WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
Essential ITIL: What You
Need To Succeed
JUNE 2008
Malcolm Fry
EXECUTIVE CONSULTANT TO CA
Table of Contents
SECTION 1 1
Introduction
SECTION 2 2
ITSM Meets Perfumery
Types of Scents
The ITIL Essentials
SECTION 3 4
The Eight Essential Elements
SECTION 4 6
What Makes the “Essentials” Essential?
Getting the Basics Right
SECTION 5 7
Real World Application of “The Essentials”
SECTION 6: CONCLUSION 8
SECTION 6: ABOUT THE AUTHOR 9
Copyright © 2008 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted
by applicable law, CA provides this document “As Is” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be
liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages. ITIL® is a Registered
Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 1
SECTION 1
Introduction
Judging from the types of questions that come up at my talks and seminars, one of the hottest
topics in IT Service Management (ITSM) today is the new ITIL® v3 guidance and what to make
of it.
People consistently ask me similar questions about ITIL, and most of these revolve around
practical approaches for implementing various process improvements in their organization.
Of course, some of these discussions require some basic level-setting around ITIL itself, which
may in turn require a bit of “de-myth-tification.” Since its introduction back in the 1980s, ITIL
has probably had more written about it than is contained in the ITIL books themselves — some
of it factual, some hype, and some pure myth.
So let’s start there: what is ITIL really all about?
First, ITIL is about people. In fact, ITIL starts with a commitment to the people of IT, because it
consists of a series of individual IT practitioner certifications. These certifications help improve
the skills required to deliver high quality, repeatable, and well-controlled IT services. There is no
“company-wide ITIL certification” — these would, in fact, be handled by the international
standards organization ISO via ISO 9001/8 and 20000 corporate certifications.
Second, ITIL is about process. There are different approaches to process implementation based
on which “version” of ITIL you are inclined to adopt. But without debating the merits of ITIL
“versions,” let us presume that any ITIL implementation discussion ultimately has roots in the
principle of Process Improvement. Besides, ITIL v2 and v3 are more alike than different at a
fundamental level. Both embody essential ITSM processes that every IT organization must
perform to the best of its ability – you’re doing them as a matter of course whether you have
efficient processes in place, or not. Thus almost any question you might ask about ITIL comes
down to this: how do you best make use of whatever essential ITIL v2 and/or v3 elements
make sense for you to adopt given your specific needs.
Third, ITIL has starting points. This is one of the most widely discussed topics as of late,
especially as ITIL isn’t considered to be highly prescriptive. Rather, it's a set of “good practice”
guidance for IT practitioners to follow. They may adhere to these strictly, as outlined in each of
the books. Or, more likely, practitioners may adapt the ITIL guidance as they see fit based on
the unique skill sets, goals, and functions of their unique IT organization.
But rest assured, there are a handful of ITIL processes which are essential to today’s IT
organizations and the services they deliver – whatever the specifics of the organization happen
to be. This last point is worth expanding upon further, which I’ll do by way of an analogy.
2 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
SECTION 2
ITSM Meets Perfumery
When I first looked at the large number of processes and functions in ITIL v3 my initial reaction
was perplexity: Where do I start and how should I decide an approach? When I have this
dilemma I often find it valuable to look to other industries for a long-established precedent, and
see if I can learn from their experiences. Right about this time my wife had decided to change
her perfume, and there was the inspiration I needed — in the ancient art of perfumery.
Imagine being given the task of creating a new and exciting perfume. Just think of all the
potential ingredients and the sheer complexity of the task. Selecting and synthesizing a few
components from among many is a challenge perfumers have grappled with for thousands of
years as they’ve sought to blend exquisite scents from a myriad of available ingredients. This is
similar to the problem we face in talking about what processes are essential in ITSM, and
hence in ITIL.
To achieve success, perfumers have structured a logical approach that, through analogy, can be
applied with good effect to determining what’s essential to implement in ITIL v2 and/or v3.
Of course, the ingredients you ultimately choose will be driven by the specific problem you’re
trying to solve. Are you being asked to create the ITSM equivalent of a chewing gum flavor,
versus a captivating cologne? The collection of ITIL processes you choose to implement will
reflect that, as I’ll explain shortly.
Types of Scents
Perfumes basically consist of four classes of ingredients: primary scents, modifiers, blenders,
and fixatives.
PRIMARY scents can consist of one or a few main ingredients that create a classic, natural
theme or concept, such as “rose” or “jasmine.” Alternatively, multiple ingredients used together
can create an “abstract” primary scent that doesn’t directly resemble a natural ingredient, such
as “cola.” These become the essential elements around which the perfume will be based, and
are key to a successful perfume. Of course, before selecting the primary scents you would need
to have some guidance; for example, is the scent for a man or a woman, young or old, rich or
poor, trendy or staid? From this basic data the process can begin.
