About ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)

ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) today is the generally accepted approach to organizing IT service providers. The ITIL recommendations enable IT organizations to deliver their services in a quality-driven and economical way.

This page is intended to offer you a brief introduction into ITIL:

 

Optimizing IT Processes with ITIL Version 3

In 2007 the OGC published a completely revised version of ITIL, known as "ITIL Version 3 (ITIL V3)".

ITIL V3 reflects the experiences gained with the earlier versions and puts a greater emphasis on creating business value. In comparison to ITIL V2 - which consisted of nine books - it is more streamlined around a set of five new core publications which together form the ITIL V3 Service Lifecycle:

ITIL V3 Service Lifecycle

The rationale for organizing the ITIL books in this way was to establish a Deming-like Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle focused on continual improvement - and to achieve better alignment between ITIL V3 and ISO 20000.

Overall, ITIL V3 complements the processes known from ITIL V2 with a number of new processes and puts more emphasis on producing value for the business. The underlying principles of ITIL are largely unchanged.

There is a complete comparison between ITIL V3 and V2 in our ITIL Wiki.

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ITIL - The Idea

ITIL was developed at the end of the 1980's by the Central Computing and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), a government agency in Great Britain. The reason for commissioning the CCTA was a lack of quality of the IT services procured by the British Government, so that a method had to be found to achieve better quality and simultaneously decrease their costs. The objective was to develop effective and efficient methods for the provision of IT Services - in other words a catalogue of best practices for the IT organization, which today is known as ITIL.

The essence of the methods is to make IT services explicit and strictly focused on client needs. This is combined with clearly defined responsibilities for service provision within the IT organization, and effectively designed IT processes. As a result, the IT organization concentrates on the services required by the customer side, rather than being focused on technologies.

The recommendations thus compiled are very broadly valid. It was found that the requirements of the businesses and organizations examined by the CCTA were mostly similar, independent of their size or industry sector.

A series of books on ITIL has been issued since 1989 by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), an administrative body of the Government of Great Britain: ITIL is a registered trademark of the OGC.

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ITIL accepted as De-Facto-Standard

In the past years, ITIL has become the de-facto standard for IT Service Management. Increasingly, IT managers developed awareness for the service- and customer-driven approach championed by ITIL, and the ITIL terminology is widely understood and used.

The ITIL philosophy has found its way into a multitude of other models for IT Service Management, as for example:

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IT Process Wiki: Facts and Know-How on ITIL and ISO 20000

We are now able to offer you a wealth of ITIL Know-how as part of our ITIL Wiki!

Our ITIL Wiki - the "IT Process Wiki" - is intended to promote more widespread use of Best Practice by IT professionals. In particular, this wiki is about ITIL, ISO 20000 and IT Service Management, and also about Process Management in general, as process management techniques are necessary for implementing and retaining Best Practice principles.

 

Contents of the IT Process Wiki

What is ITIL? ITIL Knowledge: Reference material on ITIL and IT Service Management
ITIL Processes Detailed descriptions of the ITIL processes according to the ITIL versions V3 and V2
ITIL Glossary Definitions of ITIL terms and acronyms
ITIL Roles Descriptions of the roles within ITIL
ITIL Checklists An extensive collection of checklists and templates to get started quickly
ITIL KPIs A set of common ITIL Key Performance Indicators
ITIL V3 vs. ITIL V2 Comparison between ITIL V3 and ITIL V2 - The Main Differences
ITIL Implementation Strategies for introducing ITIL into the IT organization
"Guide: ITIL Implemention in 10 Steps"
ISO 20000 Certification for IT organizations
Process Management Advice on how to use Process Management techniques for success

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