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.