MODIFIERS alter the primary scent to give the perfume a distinct, desired character. For
example, fruit esters can be included with a floral primary scent to create a “fruity floral” scent;
whereas citrus scents specifically create a “fresher floral.” The cherry scent in cherry cola is this
kind of modifier. If we only used the primary scents then we would have much less choice, but
the skill of the master perfumer is in the subtle addition of modifiers that create a new and
exciting combination.
BLENDERS are a diverse group of ingredients that smooth out or “round off” the transitional
notes of a perfume by blending, balancing and harmonizing its different “layers” or “bases;” i.e.,
the primary scents and modifiers. Common blending ingredients include hydroxycitronellal,
which imparts a floral odor to numerous consumer products, and linalool, a naturally occurring
terpene alcohol found in many flowers and spice plants.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 3
FIXATIVES are used to support the primary scent by bolstering and stabilizing it. Resins and
wood scents, and amber bases, are among the scents typically used for fixative purposes.
Without these components smells can break apart and just not work, like immiscible liquids.
Granted that’s all vastly oversimplified but you get the picture: in a perfume some scents are
primary and others play secondary or supporting roles. It’s the same with the ITIL processes as
I’ll now explain.
The ITIL Essentials
Talking about individual ITIL processes in isolation from one another is inherently limiting,
especially in the ITIL v3 context, since the processes are designed to be used together. But
which ones are essential and which are optional? The component approach and associated
terminology used in perfumery is an ideal way to illustrate the relationships among the
essential elements and how they work together with supporting processes.
ITIL PRIMARIES are those essentials that every IT organization must have, and inherently does
have, whether it embraces the ITIL guidance or not. Every IT shop has some way of managing
incidents, for example, even if it’s just assigning someone to fix what breaks in response to
complaints from users.
ITIL MODIFIERS such as Service Level Management and Service Catalog, are those processes
that “flavor” the character of the primary processes. In relation to the essential process of
Incident Management, for instance, these “modifiers” determine whose incidents are more
important than someone else’s. Part of setting up a service catalog would be to decide that
when System X fails it’s a Priority 1 call whereas when System Y fails it’s a Priority 3 call. Most
organizations will need to implement some version of these Modifiers as they will the
Primaries. You don’t want people making up their own priorities and escalations — you want
rules, and those rules modify the behavior that is required on a primary level.
ITIL BLENDERS are those processes that ensure everything will work together. For example,
Capacity Management ensures you have enough staff, servers, etc. to execute the other
processes.
ITIL FIXATIVES in this case are Financial Management activities; things like headcount and
budget that bond the whole IT infrastructure and organization together in the end. That is, with
whatever your budget and governance are, you make sure you’ve got the best possible facilities
to meet business needs.
4 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
ITIL v3 FUNCTIONS & PROCESSES
Just for fun, try this exercise: Create a simple spreadsheet with four columns, one for each of
the four constituents just described, and then start putting the names of each v3 process or
function in Figure A into whichever one of the columns you think it belongs under. It’s a very
interesting exercise because everyone looks at the various processes and their interrelationships
with a different set of eyes. If you do this as a group you may get into a lively discussion.
SECTION 3
The Eight Essential Elements
As stated above, some ITIL processes are essential to every IT organization — because you’re
doing them regardless of whether you have an efficient process in place to help you or not.
Let’s take stock now of the essential ITIL processes and why they’re essential to IT Service
Management success.
If you compare the bullet list that follows to the list of ITIL v3 functions and processes in Figure
A you’ll quickly see that, while it’s obvious that some of these processes are clearly essential to
ITSM, it is difficult to decide exactly which processes and functions to include because there
are many sub-processes in v3. Figure A illustrates the large range of elements that need to be
addressed from the v3 perspective.
FIGURE A
Functions and Processes from the
Service Lifecycle as listed in the five
core publications describing the IT
Service Management practices that
make up ITIL v3.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 5
Leveraging the collective ITIL guidance with an eye toward “first steps” and foundational
aspects, here are the eight essential ITSM processes that are required by all IT departments:
1. Service Desk
2. Event Management
3. Problem Management
4. Service Asset & Configuration Management
5. Change Management
6. Incident Management
7. Request Fulfillment
8. Release & Deployment Management
Recent research supports calling these processes out as essential. For example, the IT Process
Institute, in its research on Identifying Key Performance Drivers1, found seven sets of control
practices that predict top levels of performance. From highest to lowest impact, they are:
• Release scheduling and rollback (Release & Deployment Management)
• Process culture
• Pre-release testing (Change Management)
• Process exception management (Incident Management and Problem Management)
• Standardized configuration strategy (Service Asset & Configuration Management)
• Change linkage (Change Management)
• Controlled production access
Looking at these control practices you can see that most of them map closely to five of the ITIL
essentials. Process culture is a management initiative and not an ITIL element per se, and
therefore is not covered by the essential elements. This leaves Controlled Production Access,
which the essential ITIL processes will contribute by highlighting and supporting resolution of
various security issues, as well as ensuring that new services are secure.
