I’m starting to learn about ITIL v3 and I seem to learn best by writing and processing the material. First I’m starting with a pocket guide to get the essential concepts. ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library and it is a means to manage services. But what is a service in this context?
“A service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.”
So you want to help people achieve something without them bearing some of the burdens, and how you help is through a service. There is an assumption that the service may have a cost to the people using it. Since the service is providing something people want there is a value placed on it — do the costs and value align?
“Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services.”
Now “specialized organizational capabilities” is pretty vague. Those are all the things that surround the service relating to its delivery. I’ll probably get to those later.
ITIL provides IT governance, has a measurement and improvement aspect and takes into account the customer perspective. Oh, and ITIL was developed in the UK which gets my interest — so many of my favorite things have come from that little island.
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