ITIL v3

Is it a process or a system?

jbronkho — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:09:00 GMT

By continually monitoring ITIL V3 publications, I find that a lot of articles and blogs on the Internet contain questions about processes. Some are about the number of processes, others are about the (perceived) lack of processes and others are about the unclear identification of processes. The fact that processes are getting a lot of attention is not surprising to me, given the fact that ITIL V2 mainly is (known) about processes. So people are expecting processes to be continued in ITIL V3.

And I think those expectations are right: processes are an important capability to coordinate, control and deploy resources within the service management system described by ITIL V3. The big difference with ITIL V2 however is that in ITIL V3 the Services (read: output of a service provider / IT organization) have become the most important topic which are realized by service assets.

Let's take a closer look at service assets. Section 3.2 of the Service Strategy book indicates that resources and capabilities are asset types that organizations use to create value in the form of goods and services. Resources (read: people, information, applications, infrastructure and financial capital) are direct inputs for production. Management, organization, processes, knowledge and people are capabilities that represent an organization’s ability to coordinate, control, and deploy resources to produce value. It is relatively easy to acquire resources while capabilities are typically used to differentiate the service provider's services from competitive service offerings.

So processes are not the only capability for which best practices are described in ITIL V3. The best practices typically describe activities that bring togheter resources. So these best practices also relate to management, organization, knowledge and people. This implies that 1) you can choose the capabiliies that help you to meet your objectives and 2) all selected capabilities need to be integrated and aligned to make the service management system work.

Now I agree that ITIL V3 is not always clear and sometimes even inconsistent on linking best practices described with the capabilities they can be used with. This leads to questions like: "Is this best practice a process, management system or an organizational unit?". One can argue this is a bad thing. Looking beyond the clarity and inconsistency isses on the other hand this implies that you have the flexibility to determine the context (read: capability) for this best practice. I don't think it really matters much whether we call availability management a process, a system or an organizational unit. Ultimately this is all about making resources work together so that services are produced that create value for its users.

For those of you looking for a solution: personally I am often using figure 10.2 from "The official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle" book to indicate the 27 ITIL V3 processes...this should not be a surprise as I created this picture myself ;-)

Does this help?

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst

Change Notification: HP blogs migrate to new platform

david spellman — Thu, 22 May 2008 06:59:00 GMT

We wanted to let you know that HP blogs will be migrating to a new platform over the next week. As of tomorrow, May 23, we won't be posting to the ITIL V3 blog and won't be able to receive any comments submitted. Please hold your comments until June 1 when our new site will be live. Thank you.

Regards,
Ashley Hanna and Jeroen Bronkhorst

Introducing Service Portfolio Management

david spellman — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:25:00 GMT

One of the "new" ITIL V3 processes is Service Portfolio Management (SPM). As I was recently delivering a SPM workshop for a large HP customer, it appeared to me that there is not only a lot of interest in this process but also some significant misunderstanding...

Here are some of the incorrect answers when I asked several people what Service Portfolio Management is all about (without giving any upfront indication). SPM is about

managing the services provided by an IT organization - at first sight this definition probably makes sense, however the problem is that this definition is not specfic enough. One could read SPM as a synonym for Service Management, which is definitely not the case as we will see later on.
managing a service catalog and service level agreements - again a definition that seems right, however managing a service catalog and managing service level agreements is done in other processes that SPM interfaces with.
managing an applications portfolio - this is an answer that I got from people with an application development background and who look at services as a piece of software code. The problem here is that applications are an asset that can be used to construct and deliver services with. So with some creativity you can look at application portfolio management (APM) as a component of service portfolio management. Unfortunately APM is not defined within the ITIL V3 glossary...

Now we've seen a couple of incorrect definitions, let's see how Service Portfolio Management is actually defined within the ITIL V3 glossary: "The Process responsible for managing the Service Portfolio. Service Portfolio Management considers Services in terms of the Business value that they provide."

Unfortunately this doesn't help us a lot as the definition basically says that Service Portfolio Management = Managing the Service Portfolio.

Perhaps it would help if we better understand the word Service Portfolio. Here's what the ITIL V3 glossary says: "The complete set of Services that are managed by a Service Provider. The Service Portfolio is used to manage the entire Lifecycle of all Services, and includes three Categories: Service Pipeline (proposed or in Development); Service Catalogue (Live or available for Deployment); and Retired Services."