Similarly, the eight ITIL essentials encompass much of what is in the ITIL Service Transition and
Service Operation phases, which have been well-quantified in terms of their impact to IT
performance.
6 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
SECTION 4
What Makes the “Essentials” Essential?
Now let’s briefly discuss each of the eight essential ITIL processes individually, with an eye
toward why each is so important.
SERVICE DESK Everybody using computers everywhere at some point needs something fixed.
Even if a business doesn’t have a Service Desk per se the activity is still happening — people
inevitably call or e-mail someone or knock on someone’s door and say “this doesn’t work, fix
it.” Service Desk is thus a basic IT activity irrespective of whether you formalize it with
technology and skilled people or not; calling the Geek Squad or another third party amounts
to the same thing.
EVENT MANAGEMENT An Event is a set of circumstances that may or may not affect the
customer, but you know it has happened or you can predict that it shortly will happen; e.g., you
see that a particular server is getting near its capacity limit. So hopefully you spot that as an
Event, you tell Capacity Management, and they create more capacity. The customer doesn’t
even know the server they use nearly froze. Event Management is being done all the time, any
time threshold/alerts are established or IT is monitoring the infrastructure.
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT AND PROBLEM MANAGEMENT Incident Management is all about
getting the customer’s service back to agreed service levels as fast as possible. Again, this is an
essential ingredient because keeping the business performing to its maximum performance
level is why ITSM exists. And Problem Management is about root cause analysis relative to
Incidents. Problem Management asks “Why did that incident or group of incidents occur? And
what can we do to stop that happening again?” Again, that’s an essential part of how you do
your job in IT.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT IT changes constantly. There isn’t any shop that isn’t changing on a
daily basis, be it major or minor in magnitude. You have to perform changes all the time to fix
Events, respond to Problem Management insights, roll out new equipment, and so on. Change
Management is not only essential to IT operations, but it’s also your Achilles’ heel. The recent
three-hour e-mail outage that BlackBerry users experienced, which resulted from an upgrade to
increase capacity, is but one example among many of the high-magnitude risks associated with
failed changes.
REQUEST FULFILLMENT Employees, customers and other stakeholders inevitably have requests
relating to services in whatever form; and, of course, you have to address those requests to the
best of your ability or what are you there for? You must do that; it’s a basic part of your job.
RELEASE & DEPLOYMENT MANAGEMENT Some might view this process as subsumed under
Change Management but either way the activities associated with it are essential. Say you’ve
got a brand new payroll system going live. This includes everything associated with getting that
business-critical service in place; conducting the related training; moving, converting, and
backing up files; and so forth. Another example might be rolling out two hundred new
workstations over the weekend. Again, Release & Deployment Management is the kind of
service IT is providing all the time with varying levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 7
SERVICE ASSET & CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT This essential process is squarely where IT
governance comes to the forefront. Every IT department needs to know what assets it has,
where they are located and what is being done with them. If you don’t know this asset
information than you are probably violating Sarbanes-Oxley since they want to know why you
don’t know. So inarguably this process, too, is essential.
Getting the Basics Right
These essential elements figure prominently in both ITIL v2 and v3, but in v3 the guidance
around them has been upgraded. For this reason I recommend that organizations that have
embraced v2 (as well as those that have yet to do so) at least consider upgrading their
essential elements to incorporate v3 enhancements.
That said, it remains absolutely imperative for every IT shop to get the basics right at whatever
level is currently possible. Implement these essential elements first, in whatever order makes
sense for your IT organization, leveraging ITIL advice wherever possible. If you’re working with
the service lifecycle approach in v3 then you’ll be modifying and blending the essentials with
some of the supporting processes at the same time. Even from a v2 perspective, in fact, you’ll
be doing some blending, shading, and customization of the essentials to fit your needs.
It is important to remember also that, wherever you start out from, you will still need to
“continuously improve” by adding the other layers – especially the Modifying layer, which
includes elements such as Service Level Management and Service Catalog.
