ITIL® v3 Foundation Certification Study Notes

I began by taking the online ITIL foundation course. These are offered by many organizations. I found the order of the training to be very confusing. I became very frustrated early on and allowed myself to become distracted. I decided to purchased Menken's book referenced above. This was well worth the minimal cost. The ITIL framework is well presented in an orderly fashion. Once I finished reading the prep study guide and taking notes I went back to the ITIL Foundation training and I was better able to follow the training and absorb more. To supplement my test preparation I found several sample tests. I found the questions I missed either helped me solidify the learning and identify my weak areas or I missed it simply because I didn't read the question and all the answers completely or accurately. Once I identified my weak areas and I went directly to the ITIL Books to solidify my understanding of those areas.

Memorization is an essential component of being able to pass the exam, however the more important element is to be very clear on the concepts of the services model and the purpose of each process, function, role and output and their relationship to each other. I imagine some people who are excellent test takers without the experiential knowledge would do well with this exam by using the resources provided. For me, I must be on solid ground in understanding and relating how to apply the concepts. Basically, I am more of a visual learner. It is important you do not introduce your perception of what you think the answer should be, you must be absolutely clear that the answer is based on the study material, course training, and IITL Books.

The glossary is such an important tool in studying. Again the Menken study guide referenced above, was very useful to me in identifying test tips. Many more than the ones I reference below.

There are just a few tricks that are helpful when preparing to take the test. For me, the important tips are:

• Read the questions carefully. Do not assume you understand the objective of the question. Look for key words to determine what they are really after. Key words include; Primary, All, Best. These are clues to which answer is correct. I was frustrated by questions that were looking for the best answer but I learned after a while that really meant what does the ITIL state.
  
• Do not answer the question based on what you think is logical... answer the question based on the ITIL foundation study material and ITIL Books.
  

Working in the process field most of my professional life you can imagine how I appreciated the premise of ITIL v3: "IT Service Management is Process Driven management of quality IT service." It is business aligned (versus technology aligned). It contains the whole life cycle of managing services. Strategy, Design, Transition, Operations and Continual Improvement. It is the act of transforming resources and capabilities into valuable services that take the form of processes, functions and roles resulting in capacity, competency and confidence. It is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to the customer in the form of services.

ITIL v3 is a best practice and the source of good practices comes from public frameworks, standards and knowledge from individuals and organizations. Developing the framework was a joint effort by the industry's best.
The ITIL core publications include:

• Strategy
  
• Design
  
• Transition
  
• Operations
  
• Continual Service Improvement
  

There are four perspectives that are managed within service management.

• People
  
• Partners
  
• Process
  
• Products
  

Services facilitate outcomes by enhancing the performance of tasks and reducing the effect of constraints resulting in an increased probability of expected outcomes.

A service facilitates outcomes customer wants to achieve without the ownership of specific costs or risks. Pay special attention to the difference of process and service. A process delivers outcomes to customer, a service facilitates outcomes without the cost of ownership.

• Sets of processes = life cycle of a service.
  
• Process model articulates the distinctive features of a process.
  
• Process control = planning and regulating a process.
  
• Role = connected behaviors or actions.
  

A process produces outcomes and create value for stakeholder, and it directs activities, resources and capabilities. They contain activities, policy, roles and metrics. Tip: It is essential you know the material, I fell into the trap of answering sample questions based on what I thought was logical and answers I could defend. But the point of the test is to determine how well you know the specific ITIL v3 material. For instance, know what are the key characteristics of processes. There are four and only four and only the four referenced below. No matter how logical other characteristics sound, know the four from the material. Process are:

• Measurable
  
• Deliver Specific results
  
• Deliver outcomes to customer and stakeholder
  
• Respond to specific events, triggers. (this is timely, but again, the training doesn't tell you they are timely).
  

Processes are closed loop. They provide change and transformation towards a goal. Use feedback of the process for self-reinforcing and self-corrective action.

The Process Owner drives improvement, is responsible that the process is fit for purpose and meet the aims of the process definition and is accountable for outputs.

The Service Owner is responsible for improvement and management of change. They own continual improvement of the service. They are accountable to the customer for the delivery of service.

The Service manager is responsible for:

• business case
  
• cost management
  
• managing conflicting objectives
  
• dynamic, flexible, matrix
  

The Process Manager is responsible for operational management of a process.

