas. Some improvements proposed or pushed by ITIL implementation teams are met with opposition from users and IT staff. Change is sometimes perceived as increasing administrative costs, losing time and productivity, and moving away from proven ways of doing things. As a result, there is a perception that rigid adherence to ITIL principles deprives an organization of competitive advantages, rather than giving them them.

In short, implementing ITIL principles involves the difficult task of justifying that these changes will actually bring improvements, as opposed to alternative approaches. But ITIL books are written as guides, explaining how certain problems “should” be solved based on anonymous so-called “best practices.” The entire concept of best practices is based on the idea that there are “good” operating principles that have proven useful in various organizations. Specific organizations where such methods have produced measurable positive results are not identified in the books. They do not describe real use cases that could be tested. There are practically no references to scientific literature in them. The reader is invited to make his own judgment about whether it makes sense to use what is written in a given situation. As a result, these publications are perceived as the expression of the subjective opinion of a group of thoughtful but invisible authors.

Some provisions are supported by the claim that their use will reduce costs or improve performance. Most of the processes and approaches proposed in ITIL come with large costs of implementation and change, in exchange for which there is a promise of a return on investment through the improvements they will bring. The implementation of various structures is “sold” as a step towards the resulting improvement in operational efficiency. But will it be achieved? There is very little comprehensive research, actual evidence, or calculations available to the general public to support any of the ITIL provisions. Clear indications of sources to verify the validity of certain statements could help the reader to understand on what basis the various provisions of the books are based. But it is clear that for any thorough methodology, finding such evidence will be a difficult task.

“A truly effective future methodology must include ways to evaluate and test the effectiveness of various recommendations, as well as a system for sharing research that supports or refute the validity of various “best practices” for managing IT organizations.”

The absence of such references further complicates the application of ITIL principles in practice - any failure can be attributed either to an incorrect approach to implementation, or to a defect in the methodology itself. A clear scientific rationale would make it easier to incorporate into ITIL new knowledge that has emerged in the years since the first versions of the library that made it popular were released. A truly effective methodology of the future must include ways to evaluate and test the effectiveness of various recommendations, as well as a system for sharing research that supports or refute the validity of various “best practices” for managing IT organizations.

8. Increasing the role of the community

Social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and others, help people unite in groups of supporters of a particular idea or, say, brand for the sake of proximity to like-minded people. In the current era of global knowledge sharing, the emergence of large-scale communities helps generate more objective knowledge about common problems. The Internet and other new media have created platforms that allow community members to more effectively solve problems together. A community can be a group of people associated with a commercial entity, it can be contributors to an open source project, or employees of research institutions. Some information is offered for a fee, while others are available for free. In addition to traditional communication based on copyright laws, alternative means of transmitting information are available on the Internet.

So where is the community that will bring the concept, or at least the ITIL brand, to life? How can ITIL evolve in line with new trends in IT and society? Currently, ITIL and related materials from the British government are being developed as a deeply authoritative framework focused on stability and security, rather than as a platform for active evolution and the exchange of ideas. The books themselves are too expensive for private individuals to afford and are heavily copyrighted. Sharing of books or copying in paper or electronic form is prohibited. The use of concepts described in books, teaching materials, and other purposes is subject to special rules, and again, there is no charge. Electronic platforms licensed to use ITIL and related materials are focused on protecting their proprietary status rather than accepting improvements from the community. Even large user groups like itSMF are perceived as having only limited influence from below on the content and evolution of core materials.

"ITIL's development potential is limited by the capabilities of a clearly defined group that is the source of ITIL ideas, and the commercial motives of the community that applies and promotes these ideas"

As a result, the ITIL book change model can be perceived as inflexible and outdated - just like the operating principles proposed by the methodology. ITIL defies conventional wisdom about how actual market standards are created by being relatively inaccessible to most users and not influenced by their community. This means that the development potential of ITIL is limited by the capabilities of a clearly defined group that is the source of ITIL ideas, and the commercial motives of the community that applies and promotes these ideas. The benefits of having an influential community are clear, especially given the difficulty in separating verified facts from conventional wisdom.

9. Be simpler and more accessible

In recent versions, ITIL has been partially adapted to some of the realities of the modern world. At the same time, the books defend everything that was transferred to them from previous editions. This covers concepts such as customer service and service level agreements, the difference between incident management and problem management, the use of a configuration management database and other tools, as well as ITIL functions and processes, service principles and service management.