SECTION 5
Real World Application of “The Essentials”
Let’s now apply all this emphasis on the flexible application of essential ITIL processes to
answering the kinds of questions I hear every day from IT managers and leaders alike.
My boss told me to forget about strategy and to concentrate on improving service management —
how do I do this with ITIL v3?
One approach would be to implement the essential elements to a given maturity level; and,
once those are in place then go back to the boss and say, “OK, we’ve got control of our basic
processes, now let’s do ITIL v3 the proper way using the service lifecycle approach.” That is,
look at the essentials versus your current practices and determine how far from the v3
guidelines you are for each one. Then ask: What do we need to do to close the gap? Having
implemented the essentials you’ve lost nothing towards moving ahead with the serviceoriented
methodology that v3 advocates.
To prove the business value of ITIL v3 to my boss and peers I need some quick wins — how do I do
this with v3?
It’s often the case that senior IT managers don’t have direct, hands-on experience with ITIL;
hence they might legitimately question whether it’s just another way for consultants to make
money. If this is your situation my advice would be similar to the above: look at your basic
processes today, pick the ones you’re worst at right now, and improve them using v3 guidance
to a basic level of maturity that provides business value. Then you’ll have some leverage to
justify your case to move forward with the lifecycle approach.
8 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
I am not interested in the service lifecycle approach, so can I still use ITIL v3?
Some organizations just don’t “do” long-term planning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make
good use of ITIL v3. First get the essential elements in place, then look at the rest of the
components and start integrating supporting processes with those basic eight, keeping in mind
the perfume analogy above. First modify the basics, then add blenders and fixatives as I’ve
discussed.
How can I build a good set of essential elements from ITIL v3?
Select the processes that address your greatest pain points, perform a process gap analysis
and then close the gaps. But keep in mind that the number of “essential” processes you
ultimately put in place might be more than the eight discussed here. When you take a closer
look at v3 guidance (likewise see Figure 1) you’ll see that there aren’t just a few processes and
functions involved, there are more than thirty of them. Once you’ve got the basics in place
you’ll want to continue on and build in others – even if you don’t plan to adopt v3’s service
lifecycle approach. It’s reasonable to take the v2 approach to process implementation since v2
is process-oriented. But adopt the v3 guidance about what constitutes a process, its inputs and
outputs, etc., and then prioritize your rollouts of specific processes based on what you need to
improve most.
SECTION 6
Conclusion
ITIL isn’t about the debate over Versions or Processes or Lifecycles. As my colleague Rob
Stroud notes in his blog titled: ITIL v3 — You’re doing it whether you know it or not, if you
want to work for successful organizations, they have probably already put several aspects of
ITIL v3 into practice — whether they realize it or not. As the head of the ITSM team at a large
manufacturer commented, "any ITIL implementation that is service aligned is doing much
of v3 already."
The keys to success then, are the eight essential elements that every IT organization should
adopt and perform to the best of its ability.
When practical considerations preclude adopting all aspects of the v3 methodology, this
should be seen as a valid starting point, not a stumbling block, for leveraging the essential
elements. Once basic processes are in place organizations can begin to fine-tune and expand
on those processes by adding “modifiers,” “blenders” and “fixatives” — supporting processes
that “flavor” the IT environment in line with unique, local requirements.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 9
SECTION 7
About the Author
Malcolm Fry began his IT career in 1967, and in the following years took on development,
operational and management roles for retail, manufacturing, oil, and pharmaceutical
organizations. He has received worldwide recognition as one of the foremost authorities in
the areas of help desk and IT service management. He is the author of numerous best-selling
books on IT service and support, the newest being Building an ITIL Service Management
Department which is due to be published in May. In addition he has had many articles and
papers published in multiple languages, and is currently writing a white paper for CA extolling
the importance of the Essential ITIL V3 Processes and Functions. Malcolm was also a member
of the ITIL Advisory Group (AIG) steering ITIL v3 and a mentor, along with Rob Stroud, to the
authors of the ITIL v3 Service Transition book.
Malcolm is an innovative and informative strategic consultant sought-after by many large
organizations that see him as a catalyst to initiate improvements by reviewing their facilities
and processes, and most importantly, preparing plans to allow them to meet their business
and IT objectives. He is also a regularly featured keynote speaker at Service Management
conferences around the world.
Malcolm Fry
Industry Personality and Author
Executive Consultant to CA
CA (NSD: CA), one of the world's leading independent,
enterprise management software companies, unifies and
simplifies complex information technology (IT) management
across the enterprise for greater business results. With our
Enterprise IT Management vision, solutions and expertise,
we help customers effectively govern, manage and secure IT.
