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In this ITIL ® 4 Q&A, Dinara Adyrbai explains the development of the 34 management practices and how they relate to ITIL processes: Q: Processes in ITSM are about structure, defined inputs/outputs and objectives – with ITIL 4, do we need processes anymore? A: Yes, we...

It’s a natural response for many IT organizations to think about how implementing tools can be the solution to IT problems. But it’s a big problem, as there’s no magic pixie dust sprinkled over a tool and it can affect people negatively as much as positively. This issue ...

The principal objective for a project – delivering a specific output – can often be relegated to a focus on standardization. And very often this standardization of the project management processes boils down to completing a set of project templates. I’ve seen this happen very...

The DevOps and Agile movements are putting increasing pressure on traditional approaches to IT Service Management (ITSM) as many organizations embrace new technology and become more and more cloud native . These concepts related to the movements are all about evaluating ...

Business service management (BSM) is about bringing value to a business through matching overall business objectives with IT. Arguably, the concept has been with us for some time; but like the latest version of ITIL ® addresses the issue of business and services, it ha...

Traditionally, ITSM has not been agile. People have tended to focus more on having robust processes and rather than considering “what do we need?”, they have asked “what more can we put in to processes ?”. This level of “over-control” has happened because of over-enginee...

Why is IT Service Management (ITSM) important to organizations? Executives, of course, want to measure systems, data and people and how the IT infrastructure and the provided services are helping end-users to accomplish their business goal more efficiently. In the past, onl...

“It won’t work if organizations expect IT people to pick up an ITIL ® book or go on a training course and then implement successful service management solutions. “Organizations and people need to ‘adopt and adapt’ ITIL to the specific and unique requirements of their b...

Why do IT professionals certify in ITIL ® and PRINCE2 ® ? In the space of eight months, Service Process Controller (within Change Management tower) at Fujitsu, Balaji, achieved three certifications: PRINCE2, ITIL 4 Foundation and PRINCE2 Agile ® . We asked him why: While ...

IT Infrastructure management and support domain are experiencing a new makeover when it comes to tools, technologies, and methods that are being introduced on top of the service layer. Support and service are an integral part of every business. Every organization is an IT org...

When I got my start in IT, I found myself in a service operation role without even knowing what it was! I was part of an initiative in which Service Operation (SO) and ITIL ® were at the heart: consolidating IT operations management and incident ticketing for a radiology ...

One of the reasons why businesses overcomplicate processes in transition projects is because they are trying to develop an approach that meets all the principles of best practice. Quite often, the people in charge or accountable for transition projects want to achieve perfec...

Services are about people and processes and how technology enables the service delivery. These services need service management and, as a product manager, it has been useful to recognize that designing services is different to designing products. In order to deliver a cons...

IT service management – at the turn of the century and before ITIL® v2 – was as difficult to manage as landing on the moon and finding a state of anarchy. But – in my career post-ITIL v2 – I discovered a common language, a glossary, definitions of service level agreements ...

No matter how sophisticated an organization’s technical controls, there is always a risk of attack. In this day and age, with the great speed at which technology is advancing, the constant evolution of threats makes it impossible for any business to be 100% protected; what th...

When is a “dirty, mucky field” like your IT estate? Having mature existing practices, processes and controls that can’t be jettisoned; legacy technology sitting alongside new and a combination of waterfall and Agile/DevOps approaches – that’s your proverbial “mucky field”....

The content of best practice methods and frameworks such as ITIL ® , PRINCE2 ® and MSP ® enables people to speak a common language of IT service management, projects and programmes. However, the terminology needs to be chosen carefully to account for tone and...

You only have to be a casual follower of the news to see that cyber attacks and the resulting damaging data breaches are happening with greater frequency. TalkTalk and JP Morgan are just two of the latest high profile companies to show their vulnerability to cyber crime....

Automation today, and certainly in the future, can do many things equally if not better than humans, providing efficiency and cost savings. Ideally this also allows people to do more interesting work. The opportunity is clear that – as artificial intelligence becomes yet m...

Combining different IT and ITSM frameworks for business benefit How do organizations that begin with basic IT service management (ITSM) processes progress their approach to become more service-centric? I often observe companies – in spite of today’s focus on digital tr...

AXELOS' "Cyber Stories from the Frontline" brings to life the reality of cybercrime for organizations today and from the perspective of those who have first-hand experience How often do we hear stories of how multi-national corporations have been hacked via third-party s...

When embarking on any project, the hardest part is knowing where to begin. But as the Guiding Principles of ITIL Practitioner recommend, my view is that you should start where you are. I recently put these principles into practice when completing a strategic review of our I...

Scott Harberd shares his experience of implementing PPM software during a period of transformation and change for one of the UK’s largest airlines. Following a period of rapid growth and promotion to the FTSE 100, the organization was outwardly successful but highly i...

Digital transformation offers organizations the potential to compete, stay relevant and reduce the cost of delivering services to customers and running business processes. IT service management (ITSM) provides a structured process, approach and common language along wit...

ITIL Intermediate’s Service Design (SD) module provides one of the most important approaches to deliver a service that works and enables value creation. Without employing SD and, for example, moving to transition without much design and attention to processes there is a ...

