Chapter 16
Ten Places to Go for Help
In This Chapter
Using Cabinet Office resources
Getting in touch with an examination institute
Seeing how other approaches can complement ITIL
Don’t bother reinventing the wheel. Many people and organisations out there have implemented ITIL or are willing to provide you with help; some are closer to home than you think. Here are ten suggestions of where to go for help.
I start this section with some general, and maybe obvious, places to go for help. Then I move on to the other organisations that can help you.
Your Colleagues
Before I bombard you with details and websites of organisations that can provide help for your ITIL implementation, I want to say a quick word or two about the blindingly obvious. I’m a great believer in keeping things simple. Help may be closer at hand than you think. You’ll be surprised how many examples of service management you find in ordinary life. Each is a useful analogy to get you thinking about how to improve your services.
Whenever I turn on the TV or radio, it’s not long before I say to myself ‘That’s a real-life example of service management.’ For example, when the Government talks about the underlying reasons for unemployment, symptoms and causes relate to each other in the same way as incidents and problems do. Recently, my local news talked of the benefits of traffic officers clearing motorway accidents as soon as possible to recover the flow of traffic, just as you restore IT services when you have an incident. Of course, when I go shopping I only have to look at a queue and I go off on a diatribe about capacity management. Or is that just me?
All of these things help to exemplify and improve your understanding of service management. They also provide great examples that are easy to understand and that you can share with others.
The point of this section is that you and your colleagues represent a source of help. You have, no doubt, developed your own processes and procedures and ways of resolving issues that are just as effective as those documented in ITIL and elsewhere. The important point is to capture these and make them official. When you resolve issues and establish the best way of achieving something, you create good practice. Document it and follow it.
Don’t forget, for your ITIL implementation to be successful you must involve all staff. Getting their involvement will help get support and commitment for the changes you make.
The Internet
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the Internet is a great source of information. Online you find lots of stuff about service management and ITIL. Admittedly, if you simply search for ‘ITIL’, you end up with a list of training companies; however, if you dig a little further you uncover useful information.
A couple of years ago I was doing research and searched for invitation to tender (ITT). I found a copy of the official ITT from NASA to bid for one of the space shuttles when they retired from service. I was nearly tempted to put in a bid to have a space educational centre in my back garden. The moral of the story, of course, is that you never know what you’re going to find.
Searching for terms such as service level agreement (SLA), operational level agreement (OLA) or service portfolio will yield many useful resources and examples.
In the following sections I list many websites that can help you. Here are some others that don’t fit in those sections:
MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework) is closely related to ITIL. It provides a framework of practices intended to help you manage your IT systems. It describes similar processes to ITIL. This guidance is now available free to download at the following website:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd320379.aspx
The IT Skeptic. The name of this website may sound like a joke – but it isn’t. You’ll find some interesting stuff here. Yes, occasionally you may find some challenging comments made about ITIL, but there is no harm in this. If you fancy a look go to:
Cabinet Office
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was the custodian of ITIL and the UK Government department that sponsored best practice. In 2011 these duties transferred to the UK Government Cabinet Office. The Cabinet Office now sponsors many best practices and other relevant guidance, including ITIL and others such as:
M_o_R® (Management of Risk)
MSP® (Managing Successful Projects)
PRINCE2 – project management methodology
M_o_R® and MSP® are Registered Trade Marks of the Cabinet Office.
The Cabinet Office licenses the day-to-day running of ITIL to the APM Group (see the following section).
The best sources of news updates and basic information about ITIL and the qualifications are these websites:
www.best-management-practice.com
All three websites are run by a combination of the Cabinet Office, TSO (originally The Stationery Office) and the APM Group. You will find information about all of the Government best-practice guidance mentioned above, along with ITIL information regarding exams, accreditation and much more.
