ITIL in Practice: How to Get the Most of it at SKILup Days 2024

Hello, my name is Roman and I work at People Cert and do as an I architect for a bit more than seven years. And today we will be talking about ITIL and how it helps organization because it works and how exactly it works. Uh, we're going to cover, uh, about four major, uh, points for major topics during the next 25 minutes or so.

And then we will have some time for Q and D. So we'll start with a very, I promise, it'll be very brief history of IT and it l and how they were developing together and how their former affected the letter. Then, uh, just a very quick overview of the IT system and what it L is and what we mean by it.

L are a few important key concepts from itil. Just to illustrate what's inside. We won't be able to cover all of them.

Uh, we don't have time for that, but the most important one, uh, ones we will, uh, cover. And then a few words on, uh, why this might be important and interesting for you, and what are the benefits that one might expect from ITIL if you take this food. So let's start.

I will not be going further away than, uh, about 40, 30, 40 years ago. So if you look at the role of IT in business, it has been evolving in the last few decades. And we may remember, some of you may remember, I do remember how our IT, or under the maiden name of our ICT, um, was focused mostly on managing IT systems rather than services or products.

So let alone some business value and mostly was, uh, uh, focused on fragmented support of some particular business functions. Uh, the role of IT was growing, uh, in the end of 20th century. And, uh, uh, by year 2000, it was apparent that it is a very important business enabler.

And this is also where our standards and good practices and models for management of IT were emerging and becoming really popular. And coincidentally, it's more or less when, uh, I also started, um, working in IT service management and, uh, uh, uh, maybe I've had first time of it in the late nineties. And the first version that I was familiar with was the second version of itil, which started being published from the year 2000.

So everything before is, uh, as much a history for me as probably it is for you. Then, uh, the role of I was still emerging. We went through, uh, a number of interesting, uh, um, uh, developments, uh, including, uh, uh, in the beginning of, uh, um, two thousands, uh, the emergence of a very important new player in the field, which is called DevOps.

There was a period when it was, uh, thought to be a commodity or to become a commodity, and there was a very popular publication, very popular book called, it Doesn't Matter, which implied that, uh, it'll be very soon fully commoditized and, uh, just people in the gray robes will be vacuuming the IT sockets more or less the way they are vacuuming. The electric sockets didn't happen. However, the new developments in, uh, technology, uh, trigger new, uh, innovations related to digital technology related to it.

And generally our life is more digital driven than it ever was. That, of course, was reflected in the development of ITIL because ITIL is a rather old thing. It it was created in mid eighties originally, but it has been evolving together with, uh, uh, technology.

And we are currently dealing with IL four, which we launched, uh, about five years ago. So in February, 2019, the first book of IL four was published and we were really trying, uh, those who are working before us, and, uh, our team, uh, we were really trying to or keep pace with, uh, uh, the technology development and, uh, to reflect the changing role of technology in business in our publications. So currently we are dealing with ILE four.

ILE four started being published in 2019. The first book introduced was I Foundation, and, uh, in the course of 20 19, 20 20, we published these six core publications, which are currently on the screen. I will name them.

There is no need to memorize it, but we will come back couple of times in this presentation to some of these titles, so I will name them. So after foundation, we published, uh, uh, two books in, uh, uh, the first half of 2020 that were, uh, create, deliver and support and, uh, uh, derive or direct plan and improve, so CDS and DPI respectively. And later in 2020, we published High Velocity it, HVIT and stakeholder Value DSV.

And finally, the sixth book to be published was the Digital and IT Strategy. So these six publications is not the whole of it. Apart from this, we have a number of, uh, supplementary publications, but most importantly, they are also supported by management practices.

And this is another group of publications, 34 individual publications describing 34 management practices. Stay tuned for that. I will come to them later.

What is important about ile? What usually when people think ile, they also imply ILE certification because indeed each book is supported by, uh, a training of the same name and the certification of the same name, and they are grouped according to the target audience. Let's ignore for now that four blocks, which are called it extension modules.

Let's focus on the three pillars in this 50 shades of purple in the middle of the screen. So right to the left, we have, uh, two publications which are addressed to leaders, and I will call, I would call them the Why of service management, and this is digital and data strategy. And also that Publica, um, debt certification track includes, uh, direct plan and improve Direct plan and improve is also shared with this middle track, which is addressed from managers, and I call it the what of service management.

And this includes four modules, which you see are, are of the same names as the books they're based on. So it's DPI, high velocity, it, uh, DSV, and C-D-S-C-D-S. In turn is is shared with the practitioners, uh, group of publications and certifications, which I would call the how of service management.

And this is based on the practice guides, and we will come to them later in the presentation. All this is based on, uh, the ILE Foundation training, and, uh, all of them require ILE Foundation training as a prerequisite and foundation training is based on the foundation book, which was published first and described the key concepts. Most of the diagrams and concepts and ideas we are going to discuss today.

