ITIL Glossary

Information Technology Information Library (ITIL) is a set of best practices used to deliver high quality IT services. The best practices described in ITIL represent the consensus derived from over a decade of work by thousands of IT and data processing professionals’ world-wide, including hundreds of years of collective experience. Because of its depth and breadth, the ITIL has become the defacto world standard for IT best practices.

Let’s have a look on ITIL Glossary (from A-I):

• Absorbed Overhead: Overhead which, by means of absorption rates is included in costs of specific products or saleable services, in a given period of time. Under or over-absorbed overhead is the difference between overhead cost incurred and overhead cost absorbed: it may be split into its two constituent parts for control purposes. 

• Absorption Costing: A principle whereby fixed as well as variable costs are allotted to cost units and total overheads are absorbed according to activity level. The term may be applied where production costs only, or costs of all functions are so allotted.

• Allocated Cost: A cost that can be directly identified with a business unit.

• Application Portfolio: An information system containing key attributes of applications deployed in a company. Application portfolios are used as tools to manage the business value of an application throughout its lifecycle.

• Apportioned Cost: A cost that is shared by a number of business units (an indirect cost). This cost must be shared out between these units on an equitable basis.

• Asynchronous/Synchronous: In a communications sense, the ability to transmit each character as a self-contained unit of information, without additional timing information. This method of transmitting data is sometimes called start/stop. Synchronous working involves the use of timing information to allow transmission of data, which is normally done in blocks. Synchronous transmission is usually more efficient than the asynchronous method.

• Balanced Scorecard: An aid to organizational performance management. It helps to focus, not only on the financial targets but also on the internal processes, Customers and learning and growth issues.

• Baseline: A snapshot or a position which is recorded. Although the position may be updated later, the baseline remains unchanged and available as a reference of the original state and as a comparison against the current position (PRINCE2).

• Baseline Security: The security level adopted by the IT organization for its own security and from the point of view of good 'due diligence'.

• Bridge: Equipment and techniques used to match circuits to each other ensuring minimum transmission impairment.

• BS7799: The British Standard for Information Security Management. This standard provides a comprehensive set of controls comprising best practices in information security.

• Budgeting: Budgeting is the process of predicting and controlling the spending of money within the organization and consists of a periodic negotiation cycle to set budgets (usually annual) and the day-to-day monitoring of current budgets.

• Business Process: A group of business activities undertaken by an organization in pursuit of a common goal. Typical business processes include receiving orders, marketing services, selling products, delivering services, distributing products, invoicing for services, accounting for money received. A business process usually depends upon several business functions for support, e.g. IT, personnel, accommodation. A business process rarely operates in isolation, i.e. other business processes will depend on it and it will depend on other processes.

• Business Recovery Plans: Documents describing the roles, responsibilities and actions necessary to resume business processes following a business disruption.

• Business Recovery Team: A defined group of personnel with a defined role and subordinate range of actions to facilitate recovery of a business function or process.

• Capital Costs:  Typically those costs applying to the physical (substantial) assets of the organization. Traditionally this was the accommodation and machinery necessary to produce the enterprise’s product. Capital Costs are the purchase or major enhancement of fixed assets, for example computer equipment (building and plant) and are often also referred to as ‘one-off’ costs.

• Capitalization: The process of identifying major expenditure as Capital, whether there is a substantial asset or not, to reduce the impact on the current financial year of such expenditure. The most common item for this to be applied to is software, whether developed in-house or purchased.

• Category:  Classification of a group of Configuration Items, change documents or Problems.

• Change: The addition, modification or removal of approved, supported or baseline hardware, network, software, application, environment, system, desktop build or associated documentation.

• Change Advisory Board (CAB):  A group of people who can give expert advice to Change Management on the implementation of Changes. This Board is likely to be made up of representatives from all areas within IT and representatives from business units
• Change Authority  A group that is given the authority to approve change, e.g. by a project board. Sometimes referred to as the Configuration Board.

• Change Control: The procedure to ensure that all changes are controlled, including the submission, analysis, decision making, approval, implementation and post implementation of the change.

• Closure: When the Customer is satisfied that an incident has been resolved.

• Command, Control And Communications: The processes by which an organization retains overall co-ordination of its recovery effort during invocation of business recovery plans.