APM Group
The APM Group is the accreditor of all examination institutes for ITIL qualifications (see the following section). This means that it accredits examination institutes worldwide. The examination institutes then accredit other organisations that deliver training. Any ITIL training course that leads to an exam must be an accredited course run by an accredited trainer, using accredited material.
You can find more information at www.apmgroupltd.com.
Examination Institutes
The examination institutes accredit training organisations around the world. If you go to these websites you’ll find information about training companies near you that are accredited to provide ITIL training.
Here’s a list of the current examination institutes:
APMG-International: Global organisation based in the UK (see the previous section).
BCS: UK-based British Computer Society, provider of BCS Professional Certifications
Cert-IT: Based in Germany.
DANSK IT: Based in Denmark.
DF Certifiering AB: Wholly owned subsidiary of the Swedish Computer Society.
EXIN: Global certification company based in The Netherlands.
Loyalist Certification Services: Based in Canada and provides ITIL exams around the world.
PEOPLECERT Group: Global exam institute.
TÜV SÜD Akademie: Germany-based organisation.
You can see an up-to-date list at www.itil-officialsite.com/ExaminationInstitutes.
ITIL Live
ITIL Live is the online portal for advice and guidance for using ITIL, and has heaps more stuff. You can find process flow diagrams, role descriptions, white papers and much more there. You have to pay a subscription to get access to all this.
The ITIL Live website is www.bestpracticelive.com.
IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF)
The IT Service Management Forum (ITSMF) is the equivalent to a user group for IT service management and is a great source of information for anyone interested in ITIL-based service management. You can join the ITSMF and get discounts on books, and access to discussion forums.
The ITSMF has chapters in many countries. Each chapter organises events to give the opportunity for members to get together, attend seminars and discuss service management topics.
There are two main websites for the ITSMF:
www.itsmfi.org is the website for the international ITSMF, where you will find details of the many worldwide chapters of the ITSMF.
www.itsmf.co.uk is the website for the UK chapter of the ITSMF.
ISO/IEC 20000
ISO/IEC 20000 is the international standard for IT service management. The standard allows companies to demonstrate excellence and prove best practice in IT management. As a standard, ISO/IEC 20000 simply tells you what your organisation must achieve in order to be accredited to the standard. ITIL describes the same processes but gives much more advice on how to implement the processes in your organisation. So the two complement each other.
If your organisation wants to take ITIL to the highest level, then it may want to become accredited to the standard ISO/IEC 20000. This will indicate that your organisation has adopted the ITIL service management processes and achieved a certified level of maturity.
You can find more information about the accreditation scheme at www.isoiec20000certification.com.
Complementary Approaches
Many approaches, methodologies and guidance can help you improve the way you manage and provide IT services. Occasionally, people make the mistake of believing they can adopt only one set of guidance or one standard at a time. This isn’t true. Many approaches are complementary to ITIL. Depending on your needs, you may find that these can be used to help your ITIL implementation project. Here are a few:
Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT): Covers similar areas to ITIL but is more of an auditing tool: a controls-based, value and risk management framework that can support overall IT governance. Get the low-down at www.isaca.org/Knowledge- Center/cobit/Pages/Overview.aspx.
Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI): A process improvement approach that provides models you can use to assess the maturity of a process. ITIL is a framework of processes, so the approach is invaluable in setting baselines for improvement of your service management processes. Visit www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi to find out more.
Six Sigma: A process improvement approach you can use to analyse and improve processes, including the ITIL service management processes. There are many websites for Six Sigma, and the best approach is to launch your favourite search engine and have a look. However, a good starting place is www.asq.org, which is the site for the American Society for Quality.
SFIA
SFIA is the Skills Framework for the Information Age. It is an approach to defining IT skills. It defines and clarifies the skills and levels of responsibility required to perform many common IT roles. Lots of the roles align easily with the ITIL roles. You can use a combination of the ITIL role descriptions and the SFIA framework to create role or job descriptions for your ITIL implementation.
You can view and download the skills framework at www.sfia.org.uk.