Defining ITSM If ITSM is the art of making a business run, that begs somes questions. How does a business run? For whom? For what purpose? With what tools? To begin answering those questions, let’s break down ITSM into five areas of concern: End Users: Employees and customers who use IT services

Services: Applications, hardware, infrastructure, etc. provided by IT

Quality: Solving IT problems effectively and efficiently

Cost: Getting the most out of an IT budget

Business: Enabling a company to perform its core functions and achieve its goals

The Generic IT and Business Benefits from ITSM Imagine an awkward party where two groups, who don’t always get along, are hanging out. One group includes the IT professionals who serve a company. The other group includes the end users who depend on IT for services. End users could be employees of the company, partners, or customers. The silence is painful. Someone asks about the weather. No one is having that much fun. Then ITSM arrives and fixes all the awkwardness. Done right, it achieves the following benefits: Benefits for IT: Better understanding of what the business needs and why (i.e. “business alignment”)

Repeatable and scalable processes

Defined roles and responsibilities

Increased productivity

Satisfied end users with realistic expectations

Shorter gaps between detecting incidents and solving them

Prevention of IT issues before they happen

Ability to identify and address repeat problems

Analytics to measure and improve IT’s performance Benefits for the Business: IT can react quickly to change and innovation in the market

Better IT availability and performance means employees get more done

IT issues are less common, less impactful, and less costly

Employees know what services are available and how to use them

IT provides better service at a lower cost

Business complies with regulatory requirements no one wants to think about When ITSM runs smoothly, that once-awkward party becomes one of those epic evenings that ought to be memorialized with stone tablets (or impulsive tattoos). It’s that good. Tip: You can use these lists of benefits to build your case for investing in ITSM.

ITIL - the ITSM Best Practice Framework The difference between IT and formalized ITSM is the underlying set of processes. ITSM organizations obsess over consistency, best practices, and reducing manual labor with automation. ITSM is about optimizing IT, and that’s where ITIL comes into play. ITIL, formerly known as the “IT Infrastructure Library,” is the most popular approach to ITSM. We consider it an “ITSM Best Practice Framework” – i.e. a set of values, processes, and strategies for executing ITSM. ITIL is about managing IT as a service, not as a messy collection of IT components. Some IT departments focus on stuff – hardware, infrastructure, apps, etc. ITIL departments focus on the relationship between IT and end users. ITIL 2011, the latest edition, contains 26 ITSM processes. You take what your business needs and ignore those that don’t apply. The best practice framework is covered in five books: Service Transition, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. They are ITSM’s Five Books of Moses – the closest thing we have to a ITSM bible. You guessed right: These are not beach reads. The five ITIL books map the entire IT service lifecycle and go well beyond what we can and should cover here. The ITIL 2011 Glossary of Terms is an essential companion for these books and is available in multiple languages. To many people’s surprise, ITIL emerged from the UK government, which became disillusioned with the way IT was delivered in the latter half of the 1980s. The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), now called the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), was tasked with developing a framework for the efficient, and financially-responsible, use of IT resources. Soon enough, ITIL morphed into an ecosystem with consultancies, software, training, examinations, and membership organizations. Over 2 million people worldwide now have ITIL qualifications. Think of ITIL as accumulated common sense. If it’s in the book, it’s been proven. Rather than create an ITSM framework from scratch, start with ITIL.

Differentiating Between IT Help Desk and Service Desk Similar to the potential confusion between ITSM and ITIL, two other ITSM terms can mean different things to different people: “IT help desk” and “service desk.” The term “IT help desk” dates to the 1980s and refers to the people that employees should contact for IT support or information. ITIL literature never mentions the IT help desk. The “service desk” is ITIL’s service-oriented term for roughly the same thing. These days, corporate IT organizations tend to use “service desk” over “help desk.” Their end users, however, might call it the help desk anyway – hence, the confusion. (2012 HDI Practices and Salary Report, available to HDI members, has quantified usage of each term.) If you would like to read more on this, Joe the IT Guy has written more on the distinction between the two terms in his Are You An IT Help Desk Or An IT Service Desk? blog.