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White PaperITIL That Fits Your BusinessBy Bridget Conrad, VP Services and Support

ITIL That Fits Your BusinessTable of ContentsIntroduction3What is ITIL?3Adoption of ITILA moving target – The evolving ’best practices’ of ITILImplementing ITIL345Where to beginBasic questions to askStart with the most urgent processes566Software tools – flexibility is the keyAgiloft has the flexibility you needImplementation consultants can save you time and money677Conclusion8

ITIL That Fits Your BusinessIntroductionIn the last several years, ITIL has become abuzzword in management circles. CEO’s and CIO’sanxious to stay at the forefront of business trendshave felt some pressure to adopt “the most widelyaccepted approach to IT service management inthe world.”1 ITIL has been portrayed by some as apanacea that will suddenly make IT a profit center,while improving services, reliability, infrastructure,and accountability.However, jumping into “implementing ITIL” withouta clear understanding of how best to go about itand what potential benefits and pitfalls you mayencounter is tantamount to jumping out of aplane with your company’s resources on your backinstead of a parachute.A significant percentage of ITIL implementationsare simply never completed, after months oftraining, certification tests, and effort, while it is alsocommon to find that an ITIL implementation hasactually increased the workload of IT staff memberswithout improving service or reliability.Both of these outcomes may be avoided by doingsome homework and approaching ITIL with a clearsense of priorities. This paper offers some practicalsuggestions for how to get the greatest benefits ITILhas to offer without getting lost along the way.What is ITIL?The Information Technology InfrastructureLibrary (ITIL) is a set of “best practice” guidelineson managing IT processes that were originallydeveloped for government agencies in the UnitedKingdom in 1989. The guidelines were created byan organization called the Central Computer andTelecommunications Agency (CCTA) in response towhat was perceived as the inefficiencies and failingsof IT in the British government.The purpose of the guidelines was to increaseefficiency and cost-effectiveness, reduce failure,and improve the customer service provided byIT organizations. The agency that created theITIL books investigated the actual practices ofcorporations as well as government agenciesin the UK and abroad, looking for the processelements that led to effective IT service delivery,and they then codified those elements. The ITILbooks therefore documented practices alreadybeing followed to some extent in many successfulorganizations.Adoption of ITILITIL quickly became a well-known standard inEurope and much of the world soon after itsintroduction, thanks in part to the IT ServiceManagement Forum (itSMF), an internationalorganization founded in the early 1990s to spreadthe word about ITIL. The UK and the Netherlandseach created their own ITIL user certificationprograms in 2000 and hundreds of thousands ofindividuals have been certified.ITIL has been slower to gain ground in the UnitedStates. Only in the last 5 years has it made realinroads among American corporations. The lag inAmerican adoption has been blamed by some oncultural differences. Ken Hamilton, past presidentof itSMF in the USA, explains, “Europe tends to bea qualitative environment. Process improvementin terms of the quality of service delivered, thesesorts of metrics were more popular in Europewhereas in the United States, cost savings, returnon investment, hard-dollar savings were theprimary drivers.”2The interest in ITIL adoption in the U.S. has beengrowing, however, as indicated by changing surveyresults. In October 2005, a U.S. survey on theComputer Economics website showed that 56%Chad Vander Veen, “American ITIL”, Jul 27, 2005Government Technology, (http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/95672?id 95672&full 1&story pg edge-Centre/Best-Practice-Guidance/ITIL/