Uh, they can be found in foundation, but they, um, also are used and, uh, um, um, explode in the following publications. However, it's important to remember that IEL is not just a set of publication, and it's not just, uh, a set of publications supported by training and certification. So on top of all what we would call, uh, the core publications, so the books, we already had a look at plus practice guides that I mentioned.

We also have other products such as, for instance, uh, IL maturity model, uh, or our certification and, and accreditation scheme that we had a look at in the previous slide. And there is also a software assessment model that we won't be covering in this presentation. So there are some core products based on these products.

ITIL has developed into, uh, a rather wide global ecosystem, which not only includes Peoplehood and the customer organizations, but it also includes different types of partners. So our, we have training, uh, organizations to upgrade training partners, and these are organizations who are upgraded to deliver our training and to certify individuals. We also have a whole universe of tool vendors, and there is a lot of software tools that basically automate service management processes, practices, workflows, and, uh, are many of those automation solution are based on IL and the best of those tools are accredited as, uh, uh, IL or accredited, uh, software tools.

So there is a, uh, whole ecosystem of the automation systems of tool of tools. Also, many organizations when they decide to adopt title or if you like to implement service management solutions and improve service management practices or service management systems in their organization, they, uh, invite some consultants to help them. And there are consulting organizations.

Sometimes it's also training organizations and tool vendors. Sometimes it's a specialized consultancy, uh, and they are tool or training diagnostic, and they may come and help you to, uh, adopt and adopt certain IT recommendations in your business. And some of these consultants are better than the others, and the best consultants are also accredited consulting partners, and they have come through quite a rigorous assessment, uh, to make sure that they know what they're doing.

So we have consulting partners, vendor partners, training partners, and probably all the least, but, uh, certainly, uh, all, although last but certainly not least important, we have a community. It's online community of professionals. It's called axus.

So people surplus. And, uh, uh, this is a community where we, uh, provide a lot of additional materials to those who use iil to you, to practitioners based on this ecosystem. Organizations that act as service providers and uh, are, I will say that pretty much every organization on this planet is service provider, and many of them are digital service provider or digitally enabled service providers.

They can benefit by, uh, becoming more resilient, more business alike are more, uh, um, efficient, uh, and more agile. And there is a link between our products and the elements of data system to each of these benefits for service providers, which we don't have time to explore, but believe me, it's, uh, uh, quite closely connected. And, uh, there is a link between, uh, each of these benefits and particular products.

And if a service provider happened to be resilient, agile, business aligned, efficient, then uh, there is a chance that businesses de, depending on the service provider, whether it is external customers or the parent business of an internal service provider, which also can happen, uh, they have, are usually very high chances to benefit from high quality of products and services, uh, and from, uh, better risk and, uh, uh, cost management and from sustainable digital transformation, continual business growth and, uh, motivated and, uh, uh, better skilled staff. Just last year we conducted, uh, with some of our partners research on, uh, the impact of it l adoption on, uh, the businesses. And these are just some, uh, figures proving that it l actually helps organizations to achieve their goals and to work better than they would be working if they haven't adopted title.

Now, uh, let's, let's, uh, uh, for, for a while stop talking about what title is, and let's have a brief, unfortunately, but nevertheless, let's have a look inside. And I would like to start with, so-called IL guiding principles. I believe that's the most important fundamental part that then if you want to take only one takeaway from ITIL are, I would recommend this to be the guiding principles.

There are seven of them, they are on the screen. And, uh, I will comment very briefly just on some of them. First of all, focus on value.

Remember what, uh, uh, the stakeholders you work for expect. And usually these stakeholders are more diverse than just, uh, uh, your customers and your, uh, sponsors. So there are multiple stakeholders.

They expect something from the organization and from the, from the product and services this organization provides, delivers great. And, uh, it's important to remember what we are working for. What is the expected value?

Not just outputs, but outcomes. Not just processes, but outcomes. Embrace what you already had, uh, got.

Don't start from the, uh, clean sheet. Don't start, uh, uh, remove everything you, you you've had so far. Usually your improvement is not starting from square one.

Usually you are in the situation where you have something to keep, have something to build on. So start where you are, know where you are and use it. And when you know what is the value expected and where you are, you start moving towards that value creation.

And that movement should be iterative, should be incremental, and should be based on the feedback. We are way past the time when you could, uh, define a plan for five years ahead and just follow that plan without orienting and changing the plan accordingly to your orientation, because the things around keep changing all the time. So progress iterative feedback, which means be agile, collaborate and promote visibility.

You won't be able to produce whatever you want to produce if you work on your own. You need to collaborate within and outside of organization, and you have to maintain visibility of your intentions, of your progress, of your risks, of your, uh, costs, of your success and failures. And visibility also refers to making your work visible.