MP329560608
Essential ITIL: What You
Need To Succeed
JUNE 2008
Malcolm Fry
EXECUTIVE CONSULTANT TO CA
Table of Contents
SECTION 1 1
Introduction
SECTION 2 2
ITSM Meets Perfumery
Types of Scents
The ITIL Essentials
SECTION 3 4
The Eight Essential Elements
SECTION 4 6
What Makes the “Essentials” Essential?
Getting the Basics Right
SECTION 5 7
Real World Application of “The Essentials”
SECTION 6: CONCLUSION 8
SECTION 6: ABOUT THE AUTHOR 9
Copyright © 2008 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permitted
by applicable law, CA provides this document “As Is” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be
liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages. ITIL® is a Registered
Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 1
SECTION 1
Introduction
Judging from the types of questions that come up at my talks and seminars, one of the hottest
topics in IT Service Management (ITSM) today is the new ITIL® v3 guidance and what to make
of it.
People consistently ask me similar questions about ITIL, and most of these revolve around
practical approaches for implementing various process improvements in their organization.
Of course, some of these discussions require some basic level-setting around ITIL itself, which
may in turn require a bit of “de-myth-tification.” Since its introduction back in the 1980s, ITIL
has probably had more written about it than is contained in the ITIL books themselves — some
of it factual, some hype, and some pure myth.
So let’s start there: what is ITIL really all about?
First, ITIL is about people. In fact, ITIL starts with a commitment to the people of IT, because it
consists of a series of individual IT practitioner certifications. These certifications help improve
the skills required to deliver high quality, repeatable, and well-controlled IT services. There is no
“company-wide ITIL certification” — these would, in fact, be handled by the international
standards organization ISO via ISO 9001/8 and 20000 corporate certifications.
Second, ITIL is about process. There are different approaches to process implementation based
on which “version” of ITIL you are inclined to adopt. But without debating the merits of ITIL
“versions,” let us presume that any ITIL implementation discussion ultimately has roots in the
principle of Process Improvement. Besides, ITIL v2 and v3 are more alike than different at a
fundamental level. Both embody essential ITSM processes that every IT organization must
perform to the best of its ability – you’re doing them as a matter of course whether you have
efficient processes in place, or not. Thus almost any question you might ask about ITIL comes
down to this: how do you best make use of whatever essential ITIL v2 and/or v3 elements
make sense for you to adopt given your specific needs.
Third, ITIL has starting points. This is one of the most widely discussed topics as of late,
especially as ITIL isn’t considered to be highly prescriptive. Rather, it's a set of “good practice”
guidance for IT practitioners to follow. They may adhere to these strictly, as outlined in each of
the books. Or, more likely, practitioners may adapt the ITIL guidance as they see fit based on
the unique skill sets, goals, and functions of their unique IT organization.
But rest assured, there are a handful of ITIL processes which are essential to today’s IT
organizations and the services they deliver – whatever the specifics of the organization happen
to be. This last point is worth expanding upon further, which I’ll do by way of an analogy.
2 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
SECTION 2
ITSM Meets Perfumery
When I first looked at the large number of processes and functions in ITIL v3 my initial reaction
was perplexity: Where do I start and how should I decide an approach? When I have this
dilemma I often find it valuable to look to other industries for a long-established precedent, and
see if I can learn from their experiences. Right about this time my wife had decided to change
her perfume, and there was the inspiration I needed — in the ancient art of perfumery.
Imagine being given the task of creating a new and exciting perfume. Just think of all the
potential ingredients and the sheer complexity of the task. Selecting and synthesizing a few
components from among many is a challenge perfumers have grappled with for thousands of
years as they’ve sought to blend exquisite scents from a myriad of available ingredients. This is
similar to the problem we face in talking about what processes are essential in ITSM, and
hence in ITIL.
To achieve success, perfumers have structured a logical approach that, through analogy, can be
applied with good effect to determining what’s essential to implement in ITIL v2 and/or v3.
Of course, the ingredients you ultimately choose will be driven by the specific problem you’re
trying to solve. Are you being asked to create the ITSM equivalent of a chewing gum flavor,
versus a captivating cologne? The collection of ITIL processes you choose to implement will
reflect that, as I’ll explain shortly.
Types of Scents
Perfumes basically consist of four classes of ingredients: primary scents, modifiers, blenders,
and fixatives.
PRIMARY scents can consist of one or a few main ingredients that create a classic, natural
theme or concept, such as “rose” or “jasmine.” Alternatively, multiple ingredients used together
can create an “abstract” primary scent that doesn’t directly resemble a natural ingredient, such
as “cola.” These become the essential elements around which the perfume will be based, and
are key to a successful perfume. Of course, before selecting the primary scents you would need
to have some guidance; for example, is the scent for a man or a woman, young or old, rich or
poor, trendy or staid? From this basic data the process can begin.