The way these concepts were presented in previous versions of ITIL echoes the ideas of the time; an example is a defined view of total quality management, a strong argument for a focus on customer satisfaction, and encouragement of a cross-functional process model in the IT organization as in a traditional automotive manufacturing facility. All these concepts have been preserved, but translated into modern language. Supplier control has been replaced by “value web” management, and traditional “quality management” has become something broader, “continuous service improvement.” And dynamic optimization of the service portfolio based on strategic assets and market needs has replaced the simple negotiation of a service level agreement with the internal customer.

The updated ITIL books have added new realities of the modern world, such as outsourcing and other service delivery options. The description of how modern service tools can help with automation has been updated. Some processes have been added that were not present in previous books, such as monitoring-based activities. In addition to clarifying the differences between functions and processes, emphasis was placed on differentiating between views of service, service life cycle, and service chain. Many processes, function definitions, activities, and tasks were added to link these concepts, resulting in not two but five books built around the life cycle concept rather than the decision-making principle.

“The methodology looks like a set of concepts and theories, the visual representation of which requires a multidimensional space with complex connections”

However, the level of abstraction still remains; as a result, the methodology looks like a set of concepts and theories, the visual representation of which requires a multidimensional space with complex connections. While the concepts, applicability and shortcomings of the previous version of ITIL could still be explained to even junior IT professionals in a two-day basic course, this has become more difficult in the new version. In a three-day course, some students learn only a mountain of specialized terminology and traditional concepts, gaining only a general understanding of how it all fits together.

Proprietary approaches to ITIL implementation, such as the Microsoft Operations Framework and frameworks offered by commercial IT service providers, have attempted to simplify theories from ITIL with varying degrees of success. ISO 20000, considered a subset of ITIL suitable for assessing and certifying organizations, contains only 13 elements out of hundreds contained in ITIL itself.

10. Documented compatibility with other standards

ITIL is not promoted as a formal standard, and there is no process to certify organizations to ITIL compliance. But the level of maturity of IT departments in comparison with others must somehow be assessed, and commercial organizations must somehow demonstrate adherence to generally accepted practices. One of the ways to solve these problems is training and certification of specialists. In addition, it is possible to certify organizations for partial compliance with the principles of ITIL according to the generally accepted international standard ISO 20000. Conversely, the implementation of ITIL is a supporting way of transition to operating principles in accordance with the ISO 20000 standard. There have been many publications regarding the similarities and discrepancies between ISO 20000 and ITIL . Other methodologies that have been combined with ITIL include PRINCE2, PMBOK, CMM/CMMi, ISO9000 and COBIT. Recent versions of ITIL have included some of the fundamentals of these methodologies.

“Although in practice ITIL can be used in combination with other management theories, methodologies and standards, there is little practical advice from various sources on how to use them together.”

Although in practice ITIL can be used in combination with other management theories, methodologies and standards, there is little practical advice from various sources on how to use them together. In ITIL version 2 there were 10 or 11 core processes, and in version 3, different editions of which were released from 2007 to 2011, there were first 26 of them, and then even more. For comparison, the 2005 version of ISO 20000 regulates 13 processes, and the 2011 version - from 13 to 17. COBIT has 34 processes, and a different number in MOF v3, MOF v4, ASL and BISL. They all use different names and definitions. There is no single version of the truth, so recommendations from different sources, including ITIL, must be combined and creatively applied to specific situations as needed.

Conclusion

So is ITIL coming to an end? Definitely not. ITIL takes its important place among other sets of “best practices”, “bodies of knowledge”, standards and management approaches. Most ITIL books and related materials, including the Foundation course, can be used as a source of perspective. Many of the well-known concepts documented in ITIL can provide valuable knowledge to a variety of professionals. Although self-evident, these concepts help structure what was already intuitively clear. Standards and methodologies promote collaboration in teams by providing a common reference and terminology. And thanks to improvements, the latest versions of ITIL have become as close as possible to modern realities. However, even the best methodologies have their limitations, and what is advantageous in one situation may be a limitation in another.

Actually, the whole difficulty is to apply the methodologies appropriately and wisely. In the modern world, ITIL principles must be applied to a specific situation and used where necessary, based on pragmatism and real experience in applying effective solutions. The tools offered by ITIL and other methodologies are still needed on the desktop, although choosing the right tools and the right way to use them has become more difficult today. The purpose of this publication is to list the known limitations of the toolkit, to explore those aspects of ITIL that increasingly need to be supplemented with other knowledge. This will expand the possibilities of application and bring the described tools closer to reality.

