ITIL 101:

An essential guide to the Help Desk’s role in IT Service Management

February 5, 2003

Presented by: Dave Gressle,

Solutions Design Director

Agenda

• Overview of ITIL

• Origin/History

• Service Management

• Service Support Components

• Industry Insights

• Learning More…

Origins of ITIL

• Founded in the United Kingdom

• Office of Government Commerce (OGC) – Created by CCTA (now part of OGC) – Promote Sound IT Management Practices – Information Technology Infrastructure Library

• Best Practice Framework – Over 10 Years of Practical Usage – Recently Refined and Updated – International User's Group

• To Date, the only comprehensive, non proprietary, To Date, the only comprehensive, non proprietary, publicly available guidance for IT Service Managementpublicly available guidance for IT Service Management

Source Pink Elephant 2002

Market Trends

• By 2003, 60% of large companies will adopt a By 2003, 60% of large companies will adopt a balanced set of metrics to guide business balanced set of metrics to guide business related IT decisionsrelated IT decisions

• ……Managers declare that in the future IT will Managers declare that in the future IT will need to be steered on benefits and value to the need to be steered on benefits and value to the business in place of costsbusiness in place of costs

• Only 45% of business managers said they Only 45% of business managers said they effectively steered IT performanceeffectively steered IT performance

Source Gartner 2002

Benefits

• By improving the process around IT the organization can begin to:– Improve resource utilization– Be more productive– Decrease rework– Eliminate redundant work– Improve upon project deliverables and time– Improve availability, reliability and security of mission critical IT

services– Justify IT spending and the cost of service quality– Provide services that meet business and customer demands– Integrate central processes Document and communicate roles

and responsibilities in service provision– Learn from previous experience– Provide demonstrable performance indicators

ITIL Fundamentals

Service Support – Incident Management – Problem Management – Change Management – Configuration Management – Release Management

Service Delivery– Availability Management – Capacity Management – IT Service Continuity Management – Financial Management – Service Level Management

What Does ISO, Six Sigma and ITIL Have in Common?

All three are aimed at Process Improvement as a vehicle to reduce cost and increase efficiency

•Core Principles

• Define

• Measure

• Analyze

• Improve

• Control

•All three embody development and management of People Process and Technology in Support of the Business goals and objectives

Setting the Stage

• Cost/Benefit Analysis

• Example Company statistics for Reference:– All Employees cost $50/hr– Organization size = 500 Users– Total Incidents annually = 5,000– Avg time to resolve incidents = 10 min– A working year has 200 days

Service Support

Incident Management

• Incident – – Unexpected Disruption to Agreed

Service

• Coordination of the Rapid Restoration of IT Services

• Activities – Incident Detection & Recording – Initial Support & Classification – Investigation & Diagnosis – Resolution & Restoration – Develop Work-around Where

Possible – Incident Closure – Ownership, Monitoring,

Tracking & Communication

• Assigns Priority –

– Function of Business Impact & Urgency

• Manages Escalation Process

– Functional

– Hierarchical

Service Desk Essentials• Activities

– Primary User Interface, (SPOC) – A Function of Incident Management – Customer Communications – Business Operation Support – Management Reporting

• Key Role in the Incident Management Process

• Correct Assessment of Priorities – Enables the Deployment of Resources in the Best Interests of the

Customer

• Escalation

Case Example Supporting Implementation of Incident Management and the Service Desk

• Implementation of Incident Mgmt has resulted in a decrease of down time per user. This is defined as the amount of time a user is on the phone to the Service Desk or cannot work because of failure.

• If the downtime per user is reduced by one minute per person per day, this saves the organization: $83,000.00/annually

(500 users*200 days*$50/hr*1min)

Problem Management

• Objectives – Stabilize Services Through

• Removing the Root Cause of Incidents

• Preventing Occurrence of Incidents & Problems

• Minimizing the Consequences of Incidents

– Manage the Problem Lifecycle

• Problem, Known Error, Review

• Improve Productive Use of Resources

• Activities

– Problem Control

– Error Control

– Proactive Problem Management

– Management Information

Elements of Problem Management

Cost/Benefit Analysis of Problem Management

• Implementation of formal Problem Management decreases the number of recurring incidents by 500 (10% of the total incidents annually. This equates to a cost savings to the company of $4,150 per year

(500 incidents*$50/hr*10 min)

Change Management

• Objective – Only Approved Changes Made to

enterprise configuration – Risk & Cost Minimized – Benefit Maximized

• Applies to All IT Infrastructure Components

• Activities – Manage Requests for Change

(RFCs) – Assess Impact – Urgency/priority & Resources – Approve & Schedule Changes – Oversee Change Building – Testing & Implementation – Change Review – Business Support

• CAB & CAB/EC – Membership – Advisory Role – Urgent Changes

• Back Out Plan

• Link to Configuration Management and Release Management

• Process Always Ends With a Review of the Change

Change Relationship Model

Case Example in Support of Change Management

• Two changes are implemented simultaneously, resulting in a major problem:

• The customer support system fails, resulting in a loss of 50 Customers with an average purchasing power of $500.

