Steps to implement ITIL

• Make a clear plan of high-level goals to be achieved with the ITIL implementation
  
• Implement an ITIL-based Service Desk with Incident, Problem, Change, and Configuration Management

Planning your ITIL Implementation

Enterprises need to plan ITIL implementation with clearly defined short term and long-term goals. This helps enterprises to stay focused on their vision with every step and on the whole move.

A simple plan with the following key points can help SMBs to stay focused and implement ITIL successfully.

• What is the Vision?
  
• Where are we now?
  
• Where do we want to be?
  
• How do we get where we want to be?
  
• Check Milestones to ensure the organization is head towards defined vision

Define Your Vision	Define high-level objectives you need to move towards. These objectives can help you define and refine your goals. Example Move towards ideal minimal cost to provide the best & uninterrupted services possible Provide 99.9% service uptime Provide new services to users and take services to the next level
Where We Are Now	Take a baseline statistics of Key Performance Indicators. Track statistics and trends to measure KPI. Example Total number of incoming call volumes Total number of first call resolutions Average Service downtime in a week, month, quarter, and year. New services introduced Service Support staff distribution taking level1, level2, and level3 calls Total time spent by Service Support staff by level of issues
Where Do We Want To Be	Define specific goals to improve on Key Performance Indicators based on the KPI statistics, define specific goals to improve service. This can be considered as short-term goals towards improving the service. Example Reduce Incoming service calls by 40% Increase first call resolution rate by 20% Reduce the most frequent service outage
How Do We Get Where We Want To Be	Implement ITIL process or part of the process to reach your short term goals Example To reduce Incoming 40% in incoming service calls Implement a Self-service Portal with solution to common problems users can resolve themselves To Increase first call resolution rate by 20% Implement a Help Desk solution with asset management and network monitoring software to drill into problems and resolve them faster.
Check Milestones And Direction	Check Milestones and KPIs to ensure you are heading towards your vision Example Define Timelines to check the impact of short-term goals on your KPIs Check how many users logged in to Self-service portal to solve their issues and analyze how it reduced your level1, level 2 calls. Check if your first call resolutions rates have increased Analyze results from User Satisfaction Survey

Implementing ITIL-based Help Desk

Enterprises can implement an ITIL based Help Desk for proactive IT service management and to reduce service downtime. Consider a financial services company with multiple teams of employees. Employees are spread across two floors and all employees have a workstation to run their applications. Employees access a shared resource pool of printers to print out cheques or transaction reports. Employees print cheques often as they sanction loans and provide financial reports to customers. Workstation or printer failure can be critical for business. Let us see how IT Help Desk staff can implement an ITIL-based Help Desk solution to identify and manage service requests, eliminate problems and provide uninterrupted service.

Incident Management

When an employee sends a request saying that he is unable to print. There can be various reasons why he is unable to print, the service staff needs to ask the right questions to understand and pin point service problems. Here are a few possibilities.

Right Questions	Is the Printer configured in his machine What is the name of the printer he is configured to Are the required Device Drivers working properly Is the Toner Low in Printer Is the Printer out of paper Is there a Printer Paper Jams
Right Details	Requestor details Requestor location and network connected to Workstation details Hardware and Software installed Printer Status & Details Network Status & Details
Right Answers	All the information is pulled out from the requestor and the support staff gets back to the requestor with alternative problems to print by anyone of the following options Directing the request to another functioning printer Configuring the printer Restoring the printer

An incident is an event that it is not part of the standard operation. It interrupts or reduces the Quality of Service.

In this instance a single user being unable to print, this affects the user alone and might not affect business in a big way. This event only reduces the overall QOS from Excellent to Good, so this event can be classified as an Incident.

Problem Management

The Office operations are not affected in a big way by Incidents, as only a single employee is affected in this case. But when another employee or a group of employees send requests communicating that they are unable to print. In this case, when the second incident is raised, a basic check is performed with the knowledge base for matching incidents. If there are matching similar individual Incidents pointing to a single point of failure. This might be classified as a problem as it might adversely affect business as a group of employees are affected. The Support Staff must provide resolve the situation to restore the QOS. After asking the Right Questions and getting the Right Details, the support staff zero in on the problem. Say if there is a printer malfunction that is causing the problem. The printer needs to be replaced and normal operation must be restored to affected users at the earliest.

Problems	Solutions
Printer not configured	Configure Printer / Provide detailed steps to configure printer
Printer Problems	Provide detailed steps to load paper, load toner, or clear a paper jam

The main goal of problem management is to find the root cause of the problem proactively and eliminate all the related incidents. The Support staff can get back configuring the workstation or rectifying or by providing users an alternative way to print.

