Outsourcing Toolkit

ITIL: The key to productive performance

Michael Nieves, Accenture

Published: 25 Jul 2007 14:17 BST

...the actual value they deliver to the organisation as a whole, rather than the efficiency of their processes.

A cosmetics executive once remarked that his industry sells "hope in a jar". Similarly in IT, customers don't buy services; they buy the satisfaction of particular needs. This idea is one of ITIL's deceptively simple breakthroughs, and one that many IT managers still find elusive. The key lies in being able to quantify the relation between the services provided and the value created. In other words, the value of IT services can only really be quantified by customers. The more intangible the value, the more important this nuance becomes. As a result, we redefine service as "a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve, but without the ownership of specific cost and risk".

More widely, the purpose of the latest refresh of ITIL in the Service Strategy volume is to ensure that the books — now five titles in all — continue to reflect global best practices, and to meet the needs of all stakeholders in the IT organisation. Restructured into a five-phase lifecycle, the series begins with Service Strategy, the discernment of the organisation's strategic purpose — a topic often receiving short shrift in the pursuit of day-to-day practicalities. Applied properly, these core strategic concepts can lead to practical insights such as: "Where is the organisation headed — and what does it need to do to get there?".

The next book, Service Design, uses analysis and insight to convert the resulting strategy into a design blueprint. This blueprint then handled by the subsequent book, Service Transition, which provides the "brakes" to regulate the pace of the lifecycle — thereby giving IT managers the confidence to drive rapid organisational change, secure in the knowledge that effective controls are in place.

The fourth book, Service Operation, is where the designs and controls are translated into execution — a step requiring both judgment and discipline. The fifth and final book in the lifecycle is Continual Service Improvement, which examines how managers keep the organisation moving forward while balancing short-term and long-term performance, making course corrections and re-deploying resources.

Overall, ITILv3 provides invaluable theory and practice for IT managers. Common sense may help you help you cope with a well-defined problem, but few of the important problems that afflict IT organisations arrive precisely labelled. Mastery of IT management comes from an understanding of why IT organisations and services work as they do.

The ability to make clear-headed choices is increasingly vital for IT managers. It is this capability excellence that propels the field forward. ITIL is the world's most widely accepted approach to IT service management and the standard by which many organisations measure themselves. If your organisation has not yet joined the ITIL community, maybe it's time you considered doing so.

Accenture senior manager Michael Nieves co-authored the ITIL v3 book, Service Strategy.