This is exactly how ITIL itself proposes to use the methodology: there are no universal solutions, each situation requires its own solution. In the meantime, while waiting for the next version to be released, you can still get the most out of the current one.

Summary

The article offers an overview of the potential limitations of traditional implementations of the ITIL methodology, taking into account the impact of new trends and realities on IT and business. Restrictions are divided into ten categories.

The world does not stand still, and inflexible IT service providers are losing relevance. Business and IT are closely intertwined, and different businesses adopt different models.

The recognized benefits of ITIL continue to be realized in many contexts. To achieve more than the standard methodologies used today requires creativity in combining knowledge from different sources.

The report raises the question of what role future versions of ITIL can play in enabling dynamic, flexible, standards-based collaboration among all participants in IT service management within traditional structures and across organizations.

Tom Seegers ( [email protected]) is a certified ITIL Expert, Service Delivery Manager at RealDolmen, one of the largest IT service providers in Belgium. He has been with the company for about 6 years and in the IT industry for about 15.

The paper was first presented at the ITSMF 2013 conference in Belgium; This edition has been prepared taking into account valuable feedback from the audience.

Tom Segers. ITIL Pro and contra — 10 things that would make us love ITIL even more

This article used materials: ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library); MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework); ITSM HP Reference Model; ITPM (IT Process Model); COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology).

Introduction

In most cases, the success of a telecommunications business depends on the use of information technology to support the company's key business processes. Now the IT division of a telecommunications company becomes a partner of the business and, together with the production divisions of the organization, creates additional quality, whereas previously the IT division only provided elements of the IT infrastructure for use. However, it is necessary to clearly justify to the production departments the directions of development of information technologies in the company and the advantages of the selected IT solutions.

The provision of services to external users depends on the information technologies used and the quality of their support, which directly affects the competitiveness of the company, and all this increases the requirements for the efficiency of the IT department. The problem of increasing the efficiency of information technology has already been solved more than once and the most effective results are summarized in standards and libraries in the field of information technology. Using these standards allows you to “not reinvent the wheel”, but take the most perfect solution and bring it into line with your situation.

Information Technology Standards

If we talk about existing library standards, the most famous are the following:

ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)

offers a different look at the activities of the IT department, which becomes the same unit that generates surplus quality as the rest of the organization. Moreover, the IT department no longer provides equipment for use, but rather provides IT services necessary for end users, who in this context are preferably called “service consumers.” We can say that the equipment provided is “wrapped” with services to support and provide it. The transition to the term IT services requires a transition from the owner-user relationship of equipment (applications) to the buyer-seller relationship of IT services, which in turn requires the development of ways to measure the quality of the services provided. In addition, the concept of service cost is introduced, which actually brings the IT department to the financial interaction between the IT department and the business.

In fact, the ITIL library offers the construction of a process model for managing an IT department, the result of which is IT services for business with a transparent cost, the quality of which is guaranteed through the organization of continuous monitoring. The ITIL library contains the best world experience in building a unified integrated IT department management system, which can be applied to a specific situation. Because the library is freely available, it is the most widely used approach to IT service management today, applicable to all sectors and organizations of all sizes. ITIL can be implemented either fully or partially, and in fact, it is a certain system of views on information technology management in a company. The owner of the ITIL project is currently OGC/CCTA (Office of Government Commerce/Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency). The collection of 20 years of IT management experience under the auspices of the UK Government has made ITIL books in all major areas of IT management the de facto standard.

COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology)

– standard for management and auditing in the field of information technology. The COBIT standard is based on 34 high-level control objectives, one for each IT process, which are grouped into 4 domains: Planning and Organizing, Design and Implementation, Operation and Maintenance, and Monitoring. A feature of the COBIT standard in relation to other standards in the field of IT is the presence in it of a maturity model developed in the late 80s by the Software Engineering Institute's Institute of Software Engineering and Development. Maturity Models (MM) is not a technology, not a standard, there are no formal descriptions for it, there are no strict requirements, and it is not tied to specific information technologies. However, this maturity model introduces the concept of several levels of process maturity:

Does not exist. Complete absence of any IT management processes. The organization does not recognize that there are IT problems that need to be addressed and thus;
Start. The organization recognizes the existence of IT management problems and the need to address them. However, there are no standardized solutions;
Repetition. There is a general awareness of the challenges of IT management. Indicators of activity and IT processes are in development, covering the processes of planning, functioning and monitoring of IT;
Description. The need to operate in accordance with IT governance principles is understood and accepted. Procedures are standardized and documented;
Control. There is a full understanding of IT management issues at all levels of the organization, and employee training is ongoing. Responsibility is clearly distributed, the level of proficiency in processes is established;
Optimization. There is an in-depth understanding of IT governance, IT problems, solutions, and future prospects within the organization. As a result of continuous improvement, processes conform to maturity models based on “best practice”.

