ITIL Best Practices

An increase in the dependency of business on their IT services in recent years has changed the way and the extent that business must consider the delivery of those IT services. IT departments are now viewed by business managers as 'service organizations' and are expected to deliver clearly defined products to agreed service levels. Business organizations thus consider themselves to be customers of their IT departments and expect to be treated accordingly, very differently from the way IT departments traditionally treated their "users" some years ago.

Let’s see some ITIL Best Practices. The services must be matched to business needs and customer requirements. They must be flexible enough to adapt rapidly to changes in organization structure, demand, competition and technology. Users of IT services are required to obtain value for money. There is continual pressure in many organizations to reduce costs while maintaining or improving IT services. They must also make optimum use of expensive - and often scarce - IT skills. If customers are not satisfied with internal IT services, they will (and should) consider outsourcing.

Most users have no interest in technology or IT components. Their responsibility is to maintain and improve their own business processes and they are only interested in the IT infrastructure in so far as it supports their work. As the nature and volume of the work changes, IT is expected to stay ahead of service demand. This requires a policy of proactive IT service development. The best way to deliver the services that the business needs is to identify and apply appropriate industry ITIL Best Practices. This is effectively taking the lessons learned from others’ experience and building upon them using the specific knowledge and skills within your organization.

ITIL Best Practices are the best identified approach to a situation based upon observation from effective organizations in similar business circumstances.

The ITIL Best Practices approach is to:

• Seek out ideas and experience from those who have done similar things before
• Determine which of these ideas and practices would be relevant in your own circumstances
• Try them out - monitor and review whether they work for you (and if they don’t work - first check you are doing it right before seeking alternatives)
• Incorporate them into your documented practices

Applying ITIL Best Practices IT Service Management provides a thought-through, integrated approach that can be adapted to any organization and any mix of IT resources. By providing a template for service development, it allows the IT Department to spend its energies on implementation, rather than ‘re-inventing the wheel’. Best Practice focuses IT resources on service quality in fulfilling customer needs. It is a platform for moving away from yesterday’s frustrating, technology-driven, ‘boffin’ culture of IT services.

Implementation of ITIL Best Practices require IT Management software solutions that are capable of integrating detailed information from all sources and providing access to accurate, relevant management information on demand.  Many vendors have developed software solutions that have grown with the theory, adding bolt-on modules along the way. However, few have leapt forward to delivering ITIL Best Practices engine based on ITIL guidelines.

In the end, the best solution will be determined by your projections of future needs using ITIL Best Practices. In considering the best overall solution, it may be worth considering bolt-on modules or scrapping the current platform and trading up to an integrated suite. Whatever path is chosen, the management information it delivers should be tested against the requirements of fulfilling ITIL Best Practices. The ITIL Best Practices contain a self-assessment of the capacity management discipline.