The goal of problem management is find the root cause of the problem and to eliminate incidents and prevent further incidents related to the problem.

Configuration Management Database

The CMDB is one integrated database that contains all the details about employees, workstations, devices, incidents, problems, changes, and complete details of all the components in business. It provides a public Knowledge base of Known errors and solutions that help employees search and resolve minor incidents themselves with out contacting the Help Desk. It provides private knowledge base for the Support Staff get detailed reports about all assets with problem history, work-around and temporary fixes.

Requestor Details	Requestor Name Requestor Contact Details Requestor Location Associated priority Associated Workstations and assets
Workstation Details	Location of workstation Workstation type, manufacturer, vendor with complete request history Workstation Hardware and software details Complete associated inventory details
Associated Assets	Associated assets details such as printers, scanners, and webcams. Asset Status, availability reports, and problem history

Change Management

Now employees are given a workaround to print, still the problem remains and points to the printer. A detailed report with workstation and printer problem history from the CMDB shows that the printer has been failing repeatedly. To eliminate the problem, the printer needs to be changed and replaced with a new printer to restore normal services. A change is initiated to resolve a problem and a proposal is raised to replace the old faulty printer with a new printer. A proposal to change printer is submitted for approval, the approver can be IT manager or COO based on the cost of purchase. A detailed plan is prepared to implement change with a roll-back plan acting as a safety net. After implementing the change, the requestor needs to verify that change was successful.

Steps	Explanation
Proposal for change	A proposal for change is planned based on the requestor’s information and problem history report of the printer. The proposal for change must state, why change is required now with complete details
Evaluation of Change	The change plan is submitted to the approver and with an implementation plan that ensures minimal downtime during change. Example, if a new printer is installed and it might require printer configurations in all machines. Support staff needs to ensure that change plan is implemented on non-business hours so that there is a minimal business impact.
Execution of Change	After the approval, the Change plan is executed
Post Implementation Review	After executing the change, approver(s) reviews the change to ensure it was successfully. Incase of an unsuccessful change the previous state is restored. If the change is successful it is approved
Close Change Request	Once the Requestors verify that implementing the change eliminated the problem. The change request is closed.

Enterprises can continually ensure excellent QOS by implementing Incident, Problem, Configuration, and Change management process to efficiently and proactively handle service requests.

Summary

Growing SMB with an expanding IT environment often struggle to provide uninterrupted IT services to users. Enterprises need to adopt a standards based solution to handle their IT services.

• ITIL can help IT support staff to control IT environment and provide uninterrupted IT Service at best QOS
  
• Enterprises must adopt a cost saving approach while implementing ITIL
  
• The Cost saving approach will help SMBs to plan and implement ITIL in the right way without getting lost in the standards
  
• "Chaos Management with ITIL" shows how enterprises can plan and implement ITIL to proactively handle issues using Incident, Problem, Configuration, and Change Management and maintain excellent QoS.

Getting back to Bob, ITIL can help Bob manage IT Services, no matter how big his IT environment expands. It can help Bob and his team, resolve problems faster and prevent a few from even arising.

ITIL V3 Study Guide

ITIL Certification was listed as one of the top eight certifications identified.


Introduction
Service Support Functions:
• Service Desk
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Configuration Management
• Release Management

Service Delivery Functions:
• Availability Management
• IT Services Continuity Management
• Capacity Management
• Financial Management
• Service Level Management

Configuration Management
Objectives:
• Providing information on the IT infrastructure
o To all other processes
o IT Management
• Enabling control of the infrastructure by monitoring and maintaining information
on:
o All the resources needed to deliver services
o Configuration Item (CI) status and history
o Configuration Item relationships

Tasks:
• Identification and naming
• Management information
• Verification
• Control
• Status Accounting


Asset: Component of a business process like people, accommodation, computer systems,
paper records, fax machines, etc.
Configuration Management Database: A database, which contains all relevant details of
each Configuration Item (CI) and details of the important relationships between CIs.
A Configuration Item (CI):
• Is needed to deliver a service
• Is uniquely identifiable
• Is subject to change
• Can be managed
A Configuration Item (CI) has:
• a Category
• Relationships
• Attributes
• a Status

