ITIL Concepts: Functions & Processes

Hi Friends,

Two very important concepts in ITIL are Functions and Processes and these are the most misunderstood concepts as well. Beginners in ITIL often get confused with these two terms. Type these terms in any Search Engine and you’ll see so many sites talking about this.

Today we’ll try to resolve this mystery..!!! R you Ready…?

Functions:

“Functions are Units of Organizations specialized to perform certain type of Work and responsible for specific Outcome”.

Functions should relate to processes for an optimum organization.

Example of a function can be Service Desk, Desktop management, Network Management, Capacity management etc.

Functions can be designed or implemented considering the specific requirements.

Functions are divided into four categories-

1. Infrastructure Function: Application Management, Capacity Management, Desktop Support, etc
2. Service Quality Functions: Access Management, Security management, IT Service continuity management etc.
3. Activity Functions: It Operations, Monitoring & Control, Stakeholder Management, Business Relationship, Configuration Management etc
4. Organization Functions: Service Desk, Technical Management, Infrastructure management etc.

Process:

“A process is a set of activities which is designed to accomplish a specific objective”

Remember:

A process can be measured with KPIs (Key Performance Indicator).  Process is supposed to provide some result to customer or stakeholder.

Seems simple and straight till now….right? Let’s take a deeper look

With above definition of process, can we say that People in an organization can follow process to achieve result…right?

Be careful…It is not the process that needs to be followed. Practically, it is procedure and work instruction that is followed by People. Process never tells what to do, when to do and how to do. These are taken care by Procedures and work instructions. Process shows the logic to construct the procedures.

If you don’t understand the process and don’t consider it while designing procedures, there will be inconsistency between procedures. This is one of the big reasons behind failure of processes in many organizations.

At the elementary level, processes are expected to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of the service delivered to customer-

Processes to ensure Efficiency-

• Contract Management: Agree with customer’s requirements
• Operations Management: Deliver what you agreed
• Recovery Management: What to do if anything goes wrong.
• Change Management: Respond to changes in environment, technology and business requirements.

 Processes to ensure Effectiveness-

• Configuration Management: Knowing the items you are using to deliver services.
• Risk management: Hurdles and Opportunities (opportunities? Yes we’ll discuss later in my upcoming posts) in delivering what is agreed.

Above processes can be divided into sub processes...

Elementary Process	Sub Process (Described as process in ITIL V3)
Contract Management	Service Catalog Management
	Service Portfolio Management
	SLM (Service Level)
Operations Management	Event Management
	Monitoring & Control
	Request Fulfilment (Service Requests)
Recovery management	Incident Management
Configuration Management	Asset Management
	Configuration Management
Change Management	Change management
	Release & Deployment Management
	Service Validation & testing
	Transition Management
Risk Management	Problem Management
	Improvement Processes
	Service Measurement and Reporting

Great…So this is the resolution to the mystery… I have tried my best to clarify this concept. Please write to me if you have any query.