The use of a mechanism for assessing maturity levels and control objectives makes this standard more high-level, although it contains a lot of useful information for organizing IT processes. The Danai standard is most effectively used to determine goals in the field of IT, build a balanced scorecard system (BSC) for the IT department and conduct internal and external audits in the field of information technology; in addition, based on the results of process certification by maturity levels, it is possible to formulate improvement measures processes.

MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework)

— Information technology management is a topic in which Microsoft has its own vision. The Microsoft Enterprise Services standards system from Microsoft consists of three areas:

The first area is activities to prepare for the implementation of an information system, where IT requirements are formalized and the scope of the project is determined. Preparation for the implementation of an information system is described in the Microsoft Readiness Framework (MRF) standard;
The second area is the activity of implementing an information system in an enterprise, where the main issues of developing and deploying an IT solution are determined. The construction and implementation of the information system is described in the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) standard;
The third area is activities to support the information system implemented in the enterprise. Information system operation issues are addressed in the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) standard.

MOF consists of a set of articles (white papers), manuals (operations guides), training courses and includes three main models:

Process Model (MOF Process Model); o Team Model (MOF Team Model);
Risk management model (MOF Risk Model).

The general similarity of this standard to ITIL and its focus on Microsoft products makes this standard less used relative to ITIL. However, for users of Microsoft technologies, the use of this standard is justified, although it must be understood that most of the processes in MOF have been transferred from the ITIL library.

ITSM HP Reference Model

is a corporate model that was developed by HP based on and in full compliance with the ITIL library. In fact, this model is a reworking of ITIL taking into account HP’s vision and the list of processes in both models is the same.

ITPM (IT Process Model)

is a standard that was proposed by IBM in the late 70s of the last century to solve problems of managing computer systems. The ISMA (Information Systems Management Architecture) architecture and concept (IT Process Model) were created, which emerged from ISMA and adopted for use by IBM. This approach differs from ITIL not only in the way it divides processes, but also in a number of terminological aspects. In fact, the IT Process Model is 41 processes, grouped into eight groups according to the number of main factors influencing the success of IT projects:

Interaction with clients;
Providing management systems with corporate information;
IT management from a business perspective;
Preparation of solutions;
Deployment of solutions;
Service delivery and change management;
Support of IT services and solutions;
IT resource and infrastructure management.

However, if we talk about the practice of using this model in Russia, it is used quite rarely. ISO 20000 is one of the new standards in the field of quality management, which incorporates, with minor changes, most of the basic principles and processes of ITIL. Currently, IT departments are being certified for compliance with a service-oriented and process approach in the field of IT management using this standard.

ITIL Library

The library of best practices in the field of IT includes many books that contain information: on the role of IT for modern business; on the organization of interaction with clients, planning, organization and control of services; experience in management issues; quality management; about support and provision of services; issues of licensing and ensuring the functioning of software and all aspects of the daily operational functioning of equipment and technologies.

The ITIL library introduces the concept of IT service, which means solving a specific problem within the framework of an organization’s business processes or projects using information technology. All services are collected in a catalog of IT services/services and service parameters are determined for each service, such as agreed service time, availability, reliability, confidentiality, etc. All services and their parameters are recorded in Service Level Agreements (SLAs). One of the fundamental ITIL processes is the Service Delivery process, within which the following processes are defined:

Service Level Management (Service Management) – achieving clear agreements with the Customer on IT services and implementing these agreements;
Cost Management – determination, allocation of expenses, their forecast and tracking;
Capacity Management – optimization of costs, time of acquisition and placement of IT resources;
Availability Management – optimizing service and minimizing the number of incidents;
Continuity Management – preparing and planning ways to deal with emergency situations;
Security Management – ensuring information security regime.