Every process should have a process manager. An organization may chose to have a life cycle manager, e.g. Service Design Manager.:

Life cycle summary:

• Strategy develops service management as a strategic asset
  
• Service design starts with new/changed business requirements and ends with development of a service solution.
  
• Service transition is where the actual service is implemented. It sets the customer expectations on performance and use of new/changed services.
  
• enable business change
  
• reduce known errors
  
• minimizes risk of transition
  
• Change and release management happen within service transition.
  
• Service operation. Coordinates activities required to deliver, support & manage services to agreed levels.
  
• C.S.I. aligns & re-aligns IT to changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvement to make process more effective & cost efficient.
  

Service Strategy is a set of policies and objectives used to implement service management growth of an organizations strategic objectives. Helps to identifying your strengths and capabilities as well as your understanding of your clients needs, ensuring there is alignment between the two.
Service strategy includes: Service model, Business Case and Risk.
Service strategy includes:

• Defining Market
  
• Develop Service Offerings
  
• Develop Strategic Assets
  
• Prepare for implementation
  

Service Strategy processes include:

• Service Portfolio Management
  
• Demand Management
  
• Financial Management
  

Service strategy allows you to align your capabilities to client needs.
Service strategy is a strategic plan designed to achieve defined objectives. It defines a clear path to deliver value to the customer.

Interaction means demand connects with the capacity to serve.

Service model:

• Codifies the strategy for market place
  
• Blueprint process/function to create value
  
• Describes how service assets create value for a given portfolio of contracts.
  
• Useful for effectiveness in continual improvements.
  

Service agreements specify the terms and condition under which such interaction occurs with commitments and expectations.

Utility is fit for purpose (performance, desired outcome).
Warranty is fit for use (availability, capacity, security, etc.)
Utility is what the customer gets, warranty is how it is delivered.
Utility + Warranty = Value.

Four P of Strategy:

• Perspective (vision)
  
• Position (decision)
  
• Plan (means)
  
• Pattern (series of decisions)
  

Service package includes:

• Core Service Package
  
• Supporting Service Package
  
• Service Level Package
  
• Service level package provides a definitive level of utility or warranty from the perspectives of outcomes, assets and the PBA of customers. They are a means to provide differentiated services.
  

Business Case

is a decision support and planning tool that predicts likely consequences of business action. Justification. Consequences can take on qualitative and quantitative dimensions, methods and assumptions, business impact, risk and contingencies recommendations.

Financial Management:

provides cost effective stewardship of the IT assets and the financial resources used in providing IT services. The benefits are:

• Enhanced decision making
  
• Increased speed of change
  
• Improved service portfolio
  
• Financial compliance
  
• Operational control
  
• Value capture & creation
  
• Increased visibility
  
• Increased perception of IT
  

Risk Management

Risk is uncertainty of outcome. It includes identifying risk and controlling exposure to risk. Results in better decision making.

Risk Analysis. Risk Management plans:

• Monitor risks
  
• Access to reliable information about risks
  
• Balance of control to deal with risks
  
• Decision making processes supported by risk analysis and evaluation.
  

Service Portfolio Management

Service Portfolio - How to define services, identifies the agreed upon scope of services. Applied across all customers. It maximizes value while managing costs and risks.
Activities that form part of the Services Portfolio management process:

• Analyze
  
• Define
  
• Approve
  
• Charter
  

The Service Portfolio describes providers services during Service Design and Service Operations life cycle in terms of value and business outcome of the service. It contains Requirements (service requirements), Pipeline (proposed/in development), Catalog (live/ready to go live), Retired (decommissioned).

Investment categories include:

• Run the business
  
• Grow the business
  
• Transform the business
  

Demand Management

Demand Management eliminates excess capacity. Understand and influence customer demand for service and provision capacity to meet these demands to reduce excess capacity.

Understand, strategically respond to demand. System analytic is useful to model existing components and services to the higher-level business service.

• analyzing patterns and user profiles
  
• Influence demand aligned with strategic objectives
  
• Physical / Technical constraints
  
• Financial constraints
  

System Analytic: involves both analysis to produce knowledge and synthesis to provide understanding. Patterns give a high level of predictability and reliability about how the data will change over time. DIKW = Data to Information to Knowledge to Wisdom
PBA: Patterns of Business Activity, influence user behavior.