Now this helped me to understand what a Service Portfolio consists of, however it was still unclear what the added value of SPM really is. So I started to read the ITIL v3 Service Strategy book (yeah, although I read it many times now I still haven't memorized it completely ;-)).

And here's where I found a clear answer: "Service Portfolio Management is for governing investments in service management across the enterprise and managing them for value". So in other words SPM is about assiging investments to develop new services, modify existing services or retire "old" services.

And in order to accomplish this goal, the following activities are periodically executed:

Define - inventory services, ensure business cases and validate portfolio data
Analyse - maximize portfolio value, align and prioritize and balance supply and demand
Approve - finalize proposed portfolio, authorize services and resources
Charter - communicate decisions, allocate resources and charter services

So let me stop here. What else would you like to know about Service Portfolio Management?

Best Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst

IT Services, Business Services, Services...what's next?

david spellman — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:22:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks I have been reviewing various parts of the Dutch translation of the ITIL V3 glossary. In doing so I noticed that the glossary contains separate definitions for a service, an IT service and a Business service. This brings up some questions, such as: "Why are they separate? How much do they differ? (How) do they interrelate?"...

Let's first take a look at the definitions. Those of you who are already familiar with this are advised to skip the next 3 paragraphs...

As the ITIL V3 glossary is alphabetically organized, the first definition you will encounter is the one for a Business Service: "An IT Service that directly supports a Business Process, as opposed to an Infrastructure Service which is used internally by the IT Service Provider and is not usually visible to the Business. The term Business Service is also used to mean a Service that is delivered to Business Customers by Business Units. For example delivery of financial services to Customers of a bank, or goods to the Customers of a retail store. Successful delivery of Business Services often depends on one or more IT Services."

And the next one is for an IT service: "A Service provided to one or more Customers by an IT Service Provider. An IT Service is based on the use of Information Technology and supports the Customer's Business Processes. An IT Service is made up from a combination of people, Processes and technology and should be defined in a Service Level Agreement."

And finally the definition of a Service: "A means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating Outcomes Customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific Costs and Risks."

If we look at these definitions from an age perspective then I should have started with the IT service definition as this is the oldest one around. This probably also explains why this definition does not contain any reference to the business service definition.

The business service definition on the other hand indicates that it is actually an IT service. Both a business service and an IT service "support the customer business process". If we look at this from a distance, one could argue: "why do we need different terms for the same topic?". Now the answer to this is pretty straight forward: "because a business service also has another meaning, namely a service from a business to its customers".

Now here's where the confusion starts, because what is now actually being meant when someone uses the term business service? Due to its ambiguous meaning you now always need to clarify the context in which the term business service is being used. And to make things even more confusing, sometimes also IT organizations and IT service providers are being referred to as an IT business....

So I wish the term business service had not been invented... however its there and being used. We just need to learn how to live with it...

Perhaps this situation is also why the definition of a service has been added to the ITIL glossary? Under the principle of "less is more" and looking at the definition I think it is safe to say that both an IT service and a business service are specific types of services. All three definitions can refer to the same thing or be completely different, depending on how they are being used.

I think this calls for a change request....do you agree?

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst.

Is ITIL V3 (more) complex?

david spellman — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 06:53:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks I am seeing an increasing amount of articles and communication that speak about the "complexity" of ITIL V3. And this is keeping the ITIL community busy as I recently learned from talking with different people at several events, such as the "Battle of the Frameworks" roundtable organized by itSMF NL.

This post contains several of my findings and conclusions as I have been trying to get my head around the perceived vs real complexity of ITILV3.

The first thing I tried to do is to get a better understanding of how people measure 'complexity of ITIL V3' . Unfortunately there is no commonly agreed standard for measuring complexity. In other words: what is complex fo you, might be simple for me (and the other way around of course). Many factors such as background, experience, structure, etc. contribute to perceived complexity.

People that speak about the complexity of ITIL V3 often try to compare with previous versions of ITIL, other industry best practices (e.g. COBIT, CMMI etc.) and/ or international standards (e.g. ISO/IEC 20000, ISO/IEC 27001, etc.)

So, what metrics are being used to measure complexity with? The first answer I got to this question was: number of books/pages. As a participant to the "battle of the frameworks" was saying: 'ITIL V3 is more complex than ISO/IEC 20000 because ITIL V3 is 5 books of over 300 pages each and ISO/IEC 20000 is "only" 25 pages'. I've also heard someone say that ITIL V3 is less complex than ITIL V2 because ITIL V3 is only 5 books, while ITIL V2 is 9 books... Difficulty with this metric is that it assumes that all documents and standards that are being compared cover the same (reach and depth of) information, which most (if not all) of the time is not the case.