Another fundamental ITIL process is the Service Support process, which defines the following processes:

Interaction with users (Service Desk) – the point of contact between the user and the IT organization;
Incident Management (Help Desk/ Incedent Management) – eliminating the incident and quickly resuming the provision of services;
Problem Management – preventing and eliminating root problems of incidents;
Configuration Management – control of a changing IT infrastructure;
Change Management – control of changes in the IT infrastructure;
Release Management (Software Control & Distribution) – ensuring the successful deployment of releases, including integration, testing and storage.

When comparing ITIL and COBIT, ITIL is most useful in organizing the delivery of IT services and developing detailed processes, while COBIT specializes in high-level IT management and IT auditing. COBIT provides executives with the opportunity to communicate business goals and objectives to IT leaders, transforming the organization's strategic and tactical plans into clear, understandable IT roadmaps. While the ITIL methodology is used to optimize the process of servicing information systems from the point of view of designing process logic and mechanisms for their evaluation. The benefits of using ITIL are as follows:

The role of IT is changing, which is now a key driver of changes and improvements in business processes;
IT service delivery is becoming more business unit oriented;
A basis is being formed for monitoring the quality and cost of services;
The process model and structure of the IT department becomes clear;
An effective process design creates the basis for outsourcing IT services;
Adhering to ITIL best practices helps change the corporate culture towards the understanding that the IT department's job is to deliver services;
The ITIL library provides a unified system of concepts for interaction both within the company and with service providers;
There is a transition to market relations between business and IT;
A process approach is being introduced to improve efficiency and complement functional management;
A proactive (planned) approach to IT management is being introduced in addition to the traditional reactive (firefighter) approach;
A basis is being formed for calculating costs in the context of IT services;
IT knowledge management is being implemented, including a database of known errors and information about the IT infrastructure.

MOF standard

If we compare the scope of the ITIL library with the MOF process model, then the MOF model is some extension of the processes described in the books “Providing IT Services” and “Supporting IT Services” of the ITIL library. In fact, the MOF Process Model represents the service management processes of information systems, which are presented in the form of service management functions (SMFs).

The entire MOF model contains 20 service functions divided into four quadrants:

Changing - Implementation of process changes, new solutions and technologies;
Operating – Ensuring that day-to-day routine operations are carried out;
Support – Ensuring prompt resolution of incidents, problems, requests;
Optimizing - Optimizing cost, performance, availability of IT services.

All 20 service functions are distributed within these four quadrants.

The “Change” quadrant contains the following three service functions:

Change Management. Planning and recording all required changes in the information system, assessing the impact of these changes on other components of the information system;
Release Management. Control over releases and their deployment process should ensure that all releases are well planned and tested;
Configuration Management. Registration and control of information about configuration elements of the IT infrastructure includes the process of collecting information about all configuration elements of the system into a single database and the processes of auditing the compliance of information with the current situation.

The “Support” quadrant contains the following three service functions:

ServiceDesk. Organizing first line support, registering user requests, requests for information and requests for changes;
Incident Management. Managing the incident resolution process and ensuring the speedy restoration of normal service operation;
Problem Management. Ensuring the uninterrupted operation of all information system services by analyzing the root causes of incidents.

The “Optimization” quadrant contains the following six service functions:

Service Level Management. Managing the quality of IT services by defining and monitoring the parameters of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between the supplier and customers;
Financial Management. Determination, optimization and control of the cost of IT services, which includes planning and budgeting, analysis of the cost of services, as well as measures to optimize IT costs and assess the need for investment;
Service Continuity Management. Restoration of IT infrastructure in case of unforeseen situations. Includes developing a rapid recovery plan for business critical systems;
Capacity Management. Monitoring and ensuring the required performance of IT resources in accordance with a certain level of service in the SLA;
Availability Management. Managing the availability of information and services in terms of using available capacity;
Workforce Management. Developing recommendations for recruiting, retaining and motivating IT personnel.

The “Service” quadrant contains the following 8 functions:

Job Scheduling. Organizing the work process in the most efficient way to meet the requirements of the service level agreement;
System Administration. Performing daily operations to administer the information system;
Network Administration. Ensuring uninterrupted operation of the network infrastructure;
Security Administration. Ensuring the security of the information system, determining and monitoring the protection parameters of corporate information and IT services;
Directory Services Administration. Maintenance and support of corporate directory service;
Storage Management. Development of a data archiving/recovery plan, control over storage systems;
Service Monitoring and Control. Receipt of up-to-date information about the status of IT services by service personnel. The most typical monitoring objects are: process status, statuses of scheduled jobs, queue parameters, server load, application response time;
Print and Output Management. Control over the data printing process and the data provided in reports.