• This has just cost your company $25,000 in potential revenue.

Configuration Management

• Objective – – Ensure All Configuration Items Are

Authorized and Under Controlof the Config Management Process

• Maintains Information About the IT Infrastructure

– More Than an Asset Register (Content, Context & Relationships)

• Responsible for Configuration– Activities – Planning – Identification – Status Accounting – Control – Verification – Management Information

• Maintains a key role in Assessing Impact of Changes to the Enterprise Configuration

– Attributes – Relationships – Status – Unique Identifier

• Manage the Scope & detail of the Configuration Management Database

Configuration Levels

Cost Benefit Analysis of Implementing Configuration

Management• After formalizing Configuration Management After formalizing Configuration Management

across all platforms supported by the Service across all platforms supported by the Service Desk, The Service Desk Agents have a much Desk, The Service Desk Agents have a much greater insight into the relationship between greater insight into the relationship between users, configuration items and incidents. The users, configuration items and incidents. The three people assigned to incident matching can three people assigned to incident matching can be reduced to two resulting in a benefit of be reduced to two resulting in a benefit of $80,000/yr$80,000/yr

(200 days a yr*8hrs/day*$50/hr)

Release Management

• Objectives – Safeguard Hardware & Software Configuration Items – Ensure Only Tested, Authorized Hardware & Software Is in the Live Environment

• Activities – Control DSL, DHS – Define Release – Build Release – Manage Release – Distribute Hardware & Software Configuration Items – Hardware & Software Audits

• DSL - Reliable Versions of Software (Logical/Physical Storage)

– Version Control - Development, Testing, Live, Archive

• Processes– Release Management (Operational) – Change Management (Control) – Configuration Management (Control & Administration)

Major Activities of Release Management

Case Example Supporting Implementing Release Management• Suppose a software “patch” is installed to a

widely used system and has a “bug”. The previous version should be reinstalled but due to poor version management, the wrong version is used, resulting in a system shutdown that lasts three hours and affects two-thirds of all employees. This will cost the organization $50,000 in lost productivity

(500 users*$50/hr*3hrs*2/3 of users)

ITIL's framework is not an inflexible set of standards.ITIL's framework is not an inflexible set of standards.

•The guidelines can be adapted to suit different business and organizational environments.

•Don't spend time in areas where processes are satisfactory and close to complying with ITIL guidelines.

•Part-time implementation of ITIL processes will slow project completion but result in easier adoption by staff

•Identify areas for quick wins to demonstrate the value of improved processes.

•Process improvement always requires a senior executive to champion the endeavor while promoting the values and maintaining the project's focus.

•An active steering committee also is essential to sustain participation across the management team.

Bottom Line:

Enterprises will realize valuable processimprovements and better measurement and reporting of process outcomes through the adoption of ITIL processes and guidelines.

Source Gartner -2003

InteQ http://www.inteqnet.com/educationservices.html#processes

ITSM Institute http://www.itsmi.com

HP:http://www.education.hp.com/curr-itsm.htm

http://www.education.hp.com/

Pink Elephant:

http://www.pinkelephant.com/

Learning More……

Questions/Comments

Glossary• CCTA The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency.• Incident An operational event which is not part of the standard operation of a system. It will have an impact on the system, although this

may be slight and may even be transparent to the users. • Customer Recipient of a service; usually the Customer management has responsibility for the cost of the service, either directly through

charging or indirectly in terms of demonstrable business need. • Business Operations Activities and procedures carried out by the user community in performing the business role of and Organization.

The Help Desk Module is concerned with those business operation that use an IT-based business system. • Classification The process of formally identifying incidents, problems and know errors by origin, symptoms and cause (See Incident

Classification). • Resolution Action that will resolve an Incident. This may be a Work-around. • Closure When the Customer is satisfied that an incident has been resolved. • Process A connected series of actions, activities, Changes etc. performed by agents with the intent of satisfying a purpose or achieving a

goal. • CAB/EC Change Advisory Board/Emergency Committee • DSL Definitive Software Library• DHS Definitive Hardware Store • Build The final stage in producing a usable configuration. The process involves taking one of more input Configuration Items and

processing them (building them) to create one or more output Configuration Items e.g. software compile and load. • Impact Measure of the business criticality of an Incident. Often equal to the extent to which an Incident leads to distortion of agreed or

expected service levels. • Urgency Measure of the business criticality of an Incident or Problem based on the impact and on the business needs of the Customer. • Configuration Management The process of identifying and defining the configuration items in a system, recording and reporting the

status of configuration items and requests for change, and verifying the completeness and correctness of configuration items.