• Computer-Aided Systems Engineering (CASE):  A software tool for programmers. It provides help in the planning, analysis, design and documentation of computer software.

• Configuration Control: Activities comprising the control of changes to Configuration Items after formally establishing its configuration documents. It includes the evaluation, coordination, approval or rejection of changes. The implementation of changes includes changes, deviations and waivers that impact on the configuration.

• Configuration Documentation: Documents that define requirements, system design, build, production, and verification for a Configuration Item.

• Configuration Identification: Activities that determine the product structure, the selection of Configuration Items, and the documentation of the Configuration Item's physical and functional characteristics, including interfaces and subsequent changes. It includes the allocation of identification characters or numbers to the Configuration Items and their documents. It also includes the unique numbering of configuration control forms associated with changes and problems.

• Configuration Item (CI): Component of an infrastructure - or an item, such as a Request For Change, associated with an infrastructure - that is (or is to be) under the control of Configuration Management. CIs may vary widely in complexity, size and type, from an entire system (including all hardware, software and documentation) to a single module or a minor hardware component.

• Configuration Management: The process of identifying and defining 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.

• Configuration Management Database (CMDB): A database that contains all relevant details of each CI and details of the important relationships between CIs.
• Configuration Management Tool (CM Tool):  A software product providing automatic support for change, configuration or version control.

• Definitive Software Library (DSL): The library in which the definitive authorized versions of all software CIs are stored and protected. It is a physical library or storage repository where master copies of software versions are placed. This one logical storage area may in reality consist of one or more physical software libraries or file stores. They should be separate from development and test file store areas. The DSL may also include a physical store to hold master copies of bought-in software, e.g. a fireproof safe. Only authorized software should be accepted into the DSL, strictly controlled by Change and Release Management. The DSL exists not directly because of the needs of the Configuration Management process, but as a common base for the Release Management and Configuration Management processes.

• Delta Release: A delta, or partial, Release is one that includes only those CIs within the Release unit that have actually changed or are new since the last full or delta Release. For example, if the Release unit is the program, a Delta Release contains only those modules that have changed, or are new, since the last Full Release of the program or the last delta Release of certain modules.

• Depreciation: The loss in value of an asset due to its use and/or the passage of time. The annual depreciation charge in accounts represents the amount of capital assets used up in the accounting period. It is charged in the cost accounts to ensure that the cost of capital equipment is reflected in the unit costs of the services provided using the equipment. There are various methods of calculating depreciation for the period, but the Treasury usually recommends the use of current cost asset valuation as the basis for the depreciation charge.

• Disaster Recovery Planning: A series of processes that focus only upon the recovery processes, principally in response to physical disasters, that are contained within BCM.

• Net present value (NPV): method, in which the discount rate is chosen and the answer is a sum of money.

• Downtime: Total period that a service or component is not operational, within an agreed service times.

• Duplex (full and half): Full duplex line/channel allows simultaneous transmission in both directions. Half duplex line/channel is capable of transmitting in both directions, but only in one direction at a time. 

• Financial Year: An accounting period covering 12 consecutive months. In the public sector this financial year generally coincides with the fiscal year which runs from 1 April to 31 March.

• Forward Schedule of Changes (FSC):  A schedule that contains details of all the Changes approved for implementation and their proposed implementation dates. It should be agreed with the Customers and the business, Service Level Management, the Service Desk and Availability Management. Once agreed, the Service Desk should communicate to the User community at large any planned additional downtime arising from implementing the changes, using the most effective methods available.

• Full Release: All components of the Release unit that are built, tested, distributed and implemented together.

• Gateway: Equipment which is used to interface networks so that a terminal on one network can communicate with services or a terminal on another.

• Gradual Recovery: Previously called 'cold stand-by', this is applicable to organizations that do not need immediate restoration of business processes and can function for a period of up to 72 hours, or longer, without a re-establishment of full IT facilities. This may include the provision of empty accommodation fully equipped with power, environmental controls and local network cabling infrastructure, telecommunications connections, and available in a disaster situation for an organization to install its own computer equipment. 

• ICT: The convergence of Information Technology, Telecommunications and Data Networking Technologies into a single technology.