MODIFIERS alter the primary scent to give the perfume a distinct, desired character. For
example, fruit esters can be included with a floral primary scent to create a “fruity floral” scent;
whereas citrus scents specifically create a “fresher floral.” The cherry scent in cherry cola is this
kind of modifier. If we only used the primary scents then we would have much less choice, but
the skill of the master perfumer is in the subtle addition of modifiers that create a new and
exciting combination.
BLENDERS are a diverse group of ingredients that smooth out or “round off” the transitional
notes of a perfume by blending, balancing and harmonizing its different “layers” or “bases;” i.e.,
the primary scents and modifiers. Common blending ingredients include hydroxycitronellal,
which imparts a floral odor to numerous consumer products, and linalool, a naturally occurring
terpene alcohol found in many flowers and spice plants.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 3
FIXATIVES are used to support the primary scent by bolstering and stabilizing it. Resins and
wood scents, and amber bases, are among the scents typically used for fixative purposes.
Without these components smells can break apart and just not work, like immiscible liquids.
Granted that’s all vastly oversimplified but you get the picture: in a perfume some scents are
primary and others play secondary or supporting roles. It’s the same with the ITIL processes as
I’ll now explain.
The ITIL Essentials
Talking about individual ITIL processes in isolation from one another is inherently limiting,
especially in the ITIL v3 context, since the processes are designed to be used together. But
which ones are essential and which are optional? The component approach and associated
terminology used in perfumery is an ideal way to illustrate the relationships among the
essential elements and how they work together with supporting processes.
ITIL PRIMARIES are those essentials that every IT organization must have, and inherently does
have, whether it embraces the ITIL guidance or not. Every IT shop has some way of managing
incidents, for example, even if it’s just assigning someone to fix what breaks in response to
complaints from users.
ITIL MODIFIERS such as Service Level Management and Service Catalog, are those processes
that “flavor” the character of the primary processes. In relation to the essential process of
Incident Management, for instance, these “modifiers” determine whose incidents are more
important than someone else’s. Part of setting up a service catalog would be to decide that
when System X fails it’s a Priority 1 call whereas when System Y fails it’s a Priority 3 call. Most
organizations will need to implement some version of these Modifiers as they will the
Primaries. You don’t want people making up their own priorities and escalations — you want
rules, and those rules modify the behavior that is required on a primary level.
ITIL BLENDERS are those processes that ensure everything will work together. For example,
Capacity Management ensures you have enough staff, servers, etc. to execute the other
processes.
ITIL FIXATIVES in this case are Financial Management activities; things like headcount and
budget that bond the whole IT infrastructure and organization together in the end. That is, with
whatever your budget and governance are, you make sure you’ve got the best possible facilities
to meet business needs.
4 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
ITIL v3 FUNCTIONS & PROCESSES
Just for fun, try this exercise: Create a simple spreadsheet with four columns, one for each of
the four constituents just described, and then start putting the names of each v3 process or
function in Figure A into whichever one of the columns you think it belongs under. It’s a very
interesting exercise because everyone looks at the various processes and their interrelationships
with a different set of eyes. If you do this as a group you may get into a lively discussion.
SECTION 3
The Eight Essential Elements
As stated above, some ITIL processes are essential to every IT organization — because you’re
doing them regardless of whether you have an efficient process in place to help you or not.
Let’s take stock now of the essential ITIL processes and why they’re essential to IT Service
Management success.
If you compare the bullet list that follows to the list of ITIL v3 functions and processes in Figure
A you’ll quickly see that, while it’s obvious that some of these processes are clearly essential to
ITSM, it is difficult to decide exactly which processes and functions to include because there
are many sub-processes in v3. Figure A illustrates the large range of elements that need to be
addressed from the v3 perspective.
FIGURE A
Functions and Processes from the
Service Lifecycle as listed in the five
core publications describing the IT
Service Management practices that
make up ITIL v3.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 5
Leveraging the collective ITIL guidance with an eye toward “first steps” and foundational
aspects, here are the eight essential ITSM processes that are required by all IT departments:
1. Service Desk
2. Event Management
3. Problem Management
4. Service Asset & Configuration Management
5. Change Management
6. Incident Management
7. Request Fulfillment
8. Release & Deployment Management
Recent research supports calling these processes out as essential. For example, the IT Process
Institute, in its research on Identifying Key Performance Drivers1, found seven sets of control
practices that predict top levels of performance. From highest to lowest impact, they are:
• Release scheduling and rollback (Release & Deployment Management)
• Process culture
• Pre-release testing (Change Management)
• Process exception management (Incident Management and Problem Management)
• Standardized configuration strategy (Service Asset & Configuration Management)
• Change linkage (Change Management)
• Controlled production access
Looking at these control practices you can see that most of them map closely to five of the ITIL
essentials. Process culture is a management initiative and not an ITIL element per se, and
therefore is not covered by the essential elements. This leaves Controlled Production Access,
which the essential ITIL processes will contribute by highlighting and supporting resolution of
various security issues, as well as ensuring that new services are secure.