If we compare the scope of the MOF standard with the ITIL processes for the provision and support of services, we see that the MOF is somewhat broader, however, the expansion is associated with some detail in the “Service” quadrant, which on the one hand provides certain information, but on the other hand, this activity is present in most IT services and the expansion of the model in this direction does not bring much novelty. Adding a service function Human resource management does not carry specific knowledge for organizing IT in a company and is an auxiliary process that is present in any company and the logic of which is extremely clear. Otherwise, the ITIL and MOF processes are completely identical, including the same names and descriptions.

However, the MOF standard, in addition to the process model, contains a role structure for the distribution of powers and responsibilities between IT employees - a team model (MOF Team Model). Moreover, the team model is not intended to describe job responsibilities and is not an organizational chart.
The MOF team model describes six roles, grouped according to the IT service life cycle. In fact, these roles are some areas of activity:

Release - Planning and executing changes;
Supporting - User support;
Security – Control over corporate security policy;
Infrastructure - Management of infrastructure tools;
Maintenance (Operations) - Performing daily IS maintenance operations;
Partnership (Partner) - Establishing relationships with business.

The team model contains too general a definition of roles, which will be impossible to use when engineering detailed processes, and therefore, one of the options for using the team model could be the distribution of responsibilities for service functions in accordance with the given roles, i.e. actually assigning process owners.

In addition to the team model, the MOF standard contains a risk management model (MOF Risk Model), which defines the main stages of risk management:

Risk identification (Identify). Determination of the causes of risk, conditions of its occurrence, consequences;
Risk analysis (Analyze). Assessment of the likelihood of risk and damage to the information system and business;
Event planning (Plan). Determination of measures to completely avoid the risk or reduce its impact. A plan of action in the event of a risk is also being developed here.
Risk tracking (Track). Collect information about changes over time in various risk elements. If a risk has been considered insignificant for some time, it must be excluded from the list of risks. If the impact of a risk has changed, you should move to the analysis phase to re-evaluate that impact.
Control. Carrying out planned actions in response to the occurrence of a risk event. In fact, these stages of risk management are linked into the risk management life cycle from identification to continuous monitoring.

However, if you look at the risk management model in isolation from the ITIL and MOF standard, you can see a shallow view of the risk management model. For example, a methodology such as CRAMM contains more detailed instructions on risk assessment mechanisms, and BASEL II describes in more detail the issues of organizing a risk management system in a company. Therefore, to deploy a risk management system, it is more effective to use other techniques that contain more complete information. Due to the similarity of the ITIL and MOF methodologies, the benefits from using these models are virtually identical.

Conclusion

As a result of comparing ITIL and MOF, we saw that MOF has a number of significant features compared to the ITIL standard, but if we consider these features, they are not of a key nature: o Processes not included in ITIL are intuitive and accepted in operational activities ; o The process model is supplemented with team and risk management models, but the use of these models is complicated due to their poor detail; o As opposed to the purely descriptive documents of ITIL, MOF provides applied materials such as the Windows Operations Guide, Exchange Operations Guide, etc. However, these documents are tied to a specific operating system and, in principle, do not relate to the organization of processes. If we draw a conclusion about the applicability of the considered standards in the field of IT for optimizing activities, then we can say with confidence that they all contain a “grain of truth”, so using them together is most preferable, since in certain areas they have innovations relative to each other.

Materials used in this article: MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework); ITSM HP Reference Model; ITPM (IT Process Model); COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology).

ITIL— a library of methods and rules for setting up IT service work processes. The ITSM infrastructure manager helps achieve the goals formulated in ITIL.

InfraManager reduces ITIL implementation costs by offering:

Accurate and continuous collection of essential property data
Automation of IT management, unification of heterogeneous information needs for financial, operational and contract management
Reduced implementation time with more efficient use of resources
Business capabilities to define ROI and achieve goals required by v3 ITIL
Data needed for effective configuration management

The InfraManager system is a solution for setting up processes according to ITIL

Each of the processes is provided by special tools in the system, for example:

Service level management

Incident and service request management

Problem management

Identifying and logging problems
Incident Communication
Metrics for process management

Event Management

Monitoring of IT infrastructure elements
Automatic incident generation based on critical events

Knowledge Management

Asset and Configuration Management

Change management

The ITIL library contains a lot of practical recommendations on which work processes to highlight, how to distribute roles and responsibilities among employees, what should be given priority attention, and the like. However, like any technique, it requires adaptation to the individual “landscape” of the business.