PRINCE2 is one of the world’s most popular project management methodologies, so congratulations if you’re studying to take the Foundation exam; having the PRINCE2 certification will prepare you well for job roles both within and outside the world of project management. But b...

Working on projects to develop new software with developers in a different country - in other words, remotely - poses certain problems that cry out for the practical approaches enshrined in ITIL ® Practitioner’s guiding principles. The scenario I describe, unfortunately...

Why is working in silos a problem in technology and how can the ITIL Practitioner guiding principle of “working iteratively” help? In one service provider company, there were four silos operating very different service delivery models and different ITIL processes, therefore...

I n recent years Romania and, more broadly, South East Europe have become a hotbed for international IT services. Due to the region’s Internet of Everything approach, the IT market is booming and facilities like Security Operations Centres (SOCs) and Network Operation Centres...

1. In your service management experience, how much of a foundation does ITIL ® provide? ITIL is “documented common sense”, useful when undergoing any transformation as an organization. Having that ITIL tried-and-tested structure in place helps to lighten the load and mi...

Though a performance analytics and testing company, SOASTA use ITIL ® best practice to consider key processes for any application lifecycles and have applied them to their development methodology. In this blog, Dan discusses a little of what they have learned so far. ...

ITIL ® and ISO/IEC 20000, the international standard for service management, have enjoyed a long and mutually supportive relationship. ISO/IEC 20000 is currently being revised for the third time, with an increased focus on Service Integration (SIAM), governance and manag...

Robert Burton explains why he feels that ITIL shouldn’t be viewed as a prescriptive regime. There is a common misconception that ITIL is a rigid set of tools, procedures, and processes and if you don't follow what’s in the books, it’s not ITIL. With this approach,...

Many people associate ITIL’s core books with managing incidents and problems. This focus on break/fix scenarios is probably historical, but the misconception is still very much alive. Having been an ITIL trainer for more than 15 years and practising even longer, the o...

There are a couple of ITIL ® processes that you really can’t avoid. Continual service improvement (CSI) is one. If you’re not improving, you’re stagnating. And though you might not yet have a strongly-developed CSI concept or framework, you must assume that most peop...

How can you use ITIL ® to address real business problems and add value while bringing along people who might be resistant to change? Progressing iteratively means that changes (in effect, smaller changes) are easier for people to stomach and you’ll get a better level o...

For any operational department it’s obligatory to have processes and an approach to things – otherwise it would all be chaos! In my view, if you don’t adopt and adapt knowledge from one of the IT operational approaches such as the ITIL® Intermediate module, Operational Supp...

Service Management must not shy away from application development Most Service Management organizations are full of process people. And then, there are tools teams that are full of tools people. What I mean is that the tools teams are made up of individuals who are experts...

Recently, we investigated the misconceptions around ITIL in order to better understand and address the common challenges when adopting ITIL. We asked our community members to share their stories. To our delight, our members did not stop at listing the challenges, but f...

"How do I hold on to my current ITSM budget or even grow it? I know I need to show value to the business, but my concern is that the 'powers that be' see only cost. What's my best approach to this?" As technology continues to advance and develop, IT is becoming even more i...

How do you know whether ITSM is delivering what a business and its customers need? Some organizations decide to answer that question by measuring their IT Service Management (ITSM) maturity. This might be prompted because of a need to improve, or they’re investing in transf...

Project Office Managers, or P3Os and PMOs for short, are the crux of a project, programme or portfolio support office. Giving strategic guidance, support and coaching, PMOs lead the team to deliver best practice and standardize their approaches to project execution. In this...

If you had to choose between following an agreed IT Service Management (ITSM) process, or focusing on value, what would you do? When assessing the Major Incident Management process for one of my customers, I recognized that while the process was well established and defined ...

From medical, banking and automotive, to retail and hospitality, ITIL ® best practice is being used in more and more industry sectors to improve business performance. Why is this happening? Because ITIL is a proven industry best practice that takes a holistic view of p...

Projects and project management are about delivering change that your organization values. Doing that needs task orientation: you focus on what needs to be done, by when and to what quality – the founding pillars of project management . That same task orientation can le...

Those familiar with Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2® will know that the value of the universal, process-based project management method is that it can be applied to any project regardless of  type, organization, geography or culture. It can be used for any project...

When I first ‘discovered’ ITIL ® in the 1990s, it was both a revelation and like discovering a “family” I never knew I had. At that time, I loved that “family” because of how it took us where we needed to be. And it was needed because IT was largely run by people with ...

Organizations that previously set up IT processes that lasted for years are now preparing themselves for new ways of working – and a “machine” of constant change. Running in parallel to this has been the introduction of alternative ways of working – such as Agile methods a...

Throughout the 25 years of its existence, ITIL has supported IT organizations in providing business value for their customers in the form of well-designed and supported services. ITIL has become the most widely used and most successful ITSM (IT Service Management) framework i...

What’s the point of training people in project management best practices and then not using their new-found skills? Clearly, there is no point; however, this seems to be an issue among organizations according to the latest AXELOS PPM Benchmark Study 2017 – The Value of Pro...