Variant: A Configuration Item (CI) that has the same basic functionality as another
Configuration Item (CI) but is different in some small way (ex: has more memory)
Baseline: A snapshot of the state of a Configuration Item and any component or related
Configuration Items, frozen in time for a particular purpose (such as the ability to return a
service to a trusted state if a change goes wrong)
Configuration Management supports all other processes!
Scope vs. Detail
Relationships – Common Types:
• Is a component of
• Is a copy of
• Relates to
• Relates with
• Is used by
Service Desk
Objectives:
• To be the primary point of call for all:
o Calls
o Questions
o Requests
o Complaints
o Remarks
• To restore the service as quickly as possible
• To manage the incident life-cycle (coordinating resolution)
• To support business activities
• To generate reports, to communicate and to promote

Different Desks
• Call Center: Handling large call volumes of telephone-based transactions.
• Help Desk: To manage, coordinate, and resolve Incidents as quickly as possible.
• Service Desk: Allowing business processes to be integrated into the Service
Management infrastructure. It not only handles Incidents, Problems and questions,
but also provides an interface for other activities.
Service Desk Essentials:
• Single point of contact / Restore service ASAP
• Tasks: Customer Interface, Business Support, Incident Control & Management
Information
• Concentrates on incident lifecycle management
• Incident: Unexpected disruption to agreed service
• Priority determined by business impact and urgency
• Correct assessment of priorities enables the deployment of manpower and other
resources to be in the best interests of the customer
• Escalation and referral
Incident Management
Objectives:
• To restore normal service as quickly as possible
• Minimize the adverse impact on business operations
• Ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are
maintained according to SLAs.

Incident: Any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which
causes or may cause an interruption to or a reduction in the quality of that service.
Work-Around: Method of avoiding an Incident or Problem.
Service Request: Every Incident not being a failure in the IT Infrastructure.

Problem: The unknown root cause of one or more incidents.

Known Error: A condition that exists after the successful diagnosis of the root cause of a
problem when it is confirmed that a CI (Configuration Item) is at fault.
Impact on the business + Urgency / Effect upon business deadlines = Priority
Category: Classification of a group of Incidents (Application, Hardware, etc.)
Escalation (Vertical Escalation): escalates up the management chain.
Referral (Horizontal Escalation): escalates to a different knowledge group. Routing.
Incident Life-Cycle
• Accept Service Event, Register and Consult the CMDB
• Classification
• Solve
• Closure
Reporting is VERY important.
• Daily reviews of individual Incident and Problem status against service levels
• Weekly management reviews
• Monthly management reviews
• Proactive service reports

Problem Management
Objectives:
• Stabilizing IT services through:
o Minimizing the consequences of incidents
o Removal of the root causes of incidents
o Prevention of incidents and problems
o Prevent recurrence of Incidents related to errors
• Improving productive use of resources
Tasks:
• Problem Control
• Error Control (including raising RfCs – Request for Change)
• Proactive Prevention
• Identifying Trends
• Management Information
• Posit Implementation Review (PIR)
Goal is to get from reactive or proactive. Stop problems from occurring / recurring.
Inputs:
• Incident details
• Configuration details
• Defined work-arounds
Outputs:
• Known Errors
• Requests for Change
• Updated Problem Records including work-arounds and/or solutions
• Response to Incident Management from Matching Management Information
Problem Control
• Identification
• Classification
• Assign Resources
• Investigation and Diagnosis
• Establish Known Error
Error Control
• Error Identification and Recording
• Error Assessment
• Recording Error / Resolution (Send out RfC)
• Error Closure
Known Error: An Incident or Problem for which the root cause is known and for which a
temporary Work-around or a permanent alternative has been identified.
Proactive Problem Management:
• Trend Analysis
• Targeting Support Action
• Providing Information to the Organization
Known Errors resulting from Development should be made known to the Helpdesk.
Reporting is also key for Problem Management.

Change Management
Objective: To implement approved changes efficiently, cost-effectively and with minimal
risk to the existing and to the new IT infrastructure. Only approved changes made, risk
and cost minimized.
Change Management Tasks:
• Filtering Changes
• Managing Change Process
• Managing Changes
• Chairing CAB and CAB/EC
• Review and Closure
• Management Information
Inputs:
• Requests for Change (RfC)
• CMDB
• Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC)
Outputs:
• Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC)
• Requests for Change (RFC)
• CAB minutes and actions
• Change management reports
Impact of change:
• Category 1
o Little impact on current services. The Change Manager is entitled to
authorize this RfC.
• Category 2
o Clear impact on services. The RfC must be discussed in the Change
Advisory Board. The Change Manager requests advice on authorization
and planning.
• Category 3
o Significant impact on the services and the business. Considerable
manpower and/or resources needed. The RfC will have to be submitted to
the board level (CAB/EC – Change Advisory Board / Executive
Committee)
Priority Setting:
• Urgent
o Change necessary now (otherwise severe business impact)
• High
o Change needed as soon as possible (potentially damaging)
• Medium
o Change will solve irritating errors or missing functionality (can be
scheduled)
• Low
o Change leads to minor improvements
A change backout plan must always be possible.
Change management always ends with a review of the change.
Change: The addition, modification, or removal of approved, supported or baselined
hardware, network, software, application, environment, system, desktop build or
associated documentation.
Request for Change: Form or screen, used to record details of a request for a change to
any CI within an infrastructure or to procedures and items associated with the
infrastructure.
Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC): Schedule that contains details of all the Changes
approved for implementation and their proposed implementation dates.