Similarly, the eight ITIL essentials encompass much of what is in the ITIL Service Transition and
Service Operation phases, which have been well-quantified in terms of their impact to IT
performance.
6 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
SECTION 4
What Makes the “Essentials” Essential?
Now let’s briefly discuss each of the eight essential ITIL processes individually, with an eye
toward why each is so important.
SERVICE DESK Everybody using computers everywhere at some point needs something fixed.
Even if a business doesn’t have a Service Desk per se the activity is still happening — people
inevitably call or e-mail someone or knock on someone’s door and say “this doesn’t work, fix
it.” Service Desk is thus a basic IT activity irrespective of whether you formalize it with
technology and skilled people or not; calling the Geek Squad or another third party amounts
to the same thing.
EVENT MANAGEMENT An Event is a set of circumstances that may or may not affect the
customer, but you know it has happened or you can predict that it shortly will happen; e.g., you
see that a particular server is getting near its capacity limit. So hopefully you spot that as an
Event, you tell Capacity Management, and they create more capacity. The customer doesn’t
even know the server they use nearly froze. Event Management is being done all the time, any
time threshold/alerts are established or IT is monitoring the infrastructure.
INCIDENT MANAGEMENT AND PROBLEM MANAGEMENT Incident Management is all about
getting the customer’s service back to agreed service levels as fast as possible. Again, this is an
essential ingredient because keeping the business performing to its maximum performance
level is why ITSM exists. And Problem Management is about root cause analysis relative to
Incidents. Problem Management asks “Why did that incident or group of incidents occur? And
what can we do to stop that happening again?” Again, that’s an essential part of how you do
your job in IT.
CHANGE MANAGEMENT IT changes constantly. There isn’t any shop that isn’t changing on a
daily basis, be it major or minor in magnitude. You have to perform changes all the time to fix
Events, respond to Problem Management insights, roll out new equipment, and so on. Change
Management is not only essential to IT operations, but it’s also your Achilles’ heel. The recent
three-hour e-mail outage that BlackBerry users experienced, which resulted from an upgrade to
increase capacity, is but one example among many of the high-magnitude risks associated with
failed changes.
REQUEST FULFILLMENT Employees, customers and other stakeholders inevitably have requests
relating to services in whatever form; and, of course, you have to address those requests to the
best of your ability or what are you there for? You must do that; it’s a basic part of your job.
RELEASE & DEPLOYMENT MANAGEMENT Some might view this process as subsumed under
Change Management but either way the activities associated with it are essential. Say you’ve
got a brand new payroll system going live. This includes everything associated with getting that
business-critical service in place; conducting the related training; moving, converting, and
backing up files; and so forth. Another example might be rolling out two hundred new
workstations over the weekend. Again, Release & Deployment Management is the kind of
service IT is providing all the time with varying levels of efficiency and effectiveness.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 7
SERVICE ASSET & CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT This essential process is squarely where IT
governance comes to the forefront. Every IT department needs to know what assets it has,
where they are located and what is being done with them. If you don’t know this asset
information than you are probably violating Sarbanes-Oxley since they want to know why you
don’t know. So inarguably this process, too, is essential.
Getting the Basics Right
These essential elements figure prominently in both ITIL v2 and v3, but in v3 the guidance
around them has been upgraded. For this reason I recommend that organizations that have
embraced v2 (as well as those that have yet to do so) at least consider upgrading their
essential elements to incorporate v3 enhancements.
That said, it remains absolutely imperative for every IT shop to get the basics right at whatever
level is currently possible. Implement these essential elements first, in whatever order makes
sense for your IT organization, leveraging ITIL advice wherever possible. If you’re working with
the service lifecycle approach in v3 then you’ll be modifying and blending the essentials with
some of the supporting processes at the same time. Even from a v2 perspective, in fact, you’ll
be doing some blending, shading, and customization of the essentials to fit your needs.
It is important to remember also that, wherever you start out from, you will still need to
“continuously improve” by adding the other layers – especially the Modifying layer, which
includes elements such as Service Level Management and Service Catalog.