ITIL That Fits Your Businessof respondents weren’t even familiar with ITIL andanother 11% had no plans to implement it:3Current State of ITIL AdoptionNo Plans11%Researching16%ImplementingIn Place12%6%“What is ITIL”56%0%20%40%60%Percent of RespondentsSource: Computer EconomicsFigure 1By February of 2008, a survey of 370 CIO’sworldwide (100 of them American) by DimensionData found that almost 59% of American CIO’ssaid they had “engaged with” ITIL, but only 8%of them “deemed themselves aligned to theITIL framework).4 Contrast that with 66% oforganizations outside the U.S. engaging withand 17% considering themselves to be truepractitioners of ITIL.The main barriers to adoption cited by thesurvey were the costs associated with training,certification, and implementation. 31% of U.S.CIO’s reported that the framework should be moreactionable, while 25% complained that it shouldbe more flexible. 40% of American CIO’s believedthat ITIL would facilitate innovation by freeing ITdepartments from routine tasks.Most U.S. companies implementing ITIL havebeen large corporations. This is not surprising,3“ITIL Adoption: 2006 Could be Watershed Year inU.S.”, October, 2005, Computer Economics Metrics forIT Management, http://www.computereconomics.com/article.cfm?id 10684since ITIL was originally developed to addressthe problems of large organizations, and many ofthese problems may not even exist for small tomidsized organizations. For instance, a processaimed at improving communication between largedepartments will make little sense in a businesswith fewer than twenty employees. Moving to atightly structured, standards-based approachis most likely to pay off for companies jugglinga variety of independent systems in separatedepartments that don’t talk to each other.However, many small and medium-sized businessescan benefit from implementing the parts of ITILthat apply to them. The key is to find an approachthat takes into account an organization’s individualneeds and goals. For example, in a small businesswith only a few hundred computers, one or twopeople may be responsible for all computersupport issues. They may have little time to focuson higher-order issues like service strategy whenthey spend the workday managing incidents on acase-by-case basis.Implementing certain ITIL practices such as incidentmanagement in the early stages of a business canprepare the IT department for its eventual growth.Additional processes, such as change management,can be added as the business need arises.A moving target –The evolving ’best practices’ of ITILFirst published in several hefty volumes, the initialITIL library has continued to evolve as real worldexperience suggested some changes of emphasis.ITIL V2, published in 2000, is the foundationused by most companies who have implementedITIL to date. Of the 8 main books, the two mostwidely used were those on Service Support andService Delivery.5“Dimension Data Survey Shows More thanHalf of U.S. Organizations Have Engaged withITIL”, Feb. 28, 2008, 21-71F8-4A8D-827F-Enterprise: Instights and Perspectives for the CIO, ula Klein, “ITIL V3 – The Reality Check,” Smart

ITIL That Fits Your BusinessThe latest revision, known as ITIL V3, was intendedto remedy the “one-size-fits-all” approach of V2,and to provide more practical advice. It was aninternational effort, with input from vendors,government agencies, and industry stakeholders.Published in May 2007, V3 was intended to be moreflexible and adaptable to different business models.While V2 focused on processes, V3 emphasizes theway in which services are delivered to the business.The five core titles of ITIL V3 outline a theoreticalapproach to effective IT practice using the conceptof a service lifecycle:Service StrategyHelps IT organizations create strategies toimprove and develop services over timeService DesignProvides best practices for the designof IT services and processesService TransitionDemonstrates how IT organizations can best deliverservices required by the end-user, and manages thetransition of new, modified services to productionService OperationProvides a methodology for delivering effective,consistent levels of service to end-usersContinual Service ImprovementOffers best practices for anticipatingthe end-user’s needs and making appropriateservice changes over timeFor those who have already begun the certification orimplementation process under V2, it is helpful to seehow the services described in V2 map into ITIL V3:66Paula Klein, “ITIL V3 – The Reality Check,” SmartEnterprise: Instights and Perspectives for the 08winter/bestpractices.jhtml)Implementing ITILWhere to beginOne of the challenges with implementing ITIL is thatthe processes described in the ITIL volumes aredescriptions of strategies for system effectiveness,rather than prescriptions for how to implementthem. As a result, even after sending people toexpensive ITIL certification and foundation trainingcourses, your organization may still not have a clearidea of exactly how to implement ITIL.It is a mistake for most companies to try toimplement all the ITIL components at once. Thisis likely to result in endless process debates anddeadlocks, a lengthy and costly implementationproject, and an unfinished or unsatisfactoryresult. While it is certainly beneficial to plan along term ITIL roadmap, it is essential to prioritizethe implementation, and then proceed todesign and implement process improvement inmanageable chunks.