Change Management Process
1. Request for a Change
2. Registration and Classification
3. Monitoring and Planning
4. Approve
5. Build & Test
6. Authorize Implementation
7. Implementation
8. Evaluate
Release Management
Objectives:
• Safeguard all software and related items
• Ensure that only tested / correct version of authorized software are in use
• Ensure that only tested / correct version of authorized hardware are in use
• Right software, right time, right place
• Right hardware, right time, right place
Tasks:
• Define the release policies
• Control of the Definitive Software Library (DSL)
• Control of the Definitive Hardware Storage (DHS)
• Distribute Software and Associated CIs
• Carry out S/W audits (using CMDB)
• Manage the software releases
• Oversee build of the software releases
Releases are done under the control of Change Management.
DSL : Definitive Software Library. Reliable versions of software in a single logical
location. However, software may be physically stored at different locations.
Release Policy:
• Release Unit
• Full / Package / Delta Releases
• Numbering
• Frequency
• Emergency Change
Version Control:
• Development
• Testing
• Live
• Archive
Process:
• Software Control and Distribution (operational)
• Change Management (control)
• Configuration Management (control and administration)
Only process which creates its own policy.
Availability Management
Objectives:
• To predict, plan for and manage the availability of services by ensuring that:
o All services are underpinned by sufficient, reliable and properly
maintained CIs
o Where CIs are not supported internally there are appropriate contractual
agreements with third party suppliers
o Changes are proposed to prevent future loss of service availability
• Only then can IT organizations be certain of delivering the levels of availability
agreed with customers in SLAs.
Aspects of Availability:
• Reliability
• Maintainability: Maintenance you do yourself, as a company
• Resilience: Redundancy
• Serviceability: Maintenance done by someone else
Availability Information is stored in an Availability Database (ADB). This information is
used to create the Availability Plan. SLAs provide an input to this process.
Unavailability Lifecycle
MTTR: Mean Time to Repair (Downtime) – Time period that elapses between the
detection of an Incident and it’s Restoration. Includes: Incident, Detection, Diagnosis,
Repair, Recovery, Restoration.
MTBF: Mean Time Between Failures (Uptime) – Time period that elapses between
Restoration and a new Incident.
MTBSI: Mean Time Between System Incidents – Time period that elapses between two
incidents. MTTR + MTBF.
“An IT service is not available to a customer if the functions that customer requires at
that particular location cannot be used although the agreed conditions under which the IT
service is supplied are being met”
Simplistic Availability Calculation:
Agreed Service Hours – Downtime 100
------------------------------------------ X ----
Agreed Service Hours 1
IT Service Continuity Management
Why plan?
• Increases Business dependency on IT
• Reduced cost and time of recovery
• Cost to customer relationship
• Survival
Many businesses fail within a year of suffering a major IT disaster.
Business Impact Analysis:
Risk Analysis:
• Value of Assets
• Threats
• Vulnerabilities
Risk Management:
• Countermeasures
• Planning for potential disasters
• Managing a disaster
Risk Analysis: Based on the CCTA Computer Risk Analysis and Management
Methodology (CRAMM)
Options:
1. Do nothing
2. Manual workarounds
3. Reciprocal arrangements
4. Gradual Recovery (cold standby)
5. Intermediate Recovery (warm standby)
6. Immediate Recovery (hot standby)
Cold start = accommodation. Environmental controls; power and communications
Hot start = cold start + computing equipment and software
7 Sections of the Plan:
1. Administration
2. The IT Infrastructure
3. IT Infrastructure management & Operating procedures
4. Personnel
5. Security
6. Contingency site
7. Return to normal
Test and Review:
• Initially then every 6 to 12 months and after each disaster
• Test it under realistic circumstances
• Move / protect any live services first
• Review and change the plan
• All changes made via the CAB – Change Advisory Board
Contingency Plan:
• Assists in fast, controlled recovery
• Must be given wide but controlled access
• Contents (incl. Admin, Infrastructure, People, Return to normal)
• Options (incl. Cold & Hot Start)
• Must be tested regularly – without impacting the live service