Another comment I have come across is that the increased scope of ITIL V3 (from operations department in V2 to en entire IT organization in V3) is adding complexity. This comment - I think - is true by definition, because an increased scope in this case means more components and interrelationships. On the other side ITIL V3 can be seen as a recognition of the fact that IT organizations do consist of more components and are indeed more complex than described in standards so far.

Last but not least the accessibility and structure of the ITIL V3 books is used as an indicator for complexity. In other words; it takes more time to find what you need compared to other standards. Now I can relate to this when you only look at the 5 core books in paper format, however with the ITIL online subscription service, complementary guidance and the change management process around the core books (as mentioned in my earlier post), you can expect to see an improved structure and associated ease of navigation (over time).

Reading back my findings above, I conclude that in many cases the perceived complexity of ITILV3 cannot be substantiated very well. So my impression is that we are often talking about gut feelings that perhaps are caused by resistance to change...?

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst.

The ITILV3 Configuration Management System (CMS)

david spellman — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:46:00 GMT

What is the difference between a Configuration Management System (CMS) and a Configuration Management Database (CMDB)? This is a question that came up several times in meetings that I had with several different HP customers in multiple industries over the last couple of months. Let me address this post to answering this question.

Let's first take a look at the ITIL V3 glossary definitions:

CMDB - (Service Transition) A database used to store Configuration Records throughout their Lifecycle. The Configuration Management System maintains one or more CMDBs, and each CMDB stores Attributes of CIs, and Relationships with other CIs.

CMS - (Service Transition) A set of tools and databases that are used to manage an IT Service Provider's Configuration data. The CMS also includes information about Incidents, Problems, Known Errors, Changes and Releases; and may contain data about employees, Suppliers, locations, Business Units, Customers and Users. The CMS includes tools for collecting, storing, managing, updating, and presenting data about all Configuration Items and their Relationships. The CMS is maintained by Configuration Management and is used by all IT Service Management Processes.

There are a couple of points to take away from these definitions:

CMDB is a database only, while the CMS also includes tools
CMS maintains one or more CMDBs
CMS is used by all IT Service Management processes

So the quick answer to my question above is that the CMS concept builds on top of the CMDB concept.

Let's also take a look at the sample CMS (figure 4.8) in the Service Transition book. This sample shows a CMS that consists of 4 layers: data & information layer, information integration layer, knowledge processing layer and a presentation layer. As you can see in this figure there are CMDBs (and other data sources) within the data & information layer, as well as an integrated federated CMDB within the information integration layer.

Now this means that the CMS concept recognizes the fact that no single physical CMDB can hold all (service asset) data for a service provider.

On the other hand the CMS concept does however indicate that there needs to be a single integrated CMDB that holds configuration items about the available data and how these configuration items are interrelated. By using federation this integrated CMDB can pull through the data from the sources at the data & information layer and make it look at the presentation layer as if the CMS is one logical database.

There is a lot more to say about the CMS, however as I am writing this close to midnight I will stop here and save some thoughts for another post.

Please let me know your thoughts and experience on this topic. Thanks.

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst

Hot off the press - Official Service Lifecycle Intro book

david spellman — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:41:00 GMT

I think I’m the first person on my block to order a copy of the newest ITIL v3 book, “The Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle.” OK, probably the first in my small town and county as well.

Co-authored by HP’s own Jeroen Bronkhorst, I’ve allotted my entire next airplane flight to reading this book. Which, by the way, is already available through Amazon in the US, although one can purchase it from the OGC site here: http://www.best-management-practice.com/Online-Bookshop/IT-Service-Management-ITIL/ITIL-Version-3/The-Official-Introduction-to-the-ITIL-Service-Lifecycle/

Having read the other 5 books, I can already vouch for the fact that the ITIL refresh has a wealth of very practical information and such a refreshing business perspective on managing IT and business services. Buy it – read it – tell us what you think.

How long does it take to implement ITIL V3?

david spellman — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:50:00 GMT

At the end of my recent keynote presentation to the itSMF Poland, the question was asked: "how long does it take to implement ITIL V3?". This is not an uncommon question. I am probably getting this question asked on average two times per month. So I thought "let's create a post that answers this question once and for all... or not..."

As a good consultant's habit the answer to this question starts with: "it depends...". And there is a good reason for starting the answer this way; ITIL is not a cookbook that provides the same outcome regardless of where it is applied.

