Incident Management involves restoring normal business operations as quickly as possible after an incident (a server meltdown,
for instance) -- in other words, doing whatever is necessary to get services back into a normal operational state after they
are disrupted. Problem Management, on the other hand, focuses on finding and removing the root causes for the incident in
order to prevent its recurrence.
ITIL is unique in separating “problems” from “incidents.” Too often, IT organizations will allow services to remain down while
support staff tries to find the root cause of an incident, instead of focusing on fast work-arounds to minimize impact on
the business. ITIL puts priority on serving the business first and then on fixing the root cause in the background.
Change Management is the process that coordinates and controls changes to the IT infrastructure itself. ITIL views this process
as a coordinated effort to obtain the proper approvals, authorization, and quality assurance steps.
Release Management refers to the actual implementation of IT changes, including people, processes, technology, training, rollout,
communications, and business area activities, as well as the design build, test, and release of the change. The notion of
packaging changes into release units to minimize disruption to the business is new to most IT operations. Release activities
occur under the guidance and approval of Change Management.
Configuration Management includes the process of logging, tracking, controlling, and verifying infrastructure information
that describes every component in the IT infrastructure -- and their relationships. Emphasis is placed on how these items,
known as CIs (configuration items), relate to one another. All this information is stored in a logical CMDB (configuration
management database).
3. This CMDB sounds important.
The CMDB will serve as the blueprint for how the entire IT infrastructure is structured, how various CIs -- hardware, software,
incidents, agreements, service levels, documentation, and so on -- are related, and how the entire metasystem functions. The
CMDB becomes the basis for finding infrastructure information quickly, and making effective management decisions based on
it. Under ideal circumstances, every CI will have configurable attributes -- for example, it might be a computer, a purchasing
process, or an individual IT staffer. If possible, the CMDB should be designed to automatically discover information about
the CIs and to track changes as they happen in order to minimize the administrative labor necessary to maintain it.
4. Did you forget about the Service Delivery volume?
Not at all. Whereas the Service Support book is focused on how effective IT services should be operated and maintained, the
Service Delivery volume looks at how those services are provisioned and enhanced. This book also highlights five critical
processes: Service Level Management, Availability Management, Capacity Management, IT Service Continuity Management, and IT
Financial Management.
Service Level Management involves planning, coordinating, monitoring, and reporting of SLAs. It reviews services on an ongoing
basis to ensure that they are being delivered cost-effectively and are meeting desired service targets. ITIL also introduces
the concept of a Service Catalog that lists all the services delivered by IT to the business. Creation of this catalog forces
IT to think in business terms and to link the IT infrastructure and its costs to the services that are being delivered.
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