Service Strategy

Service strategy is active throughout the service lifecycle and influences every aspect of the IT infrastructure. InfraManager gives:

Decision support in developing and implementing service strategy
Data to identify opportunities and resources
Information about the property, the basis of the service portfolio

Service Design

Service design begins the service life cycle and is the step at which strategic decisions and business requirements become a detailed plan. InfraManager provides:

Easily accessible data that accurately identifies the software and hardware catalog, revealing any limitations
Dynamically analyze infrastructure capabilities with accurate software usage tracking
Database of contracts and suppliers necessary for service design
Estimation of actual costs for the planned service

Service Transition

Putting a service into operation is the second step in the service life cycle, which forms a model for processing changes due to any reasons. Configuration management, knowledge management, and change evaluation are the most significant components of this step. InfraManager provides:

Different views of service configuration and property elements used by that service
Ability to track actual infrastructure changes associated with a service or a change to a service
Tools to facilitate service accessibility through visibility, standardization and management
Data and reports to assess the financial impact of a change
Knowledge of products, organizations and usage information for long-term service management
Manage software licenses that run correctly, accurately, and automatically.
Functionality to reduce the cost of auditing software licenses and the cost of configurations

Service Operation

The last phase of the life cycle, the exploitation phase, identifies sources of information regarding the actual use of the service. Day-to-day activities of incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, and access management are part of this phase. Event management is included in ITIL v3 to manage alerts that do not originate from the Service Desk. InfraManager makes available:

Information about the current, actual configuration, vital for the correct response to situations
Data, reporting, and analytics capabilities required for most services in the Service Desk
Property information to handle queries and incidents
Capacity monitoring to evaluate how services and the infrastructure supporting services are performing

Continuous Service Improvement

Operating throughout the life cycle, continuous service improvement involves collecting information from all phases in order to monitor the level of service quality and its performance. Measurements and indicators are analyzed to evaluate achievements and costs. InfraManager provides:

Monitor data identifying changes to IT infrastructure that will impact services
Linking contract and cost information for specific assets to assess progress towards goals
Data on the use of IT assets

The word (or rather the abbreviation) is now very fashionable and very often found in publications and at IT parties. There was even a peculiar fashion for “ ITIL implementation“.

What is the reason for such intense interest in ITIL?

ITIL® (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)– a library of the most effective methods of organization and management for companies operating in the field of information technology, as well as for companies, organizations and institutions that want to build an effective process of management and interaction both within the company and with external suppliers and consumers of its services.

It contains generalized description of successful management decisions, the best practical methods of organizing work IT departments different enterprises or separate IT companies around the world providing services in the field of information technology.

ITIL, is essentially a set of publications that provide guidelines for delivering quality services and the processes and components needed to support them. The main goal of ITIL is to promote modern knowledge and exchange experience in the field.

IN ITIL library the most important and current areas of activity of the IT department and IT company are described in detail. Fundamental principle ITIL is process approach, allowing you to delimit the chain of interactions IT structures into individual processes and clearly describe the operating principle of each of them and the points of their interaction, based on the tasks assigned to each structural unit and to the business as a whole. The ITIL library also discusses the tasks, procedures and areas of responsibility of specific performers and structural units.

ITIL is a methodology, the essence of which is to build IT processes that will ultimately lead to the creation of a service model. In this regard, the third version, introducing the concept service life cycle (Service Life Cycle) is a critical step towards a service model.

In reality, ITIL is nothing more than a good methodological material, which systematizes the experience in the field of IT process management accumulated by the world's leading companies. Business processes are different in different countries, IT processes are different in different companies, so ITIL is not an “instruction for use” or a prescription, much less an automation standard, but a methodology. Like any methodology, it lacks information about the tools that need to be used to solve specific problems.

The implementation of the ITIL methodology is an attempt to creatively adapt someone else’s “best experience” ( best practices) to solve your own specific problems. And you need to approach this adaptation flexibly and creatively - perhaps someone’s experience in managing IT processes will turn out to be better and more effective. After all, increasing the efficiency of IT processes is only a means to achieve the ultimate goal - increasing business efficiency.