Think of combine boards, for instance. So make your work visible, not only in terms of transparency, but also in terms of the visibility of progress. Think and work holistically.

Understand the context. Consider multiple stakeholders. Think of, uh, the pestle factors.

Think of, uh, uh, uh, various aspects of your own organization. Uh, avoid tunnel vision. Avoid narrow thinking.

Think of the larger context. Whatever you do, keep it simple and practical. Whether you think of the interfaces for your digital products or of your own management processes, keep it simple and practical.

The way we complicate things is usually means that the way, uh, it's the way we, uh, uh, make people to avoid them, whether it's our products or our rules of work. And finally, embrace and, uh, exploit automation. But before automating, make sure you optimize your workflows.

Make sure you optimize the user journey. So don't automate a chaos. Uh, you'll just have an automated chaos.

It's usually not what we are aiming for. So optimize and then automate principles. Uh, these principles have been leading us when we were developing keil.

Uh, hopefully we managed to follow them and created something that is simple, practical, and continually iteratively developing and enables value creation. Now let's have a look at some other key concepts within IL and the highest level model is called service value system. It includes the guiding principles that we just have looked at.

It also includes another very important component, which is continual improvement. And everything in this model, including the continual improvement itself, is a subject for continual improvement. In the center, we have an operating model, which is called service value chain, which shows how we convert demand into value.

We won't be looking in details at service value chain, but we'll see it integrated in another diagram later. And in to ensure that our management system, that our service value chain, uh, is working in the right direction. As agreed, we need a governance, which is a delayed direct and monitor of our management system.

And all this is based on a, uh, collection or set of our management capabilities, which unit are called practices, management practices. Now, if you've heard about title before, then you probably are, are thought or heard that ILE is a process-based, uh, model. It's not any longer for about five years already.

It's not a process-based model. This is why we use the word practices for every kind of management capability that we describe rather than process. And this is not because we don't like process anymore.

This is because every practice is way more than just a process. Everything we do should be considered from a holistic point of view, which would address various teams and processes, yes, but also organizations and people skills, organizational units, competencies and capacity of our human, uh, resource to, uh, perform the activities we described defined in our, our process and value streams. Uh, we need to understand how the information flows, uh, together with our activities and how to support this information flows.

So information and technology, and most likely whatever we do is, uh, something that we are not doing on our own. We depend on our partners and suppliers, and we have to consider them as another resource that we, uh, have to combine with our organization, people, information technology, whether stream and process and combine effectively. So these four dimensions, as ITO called them, the so-called four dimensions of service management are, this is the way how we structure, for instance, description of every practice.

I will come back to this later when we come to the practices. I mentioned that we, uh, put continual improvement, uh, at the foundation of the service value system. And this is a continual improvement model that title, uh, is using, it applies at all levels from our operational to strategic.

And, uh, it's one of the oldest models that I, uh, uh, has been using and, uh, promoting from earlier versions from version two. Uh, when we were updating ILE five years ago to ILE four, we just added one step to this model, and that is the step, which is called take action because before that it looked like we are planning and, uh, are monitoring and checking how we improve, but we don't actually do anything, and it's not particularly, uh, uh, a step to be missed. So take action is something that we added there.

There is a continual improvement practice guide among other practice guides. So there is a lot of practical advice on how to establish continual improvement. And again, if you don't adopt much from itil, continual improvement as a principle and continual improvement as a practice combined with the guiding principles is probably the, uh, quickest possible win.

And the lower, the lowest ranking fruit ITIL is about service management. So our, we believe that every organization on this planet is a service provider and a service consumer. And, uh, our every organization is at the same time a service provider and the service consumer.

So if for instance, your organization on this diagram is organization B, then you, uh, offer your services to organization C, but you also consume services from organization A and like that Infinitum Plus. This is not, uh, a linear, uh, just one-to-one connection. Of course, it's a multidimensional, uh, very complex, uh, uh, service network.

And every organization deals with multiple customers, multiple suppliers, uh, and it's very possible that our customers are also our suppliers. So you think about this in the context of let's say internal service provider, then it may be helping HR by automating whatever they do, and HR may be helping it by finding the right people, training the right people, motivating the right people paying, uh, um, doing the payroll activities for their people, et cetera, et cetera. And all of them also interact with facilities management of the same organization and also by providing the facilities team, uh, uh, their services and consuming the facility services within the same organization.

It's a complex department of service relationship, but wait services is wonderful. But what about products in IL We believe that, uh, and IL suggest that their flow of uh, uh, let's say resources and flow of value may look like this. We take resources that we have access to.

Some of them are ours, some of them are, are available through supplier services. We combine them in products which are basically combinations of our resources designed to offer value to our target audience, to our customers. And if this offer is accepted and we engage in service relationship with our customers, then we start our service relationship and services are being delivered and consumed.

