ITIL Volumes and Processes

My today's post is an extension to the yesterday's discussion. Today we’ll take a closure look towards each part of Service Life Cycle and its processes.

I.                    Service Strategy: Think WHY to do before HOW to do

Service Strategy is the first volume of ITIL which guides us how to design, develop and implement service Management so that it becomes the capability and an asset of organization.  Service strategy ensures that organization can handle the cost and risk associated with the Service Portfolio. Service Strategy is also aimed for Operational Effectiveness and Distinctive Performance.

Major Processes coming under Service Strategy are-

a.       Financial Management: How to allocate budget to keep it aligned with Organization’s Goal.

b.      Service Portfolio Management: Portfolio of Services.

II.                  Service Design: HOW to turn strategy into Capability

This volume of ITIL guides us about Design and Development of Service and Service Management Processes. Service design converts Strategic Objectives into Portfolios of Services and Service Assets.

Major Processes of Service Design are-

•  Capacity Management : Plan capacity so that it can provide desired Output.
•  Availability management: Ensure Services are available to business.
•  IT Service Continuity Management: Ensure Services can be resumes within acceptable time.
• Supplier Management: Suppliers meets the expectation
• Service Level Management: All Service Level Requirements are met.

III.                Service Transition:  Turn Capability into Service

This part of ITIL volumes guides us about Development & Improvement of capabilities for Transitioning new and changed Services into production (or Operation). This is actually realization of designed services.

Major processes of Service Transition are-

• Configuration Management: Managing all Configuration Items.
• Change Management: Implement the required changes.
• Release Management: Changes released to Production.

IV.                Service Operation: Business as Usual

Service Operation as per ITIL focuses on practices for managing the operation of Services. It ensures effectiveness and efficiency of Service Delivery.

Major Service Operation Processes are-

• Event Management: Manage the event happening during the operation.
• Incident Management: Handle degradation or disruption to the Services due to know issues.
• Problem Management: Root Cause Analysis of the cause of issue to prevent future incidents.
• Service Request Fulfillment: Fulfill Service Request which are mostly very low risk changes
• Access Management: Grant Access to Authorized and stop Unauthorized users.

V.                  Continuous Service Management: Let’s make it better

This volume of ITIL focuses on improvement of services by combining Principles, Practices and Methods of Quality Management, Change Management and Capability Improvement. It is majorly based on Plan-Do-Check-Act Model (also known as Deming Cycle).

The major process is-

• Service Reporting and Measurement. You cannot improve if you don’t measure it.

      Dear Readers: Today we discussed the meaning of each of five volumes of ITIL and the processes covered. Please let me know if it was able to fulfill your expectations. Your feedback is a valuable resource to improve the contents.