On the contrary ITIL provides a framework of building blocks and concepts that must be translated and implemented to each organization's unique collection of resources and capabilities. For example if the perfect organizational structure would exist, than everybody would already have it by now. And also every organization has a unique set of technologies/products to deliver and manage services with.

Even if all IT organizations would use the same resources (i.e. people, information, applications, infrastructure and financial capital) then the capablities (i.e. management, organization, processes and knowledge) which are applied to the resources would differentiate IT services (organizations) from each other.

Another point here is that ITIL is not rocket science. It often provides structure to activities you might already be doing today. So even if you have never heard of ITIL before, you can already be at a certain maturity/capability level. This provides you with a different starting point then when you are building a completely new organization from scratch.

So in other words the first steps to take are to determine where you are today (A) and were you want to be in the future (B). As IT organizations are at different capability/maturity levels and have different goals, the time it takes to get from A to B depends on your starting point and how long you want to travel.

For this purpose HP has some very good ITSM assessment services that help you to do a gap analysis and create a roadmap towards the future (I think I have earned by company bonus with this statement).

In addition chapter 5.2 of the ITIL V3 Continual Service Improvement book provides some guidance on assessments as well. Interestingly the ITIL V3 books do not include a maturity model itself, but refer to other best practice frameworks such as CMMI.

Let me make a small side step here. There is an interesting difference between CMMI and ITIL; CMMI has process areas while ITIL has processes. CMMI process area have an expanding scope (read: more goals) at growing levels of maturity, while ITIL processes are described with a fixed scope (which you can see as the highest level of process maturity).

Personaly I don't like the term maturity model for an IT organization, as it implies that you will always (strive to) reach the highest level as you get more mature. My suggestion is to use capability levels that build on each other.

Let's get back to the topic. So on the question "how long does it take to implement ITIL V3?" my answer would be "it depends on where you are today, where you want to be in the future and how much you are willing to invest in getting there". And I am not only talking about money here, also other topics like effort and willingness to adopt someone else's best practices play a role in this.

In general I think it is safe to say that it can take years to implement all ITIL V3 concepts starting from a greenfield situation. My best practice recommendation is to use projects that implement ITIL V3 concepts which are cost justified and deliver desired outcomes within periods of 3 to 6 months each.

So let me stop here and ask you: "how long did it take you to implement one or more ITIL V2 concepts? Which ones did you do?"

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst

Where to find ITILV3?

david spellman — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:38:00 GMT

After returning from an excellent vacation last week, I found almost 1000 e-mails with my inbox blocked from receiving more as it was over its size limit. In going through these messages I found a lot of ITIL V3 related questions especially from people that are looking for more detailed information. So I have decided to use this post to provide you with a short overview of some sources that you can use.

First of all a pointer to the ITIL pages on the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) web site. OGC is the owner of ITIL and is part of the British Government. The web site is published by The Stationary Office (TSO) who is the selected publisher for the ITIL books as well.

On the ITIL pages of the OGC/TSO website you will find amongst other things a knowledge centre, case studies and an online bookshop where you can buy the ITIL books. In addition you can see what new ITIL publications are expected, such as the "Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle". Also available is an ITIL news alert function that you can register to and that will provide you with the latest ITIL news via e-mail.

There is also a page for submitting change requests for the ITILV3 publications http://www.best-management-practice.com/changeLog/default.aspx You need to register first before you can submit requests.

Finally the OGC/TSO web site also provides you with access to the ITIL Glossary for free (that is after first accepting a Crown Copyright License). This ITIL Glossary was produced by my colleagues Stuart Rance and co-blogger Ashley Hanna. I'll say no more...

Another interesting source can be found at http://www.itil-officialsite.com/home/home.asp. This web site is published by the APM Group who was selected by OGC as the ITIL Examination Institute, who offer global accreditation and examination services for training providers.

The APMG web site provides you with the latest news on ITIL accreditation, certification and training. I'll use another post to talk some more about the new ITIL qualification scheme.

A third recommended source of information is the web site of itSMF International. itSMF is a global, independent, internationally recognized not-for-profit organisation dedicated to IT Service Management. The itSMF organisation is wholly owned and principally run by its members. It consists of a controlling and co-ordinating body, itSMF International and a rapidly growing number of national chapters - each with a large degree of autonomy but adhering to a common code of conduct.