Capacity Management
Objective:
To determine the right, cost justifiable, capacity of IT resources such that the Service
Levels agreed with the business are achieved at the right time.
Objectives:
• Demand Management
o Business Capacity Management
• Workload Management
o Service Capacity Management
• Resource Management
o Resource Capacity Management
While doing the above, also need to do:
• Performance Management
o Internal and External Financial Data
o Usage Data
o SLM Data / Response Times
CDB – Capacity Data Base – Contains all Metrics, etc. Used to create a Capacity
Management Plan. Performance Management Data populates the CDB.
Essentials:
• From Customer Demands to Resources
• Demand Management
• Workload Management
• Performance Management
• Capacity Planning
• Defining Thresholds and Monitoring
Application Sizing: To estimate the resource requirements to support a proposed
application change to ensure that it meets its required service levels.
Modeling:
• Trend Analysis
• Analytical Modeling
• Simulation Modeling
• Baseline Models
• Used to Answer the “What If… “ questions
• Data for Modeling comes from the CDB
Financial Management
Objectives:
To provide information about and control over the costs of delivering IT services that
support customers business needs.
Costing is a must!
Input cost units recommended by ITIL:
• Equipment Cost Units (ECU)
• Organization Cost Units (OCU)
• Transfer Cost Units (TCU)
• Accommodation Cost Units (ACU)
• Software Cost Units (SCU)
Equipment = hardware
Organization = staff
Transfer = costs which IT incurs acting as an agent for the customer, they do not appear
as a cost against the IT department’s budget
Accommodation = buildings
Software = software
Different Cost Types:
• Fixed - unaffected by the level of usage
• Variable - varying according to the level of usage
• Direct - usage specific to one service
• Indirect or Overhead – usage not specific to one service
• Capital – not diminished by usage
• Revenue or running – diminish with usage
Charging Objectives:
• Recover from customers the full costs of the IT services provided
• Ensure that customers are aware of the costs they impose on IT
• Ensure that providers have an incentive to deliver and agreed quality and quantity
of economic and effective services
Charging and Pricing Options:
Charging:
• No Charging – IT treated as support center
• Notional Charging – IT treated as cost center
• Actual Charging
Pricing:
• Recover of Costs – IT treated as a service center
• Cost Price Plus – IT treated as a profit center
• Market Prices – IT treated as a profit center
Support and Cost centers used “soft charging” in which no money changes hands; service
and profit centers use “hard costing” in which money is transferred between bank
accounts
Profit centers focus on the value of the IT service to the customer
Good Financial Management minimizes the risks in decision making
3 Main Processes:
Budgeting: The process of predicting and controlling the spending of money within the
enterprise and consists of periodic negotiation cycle to set budgets (usually annual) and
the day-to-day monitoring of the current budgets. Key influence on strategic and tactical
plans.
IT Accounting: The set of processes that enable the IT organization to fully account for
the way its money is spent (particularly the ability to identify costs by customer, by
service, by activity).
Charging: The set of processes required to bill a customer for the services applied to
them. To achieve this requires sound IT Accounting, to a level of detail determined by
the requirements of the analysis, billing, and reporting procedures.
Service Level Management
Balance between the Demand for IT services and the Supply of IT services by knowing
the requirements of the business and knowing the capabilities of IT.
Objectives:
• Business-like relationship between customer and supplier
• Improved specification and understanding of service requirements
• Greater flexibility and responsiveness in service provision
• Balance customer demands and cost of services provision
• Measurable service levels
• Quality improvement (continuous review)
• Objective conflict resolution
Tasks:
• Service Catalog
• Service Level Requirements
• Service Level Agreement
• Operational Level Agreements (OLA) and Contracts
• Service Specsheet
• Service Quality Plan
• Monitor, Review and Report
• Service Improvement Programs
• Customer Relationship Management
Minimum Requirements for an Agreement:
• Period
• Service Description
• Throughput
• Availability
• Response Times
• Signature
Other Possible Clauses:
• Contingency arrangements
• Review procedures
• Change procedures
• Support services
• Customer responsibilities
• Housekeeping
• Inputs and Outputs
• Changes
Ideally contracts are based on targets in the SLA
SLAs must be monitored regularly and reviewed regularly
• Monitor to see if service is being delivered to specification
• Review to see if service specification is still appropriate