SECTION 5
Real World Application of “The Essentials”
Let’s now apply all this emphasis on the flexible application of essential ITIL processes to
answering the kinds of questions I hear every day from IT managers and leaders alike.
My boss told me to forget about strategy and to concentrate on improving service management —
how do I do this with ITIL v3?
One approach would be to implement the essential elements to a given maturity level; and,
once those are in place then go back to the boss and say, “OK, we’ve got control of our basic
processes, now let’s do ITIL v3 the proper way using the service lifecycle approach.” That is,
look at the essentials versus your current practices and determine how far from the v3
guidelines you are for each one. Then ask: What do we need to do to close the gap? Having
implemented the essentials you’ve lost nothing towards moving ahead with the serviceoriented
methodology that v3 advocates.
To prove the business value of ITIL v3 to my boss and peers I need some quick wins — how do I do
this with v3?
It’s often the case that senior IT managers don’t have direct, hands-on experience with ITIL;
hence they might legitimately question whether it’s just another way for consultants to make
money. If this is your situation my advice would be similar to the above: look at your basic
processes today, pick the ones you’re worst at right now, and improve them using v3 guidance
to a basic level of maturity that provides business value. Then you’ll have some leverage to
justify your case to move forward with the lifecycle approach.
8 WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED
I am not interested in the service lifecycle approach, so can I still use ITIL v3?
Some organizations just don’t “do” long-term planning, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make
good use of ITIL v3. First get the essential elements in place, then look at the rest of the
components and start integrating supporting processes with those basic eight, keeping in mind
the perfume analogy above. First modify the basics, then add blenders and fixatives as I’ve
discussed.
How can I build a good set of essential elements from ITIL v3?
Select the processes that address your greatest pain points, perform a process gap analysis
and then close the gaps. But keep in mind that the number of “essential” processes you
ultimately put in place might be more than the eight discussed here. When you take a closer
look at v3 guidance (likewise see Figure 1) you’ll see that there aren’t just a few processes and
functions involved, there are more than thirty of them. Once you’ve got the basics in place
you’ll want to continue on and build in others – even if you don’t plan to adopt v3’s service
lifecycle approach. It’s reasonable to take the v2 approach to process implementation since v2
is process-oriented. But adopt the v3 guidance about what constitutes a process, its inputs and
outputs, etc., and then prioritize your rollouts of specific processes based on what you need to
improve most.
SECTION 6
Conclusion
ITIL isn’t about the debate over Versions or Processes or Lifecycles. As my colleague Rob
Stroud notes in his blog titled: ITIL v3 — You’re doing it whether you know it or not, if you
want to work for successful organizations, they have probably already put several aspects of
ITIL v3 into practice — whether they realize it or not. As the head of the ITSM team at a large
manufacturer commented, "any ITIL implementation that is service aligned is doing much
of v3 already."
The keys to success then, are the eight essential elements that every IT organization should
adopt and perform to the best of its ability.
When practical considerations preclude adopting all aspects of the v3 methodology, this
should be seen as a valid starting point, not a stumbling block, for leveraging the essential
elements. Once basic processes are in place organizations can begin to fine-tune and expand
on those processes by adding “modifiers,” “blenders” and “fixatives” — supporting processes
that “flavor” the IT environment in line with unique, local requirements.
WHITE PAPER: ESSENTIAL ITIL: WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED 9
SECTION 7
About the Author
Malcolm Fry began his IT career in 1967, and in the following years took on development,
operational and management roles for retail, manufacturing, oil, and pharmaceutical
organizations. He has received worldwide recognition as one of the foremost authorities in
the areas of help desk and IT service management. He is the author of numerous best-selling
books on IT service and support, the newest being Building an ITIL Service Management
Department which is due to be published in May. In addition he has had many articles and
papers published in multiple languages, and is currently writing a white paper for CA extolling
the importance of the Essential ITIL V3 Processes and Functions. Malcolm was also a member
of the ITIL Advisory Group (AIG) steering ITIL v3 and a mentor, along with Rob Stroud, to the
authors of the ITIL v3 Service Transition book.
Malcolm is an innovative and informative strategic consultant sought-after by many large
organizations that see him as a catalyst to initiate improvements by reviewing their facilities
and processes, and most importantly, preparing plans to allow them to meet their business
and IT objectives. He is also a regularly featured keynote speaker at Service Management
conferences around the world.
Malcolm Fry
Industry Personality and Author
Executive Consultant to CA
CA (NSD: CA), one of the world's leading independent,
enterprise management software companies, unifies and
simplifies complex information technology (IT) management
across the enterprise for greater business results. With our
Enterprise IT Management vision, solutions and expertise,
we help customers effectively govern, manage and secure IT.
MP329560608
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