Executive's Guide to IT Governance: Improving Systems Processes with Service Management, COBIT, and ITIL

CHAPTER SIX

ITIL and IT Service Management Guidance

IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT (ITSM) is an expression and concept that did not really exist in the earlier days of IT operations for business enterprises. ITSM is the overall discipline or process for managing IT systems centered on the customer’s perspective of IT’s contribution to the business. ITSM processes operate in deliberate contrast to the technology-centered approaches to IT management from earlier years, and strong ITSM processes are important elements of effective IT governance.

This chapter reviews aspects of ITSM that are important for effective IT governance by introducing senior business professionals to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a set of internationally recognized best practices covering most aspects of IT operations.

ITIL is the well-recognized abbreviation for the ever-expanding guidance materials first developed in the 1980s by the British government’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC). While it was originally an actual library of publications, today it is an independent and regularly updated collection of IT best practices that was first widely recognized by IT operations in the United Kingdom, followed by the European Union (EU), and is now increasingly common in the United States. Just as IBM has become a word in itself rather than the acronym for International Business Machines, most professionals today forget ITIL’s underlying words.

ITIL is a detailed framework of significant ...