The itSMF International web site provides amongst other things information on (local chapter) events and has its own International Publications Executive Sub Committe (IPESC) that looks after itSMF endorsed titles as well as published itSMF titles and itSMF titles in progress.

And finally, in my role as an HP employee, I would like to (of course) point you to the HP Special Report: Get ready for ITIL V3 web page which has a wealth of information such as white papers and webcasts to help you quickly understand what ITIL V3 is all about (and how HP can help you).

These are the sources that I use most often myself. Let me know if there are any other good sources of ITIL information.

It's time to go into the weekend now. Cheers!

Regards,
Jeroen Bronkhorst

Welcome from Ashley Hanna

david spellman — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:42:00 GMT

Hi all,

Welcome to our ITIL v3 blog. I hope you will find these postings an interesting set of perspectives as we share our experiences in helping to write some of the content for v3 publications and as we start to work with the new material in detail with our customers.

My name is Ashley Hanna and I work for HP at the world-wide level as an ITSM Practice Principal within our Mission Critical Services organisation. My focus is anything and everything to do with Operational ITSM – helping our customers with the day-to-day challenges of running quality IT services.

I was a co-author of the ITIL v3 Glossary of Terms and Acronyms, which also included writing an ITIL v2 Baseline Glossary for use by the other v3 authors as they started their work. This proved to be a great education in the various terms used in both ITIL v2 and v3, along with those used in ISO/IEC 20000 and elsewhere, as our brief included related industry-wide terminology.

Putting together these two perspectives of my Operational ITSM role and my work as a v3 author, you can expect some of my postings to cover the new Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement publications in addition to the terminology discussions I get involved with – terms and definitions can cause a lot of heated debate!

To help you get a fuller picture of my background and where some of my thinking will be coming from, I have included a brief biography.

I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you!

I have worked in the field of Service Management for around 14 years, and before my work on ITIL v3 I have contributed as an author for ITIL v2, Microsoft’s Operations Framework (MOF), and itSMF publications. I am a Fellow of the Institute of Service Management and a member of the UK itSMF Qualifications and Certification Committee. I also serve as Vice Chair of the UK itSMF Publications Committee, and represent the UK on itSMF International’s Publications Committee.

I am a service management trainer and an examiner for ISO/IEC 20000 and ITIL v3.

I started my IT career as a programmer 26 years ago and moved into the field of Service Management in 1993 while working on fault-tolerant systems for Tandem Computers. Having solved most of the technology challenges of high-availability, we still found that customers were experiencing outages on occasion. No prizes for identifying some of the root causes… day-to-day operational issues, people and process of course. I have continued to work in this space ever since, moving from what Tandem called Operations Management, through IT Service Management and now emerging into the new world of Service Management.

In addition to these Service Management industry changes, I have also been part of several acquisitions moving as I did from Tandem Computers, through Compaq, Digital and now HP – without moving my desk. Well, almost!

I hope to be posting around once a week and will try to bring you some interesting perspectives.

Regards,
Ashley

ITIL V3 and Jeroen Bronkhorst - a quick introduction

david spellman — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:10:00 GMT

Welcome to the ITIL V3 Blog. Please allow me use this first post to introduce myself. My name is Jeroen Bronkhorst and I am an ITIL V3 author who joined HP in 1997 and have fulfilled several roles.

For the past five years, I have been a global ITSM program manager responsible for HP internal development, deployment and global support on sales and delivery of HP ITSM consulting services. In addition I am a strategic advisor to the worldwide Service Management leadership team that spans across HP Software and HP Services.

Over the last 2 years I have also been a member of the ITIL V3 authoring team in which I have helped to ensure consistent navigation and use of concepts throughout the ITIL V3 core books. In addition I have produced content for the new ITIL introduction book that will soon be published. Finally I have been working on a set of integrated ITIL V3 models which are soon to be published as complementary guidance.

My breadth of knowledge spans across HP Software, HP ITSM Services, ITIL, ISO/IEC 20000, COBIT, CMMI, as well as IT strategies, IT auditing, IT security, IT organizational design and management of organizational change (MoC) techniques.

Previously, I was a senior ITSM solution architect, working with many HP customers in the Netherlands for more than four years. I am a certified ITIL Service Manager and an official book reviewer for the itSMF chapter in the Netherlands, as well as a certified IT auditor and member of the Dutch organization for registered IT auditors (NOREA).

In this blog I will try to give you my perspective on ITIL V3 and the things that are happening in the world related to ITIL V3. My intention is to do a new posting every week and I look forward to receiving your comments. Thank you.