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By Alan Wilson.
Alan is an IT Service Manager with over 10 years of experience in such industries as telecommunications, banking and manufacturing
and is the holder of voice and data communications patents which saved $20M. Experience in Incident, Problem, Availability and
Change Management initiatives with project size that ranged from $100k to $40M with certifications in project management and
ITIL. One engagement saved a Brazilian telecommunications customer 21,000 operational hours and was featured in Ericsson Success
Stories Magazine.
Implement ing
ITIL® – How to
Get Started
Overview
The ITIL concept emerged in the 1980s, when the British government determined that the IT
service quality needed to be improved. The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency
(CCTA), later called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and currently part of The Cabinet
Office, was tasked with developing a framework for efficient and financially responsible use of IT
resources within the British Government and the private sector (http://itsm.fwtk.org/History.htm).
The result was the ITIL framework which is now in its third iteration.
Businesses have adopted the ITIL standards and methodology in order to more effectively
manage their IT networks through effective service management.
ITIL breaks down into four main categories:
Service Strategy
• How to create value for customers
• How best to use resources and capabilities
• What IT services to offer
Service Design
• How to design and develop IT services
• Changes and improvements to existing
services
Service Transition
• How to move services from development to
production effectively
• How to manage changes to operations
Service Operation
• How to coordinate and carry out day to day
actives through effective processes
What exactly does ITIL provide?
ITILprovides a structure todesign, deploy, anddeliver
IT services efficiently and effectively and thereby
lowering the cost of IT operations. In addition, a key
aspect is to improve IT services and IT operations
through Continuous Service Improvement (CSI).
The Approach to
implementing ITIL
Implementing ITIL is not a quick fix, but rather
a commitment to implement the structure and
processesonhowITservicesaredesigned,developed,
implemented and managed.
However, implementing can have a big monetary
payoff, such as the $60-$70M over a 9-month pe-
riod one company saved (Randy Steinberg, 2011).
Saving that amount of money warrants a detailed
look at apply ITIL to a company’s IT.
Step 1: Creat a Vision
The first step is to create a vision for IT in terms of
business and technical objectives. The best way
to do this is to examine a company’s business
model and determine the role that IT plays in
enhancing the company’s competitive advantage.
Step 2: UnderstandWhere You Are Today
Once the company has a good vision of what IT
should be, the next step is to understand where it is
at today by documenting how IT is performing. Find
out what IT problems are occurring today, how often,
and where the problems are occurring by having
detailed discussions with the Lines of Business.
Questions, such as “why is the network so slow”,
“why are there so many network outages”, and “why
does it take so long to get application changes
implemented”, often come up. This information
needs to be captured. As the discussions take place,
the problems and issues experienced by the business
need to be documented.
Step 3: Gap Analysis
Next, create a gap analysis by focusing on gaps
in processes, people, and technology to achieve
the objectives for IT identified in the vision.
The analysis should contain two parts. The first
is what needs to be done to achieve long term
objectives and the second is to determine what
needs to be done in the short term. The long and
short termobjectives will be formulated into projects
and will be prioritized based on risk/reward. Short
term projects with the best risk/reward ratio will be
implemented first in order to get quick “Wins”.
Why is it important to have quick “Wins”?
Short term projects that provide an immediate
paybackcreatea“. . . senseofurgency [that] iscrucial to
gaining needed cooperation. With compliancy high,
transformations usually go nowhere because few
people are even interested in working on the change
problem,” says John Kotter, a Harvard professor.
Having successful short-term projects will show
the company that ITIL methodology provides real
benefit ($$), and will secure buy-in from executive
management.
Step 4: Measure It
As mentioned earlier, it’s important to document
the current processes in IT. In addition, IT needs to
be measured on how it is performing. IT needs to
reduce the frequency and length of outages and
improve response time to customer requests, and
the best way to accomplish an improvement is to
ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark of
the Cabinet Office.
“The Swirl logo™ is a Trade Mark of
the Cabinet Office.
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