Introduction: A Makeover, But Not Extreme

What You Need To Know

 

• Lifecycle over specific processes
• Servicing the business is key
• New practice areas, new roles
• ITIL certification refresh

Next Page: Introduction: A Makeover, But Not Extreme

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is getting a makeover, but don't call it extreme.

ITIL v3, a framework designed to promote best practices in I.T. service management, is set for release on May 30 by ITIL's owner, the U.K. Office of Government Commerce.

"People are scared that we've deleted things. That's not we were doing. We're taking everything in version 2 and building upon it," says George Spalding, one of 10 service management experts who worked on the update. He is also a consultant from Pink Elephant, a firm based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, that runs conferences and educational programs about best practices in service management.

"We have broadened the scope of what ITIL is to the consumer by adding a number of elements and new concepts," says Sharon Taylor, chief architect of ITIL v3 and a consultant working under contract to the Office of Government Commerce publisher, The Stationery Office of Norwich, England. In that role, she is responsible for working with the team that wrote, reviewed and edited the library. "We still deal with operational issues such as incident, change and configuration management. What's changed? We've added a host of practice areas that were not part of ITIL in the past."

The most obvious change: five books, each between 200 to 250 pages, will replace nine books. The new titles are: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement. The teams focused on eliminating content now covered by other external practices and standards such as the Capability Maturity Model for software development. Within the original nine, there was some overlap in certain areas and this was also reduced across the core five books.

And, most closely watched: certification or qualification requirements, which are still being hashed out. (More on that later.)

Although the publishers are not releasing advance copies, Baseline interviewed five people working on the library update and identified key changes. In addition to Taylor and Spalding, those interviewed were: David Cannon, co-author of the Service Operations book and a service management practice principal at Hewlett-Packard; Gary Case, a Pink Elephant consultant who co-authored the Continual Service Improvement book with Spalding; and Robert Stroud, a member of the ITIL Advisory Group and I.T. governance evangelist at CA.

For organizations that have adopted ITIL or are considering it, here are four things they need to know about the new version.

Lifecycle over specific processes

Lifecycle over specific processes
The five books in the updated framework follow the life of a service: from setting strategy, to developing a design, followed by the transition or handing off the service to operations, and then actually operating the service. The best practices outlined in the last book, Continual Improvement, can be implemented at just about any point in a service lifecycle, according to Case and Spalding, the book's co-authors.

Next Page: Servicing the business is key

Servicing the business is key
In v3, servicing the business gains importance. In contrast, v2 emphasized supporting the information technology organization.

"The focus in this library is about facilitating and measuring business outcomes," Taylor says, stressing that "I.T. performance is definitely a component" in this process. For example, asset lifecycle management and return on investment are concepts-not dealt with in-depth in the earlier versions of ITIL-that are now addressed. That's because those concepts are more prevalent today in service management than in past years, she says.

In another example of how the updated library is intended to better address business needs: it makes a distinction between collecting metrics to measure the performance of a service, in addition to the performance of a particular technology. Take e-mail-as a service and technology. Let's say an e-mail server is running, but the network connection is down and interrupts the delivery of e-mail. A technology metric would show 100% uptime for the e-mail server. Yet, the services metric for e-mail would show the outage. "We're calling out to you to measure the end-to-end experience. Oftentimes, I.T. has not done that," says Case, co-author of the Continual Service book.

Next Page: New practice areas, new roles

V3 includes new practice areas, roles and definitions.
In v3, practice areas, roles and definitions, are added or expanded upon. Take these following four examples:

• Establishing a service level program, and the roles associated with it, is addressed in the Continual Service Improvement book. For instance, the book defines a service level manager, identified as someone responsible for monitoring and reporting whether service levels are being met, and a continual service manger, responsible for reviewing trends, identifying opportunities and making plans for improvement.
• Setting up self-help and knowledge management programs are outlined in the Service Operation book. "Self-help is something many forward-thinking I.T. organizations have done for some time-the ability to get go and solve your own problems," Stroud says. Those practices include setting up a knowledge tool to handle an error with a printer or other service, or setting up a method to handle a service request, such as requesting a laptop for a new employee. That service request, he says, could then be automatically linked to other processes such as issuing a password to the new employee.
• Setting up a service catalog is covered in the Service Transition book. It includes an explanation of what a service catalog looks like and identifies key attributes, such as costs and a warranty. "I like to give the example of when you buy a new washing machine or other device, it comes with a warranty. We started to define that as a key word in I.T. service management library," Stroud says. In addition, the service would be described so that it makes sense to the business side of an organization, as well as defined for the technology organization.
• Event management, once part of incident management, is now recognized as a core process separate from an incident. "An event does not always imply something has gone wrong," Cannon says. "It could imply that somebody needs to do something normal. For example, replace a tape in the tape drive or a job is finished and you go and launch the next job." An incident, on the other hand, is defined as an unplanned interruption to an I.T. service or a reduction in the quality of an I.T. service.

Next Page: ITIL certification refresh

ITIL certification refresh
Under ITIL v2, individuals can take training courses and exams that lead to ITIL certificates or qualification at three levels: Foundation, Practitioner and Manager.

The Foundation certificate is aimed at ensuring a basic understanding of ITIL. Practitioner offers an in-depth understanding in any one of nine specialty areas, such as change management. And, Manager is geared to people using the ITIL framework across the spectrum of service management activities.

Taylor expects new certification requirements or qualifications will be phased in over time with the first changes planned for the basic or Foundation level. She expects the Foundation level will be retained for people who want to understand ITIL basics.

"The qualifications [certificates] that people have today will continue to be recognized," Taylor says, adding that certification scheme is shaping up to be different than one that has been in place. She stresses that as of mid-May, details were still being worked out and not publicly available.

She also anticipates there will be "bridging classes" for people interested in focusing on what's new in the updated library, instead of going over content previously covered.

One change under consideration, she says, will keep the tiered structure of certificates but will include "modules" that focus on service capabilities in specific roles, such as change and configuration management.

"There would be a stronger ability to tailor learning needs to the area of interest [someone] has," Taylor says of the proposal involving advanced levels of ITIL certification.

She also anticipates the revised educational and certification requirements to address the service lifecycle to reflect the new focus of ITIL v3.

Regardless, what someone has learned in the early version, that knowledge will not go to waste, say ITIL consultants who worked on the updated framework. "The world has not crumbled from under your feet," Cannon says. "Version 3 is definitely a progression of what's in version 2.