Can you Service IT? Double meaning intended, can you service Information Technology and whatever "it" is that the business needs you to do. "IT" is not always fastest service, cheapest service, etc, but do you know what the key elements of performance are that leads to performance the business can live with and love.

Proactive IT Management is not as simple as adjusting to a need as it has arisen, but shaping the business environment for more efficiency, capacity, and excellence. "It" might also involve dramatically improved service quality and cost reduction. At the heart of ITIL is the ability to deliver to the present and future needs of our business and our customers.

ITIL principles apply to all existing and anticipated future business requirements. Done in any climate of change, it has the ability to enhance the Total Cost of Ownership investments in Information Technology. When IT is clare on it's processes and process dependencies, the foundation extends Service Management capabilities. With all the "partial processes" and no service delivery and support model, all measures will continue to struggle in complexity.

ILX Group released a progressive, yet concise IT Infrastructure Library Service Support and Service Delivery Process Maps. On 2 pages is an outline of the service support experience from a "user" point of view and a service delivery from the "customer's" point of view. Beautiful reference and in fact one of the better references I have seen at http://www.itiltraining.com/.

Years ago I tried to map with intent to vision the end processes with the product and service life cycle presently underway. While my process mapping helped me visualize the gaps, it did not help me visualize how to reach the opportunities as clearly as the ILX Group mapping did.

Working on the premise that a well working process will primarily raise Customer Issues in response to IT's ability to manage Configurations and Requests for Change, the issue for an IT group is to get the right level of Service Level Management, Availability, Capacity, Continuity, and Financial Management disciplines in place for how issues or exceptions are identified, communicated, and resolved.

Done correctly Change and Configuration Management is not something else to remember to do near or after deployment, it is part of development's foundation to maintaining sound service-- the Confirmation Management Database becomes an accurate systemic representation of a product's readiness from test to production, from production to End of Service Life Cycle. Registration of configuration items (what is going to change as a result of this request), benefits Incident, Problem, Change, Release and Configuration Management.

Have you read any inspiring ITIL best practices or visualizations lately? Would love to hear about them!

Dawn
http://linkedin.com/in/dmular