IT services are an important function in all of today’s companies, requiring the same oversight and mechanisms that more established departments such as finance and operations undergo. Whilst no company would employ an accountant without any formal qualifications, IT has historically speaking been the domain of the geek, with nobody daring to question the intricacies of the server room and its multitude of cables. However, as IT becomes ever more synonymous with the way business is done, a more formal approach needs to be undertaken to ensure IT services are formalized and held to the highest of standards, thus ensuring continued operations for businesses with minimal disruptions which can ultimately prove fatal to any business.
To see how an ITIL certification can help both professionals and businesses alike, we will take a short drive into the ideology behind ITIL and explore some of its functions and features and how they relate to the business which IT is ultimately set up to serve.
ITIL sets to standardize practices within the IT service management functions, thus ensuring everything is done above board and is in compliance with a well-defined set of standards. Now in its fourth iteration, ITIL focuses on 2 strategic components known as the SVS (Service Value System) and the 4-dimensional model.
The SVS is defined by 5 core components which include:
- The Service Value Chain
- Practices
- Guiding Principles
- Governance
- Continuous Improvement
The 4-dimensional model, as the name suggests, is made up of 4 dimensions which are listed as follows:
- Organizations and People
- Information and Technology
- Partners and Suppliers
- Value Streams and Processes
Even before going into the details of both SVS and the 4D model, one can begin to understand how structured the approach is to IT services. As IT broadens its scope to include more suppliers and service providers than ever before, due to such services as SAAS and subscription models, a coherent and common language goes a long way in ensuring that everything runs as smoothly as possible. Even more important is ensuring that when the inevitable happens and things break, everyone can work together to restore services as quickly as possible so that the business can resume normal operations with minimal disruptions. This becomes indispensable when working in a high-stakes environment, where a minute lost to downtime can cause the business irreparable damage.
Generally speaking, ITIL focuses on transitions with particular attention to planning, dialogue, and delivery. It also recognizes that IT is not there for its own sake but as a tool to enable and empower businesses to achieve their different targets. As such, engagement, feedback, governance, and holistic thinking permeate throughout the Service Value System model, together with the idea that transparent communication and work with all stakeholders and partners generates the best overall results.
Continuous improvement through iterative progress and feedback is another important aspect of ITIL’s Service Value System, thus ensuring that IT does not become complacent but rather remains proactive to the challenges that businesses face day in day out. Technology itself has proven to be quite disruptive with huge conglomerates going out of business overnight because they failed to recognise and address the challenges they were faced with. The importance of continuous improvement has never been as important as it is today and having ITIL certified staff goes a long way in helping address challenges before it becomes too late.
The 4-Dimensional model as presented in ITIL v.4 builds upon the 4 P’s of ITIL which include people, processes, partners, and products.
To be sure, unless IT is viewed as a holistic service, businesses will suffer as the disjointed ideology can quickly come unraveling. What the 4D model does is bring together the various parts of the IT supply chain under one single roof, thus ensuring that each part of this mechanism recognizes and works with each other to ensure a continuous cycle of support and growth.
As addressed earlier, each part of the supply chain is addressed and given due consideration in ITIL. One important aspect of the 4D model is the value streams which instills the idea with IT services personnel that processes, services, and technologies must ultimately bring some sort of value to the businesses. Often times, technology is implemented and deployed for its own sake, forgoing opportunity costs which could have had a more beneficial outcome should they have been used elsewhere. This is the beauty of ITIL in that in its holistic view of functions we undergo with little to no oversight, it brings it all together in full circle whilst ensuring that a structured process is undertaken throughout the service value system.
In understanding the value ITIL brings, one should also look at the ITIL processes of which there are 34 distributed in two separate lists. The first list focuses on general management practices and includes 14 out of the list of 34. The second list focuses on services management practices, encompassing the remaining 17 practices.
Together, both lists provide a comprehensive view of practices that IT departments should undertake regardless of their organization size and structure. By having such a well-thought-out list, IT service providers can ensure that each and every aspect of their department’s functions is accounted for and planned for. The importance of this simply cannot be overstated. As work gets in the way, even the most seasoned IT professionals can forget or overlook certain aspects of their workflow or neglect something important when using software and the last thing one needs is to have missed something which later derails entire processes and systems at great cost to the business.
ITIL does a wonderfully excellent job at ensuring there is a standardized set of practices IT personnel can adhere to. As IT has largely become indispensable to the way business is done today, it needs to be regarded with the same scrutiny and oversight as the rest of the business functions and no certification ensures this more than ITIL does.