And as I mentioned on the previous slide, it's a multidimensional thing. So, uh, we are consuming services for multiple, uh, uh, providers. And it may be that value can only be realized if all that providers have done their job.

Well, think for instance, uh, of, uh, self-organized, uh, uh, holidays. So you are going somewhere to enjoy a beautiful beach near a beautiful sea, and you buy some services from the, uh, air, uh, um, line, some services from the hotel, some com, uh, services from a current company, some services from, uh, let's say some, uh, um, uh, rental, uh, current was already there. What what could be that some, uh, uh, guide, uh, uh, service services, uh, uh, um, to show you the local attractions.

And only if all those service providers have been doing their stuff well, and you consumed it as you expected, you will say, okay, that was great vacation. The value have been realized, has been realized, and all those guys may have no idea about each other, and they're certainly not working coordinated. Uh, they just do their job and the value is being added and added and edit, and you manage it.

Or maybe you buy it from some service integrator who would be, in this case a package, uh, travel provider who will integrate it for you and will take the responsibility. And services are based on our resources grouped or combined to build as products. And they can be consumed and provided either in the form of service sections or in the form of access to resources or in the form of transfer of goods from the service provider to the service consumer.

If you think of this value creation as a, as, uh, uh, of a flow or chain of portfolios, then we can say that we, and by the way, this is a figure from a portfolio management practice. Uh, we have some limited funds that define what we can do in terms of acquiring resources or accessing resources. Then resources we have define what we can do in terms of building our product portfolio, and then we can offer certain set of services to certain target audience that will probably benefit from the services and pay for it to us.

And, uh, or maybe exchange value in some other form. And in order to transform all these portfolios one to another, we will be using our programs and projects. If it's a very high level, very strategic level view, uh, by the way, it can be described in terms of the books that we are already familiar with, such as direct plan, improve for the left hand side or create, deliver support for the middle part and drive the call, the value for the relationship part, but also, okay, how do we do it?

What, what is exactly the guidance? And this is where the practices come into play. So we can think of strategy management, which will be applicable throughout this portfolio flow, or we can think of, uh, uh, portfolio management, which will help us transform different portfolios to enable value.

Or we can think of capacity and performance management, which will be focusing on resources and products and services or service, um, design, which will help us to use our resources in the best possible way to create products and services. Or we can think of relationship management that, and, uh, if this is customer relationship management, then it will be on the right hand side or we can think of, uh, incident management, which may, may be, um, not only useful at the uh, service operation stage, but also earlier in the life cycle or software development and management, which, uh, we use to create our wonderful products and services and service configuration management and data set management will help us to understand what we have and how we use it and to optimize that use. So these are just examples because as I mentioned, ITIL actually creates 34 or includes 34 practices, and I am not going to list them all, but the examples I believe were sufficient.

And each practice is described in a separate document, which is called practice guide. You see that these documents are structured around there. Four dimensions of service management, so streams of various streams and processes, organization and people, information technology and partners and suppliers.

These practice guides are not published as printed books. They are available through a community that I already mentioned. Remember when we were looking at this, so-called Diagram that in the center we had, uh, people said subscription people, surplus subscription.

It's currently called my Excel. It will be called People Surplus very soon. And uh, this is an online community where all practices are available for a very reasonable subscription fee.

If you don't like reading yourself, then practices among other things are available as training. Remember that rather the crowded practitioner part of this diagram. And there are 15 practices which have a dedicated training and they're conveniently bundled in groups of five for those who prefer bundled options or can be mixed and matched, and they're delivered by our accredit training providers.

I also mentioned that we have consulting partners who can help you implement those practices, and this is a consulting partnership program we have, which again builds up to that uh, uh, ecosystem. And finally, I mentioned the tools that help to automate the practices. Just some brief information on the slides about, uh, each of these partnership programs, which represent the parts of our ecosystem.

All these promises, if you click what you need, whether you need consulting or training or just reading or, or combine these things or you want to automate it, it offers the practitioners a very detailed, very hands-on recommendations on how to do particular areas, particular develop particular capabilities of service management. And of course it's supported by a widely international recognized certification and various tools and consulting. If you're a manager, then you can, uh, uh, find, especially in the core books that we started with recommendations on various topics relevant for the IT teams from development teams to support teams and how to build the teams and how to develop the teams and uh, how to, uh, build relationship with others in, in and outside of organization.

And again, there is a relevant certification supporting it. Finally, for leaders, for those who develop the digital strategy, there is a training, there is a book, there is a lot of, uh, uh, consulting support and also there are some relevant tools. And all these are benefits for individuals.

And this is how the already mentioned benefits for organizations are being built and this is how organizations benefit from itil. I hope so, will you, I hope it was somewhat entertaining and somewhat informative, and I'm more than happy to answer your questions. Thank you very much.