Service design is where service measurements and agreements are defined. Service solution includes all of the functional requirements, resources and capabilities needed and agreed upon.

Service design converts strategic objectives into portfolio of services and service assets:

• Ultimate concern is design of new or modified services into production.
  
• Also concerned with the design of new or modified processes to deliver and support these services.
  

Aspects include design of Portfolio and Catalog.

• Service solutions
  
• Service management system/tools/technical architectures
  
• Processes
  
• Measurement systems and metrics
  

Purpose is to ensure standards and conventions are followed.

SDP: Service Design Package. Defines all aspects of service and its requirements through the life cycle.

Package is produced for new/changed or retired services to ensure operational readiness. Typical package includes:

• Business requirements
  
• Service applicability
  
• Service functional requirements
  
• Service level requirements
  
• Service program
  
• Service transition plan
  
• Service operational plan
  
• Service acceptance criteria
  
• Service design and topology
  

Service design includes these roles:

• Service catalog Manager
  
• Service Level Manager
  
• Availability Manager
  
• Security Manager
  

Service level manager ensures customer expectations are managed during service transition. Incident and problem are important for handling incidents during test and deployment.

Service continuity management (SCM) is part of service design. The assessment of business impact, risk = provision of resilience, fail over and recovery mechanism.

Technology help to support hardware and software design, environmental design, process design and data design.

Types of technology enables service providers

• Technology assisted = Only service provider has access to the same technology
  
• Technology facilitated = Both service provider and customer have access to same technology
  
• Technology mediated = Service provider and customer are NOT in the same physical proximity.
  
• Technology generated (self help) = Service provider is entirely represented by technology
  

Service Management Tool Selection Process. Key steps are Requirements, Criteria, Evaluate, Select RCES.

• What are the requirements
  
• Identify the products
  
• Selection criteria
  
• Evaluate products
  
• Short list
  
• Scoring
  
• Rank products
  
• Select products
  

Service Level Management

The aim of SLM is to ensure levels of IT service delivery are achieved, both for existing services and new services in accordance with agreed targets. The Service level manager is the primary contact for customers. SLM is responsible for negotiating and agreeing to SLA's. they provide and improve the relationship with the business and the customer. They must ensure the proactive measures to improve the levels of service are delivered and implemented.
Concerned with:

1. Designing and planning SLM process and service level agreement and structure.
   
2. Negotiating and agreeing upon support elements required by internal groups to produce operational level agreements (internal) and with supplier managers for external suppliers and contracts (external).
   
3. Guarding agreements with customers
   
4. Monitor Service Levels
   
5. Report to customer ALL reports from other processes should go to SLM who will report back to the customer.
   

SLA structure

• Service based SLA
  
• Customer based SLA
  
• Multi-level based SLA
  
• Corporate Level
  
• Service Level
  

Key Terms include:

• SLA = Service Level Agreements
  
• UC - Underpinning Contracts (use with third parties)
  
• SC - Service Catalog
  
• SLR - Service Level Requirement
  
• SIP - Service Improvement Plan. the formal plans to implement and improvements to a process or service.
  

Serviceability ensures service provider can meet terms of SLA.
Utility ensures requirements actually represent customer needs.

Service Level management works closely with Service catalog management and supplier management.

Supplier Management

Purpose to manage suppliers and the services they supply to provide seamless quality and IT service to the business and ensure that value for money is obtained. Applied across the life cycle. Supplier management is not responsible for internal service agreements.
Types include:

• Outsourcing - use one or more external suppliers
  
• Co-sourcing - combination of in sourcing & outsourcing
  
• Partnership (multi-sourcing) - strategic partnership
  
• Business Process outsourcing (BPO) - external organization manages entire process or function
  
• Knowledge Process outsourcing - enhanced provides business expertise
  
• Application service provision - external org provides shared computer based services.
  

Fastest growing is knowledge process outsourcing.
Supplier management manages all aspects of external suppliers involved in services from tender to monitoring, review, performance, renew or termination of contracts.

Service Catalog Management

The aim of SCM is to ensure that a catalog is produced, maintained and contains accurate information on all services deployed. Note: all services deployed. It contains:

• Business Service Catalog
  
• Plain English - concise language
  
• Customer facing document
  
• Technical Services Catalog
  
• Technical language
  
• Non-customer facing (for IT department)
  

Works closely with services portfolio and forms parts of the services portfolio.
Outputs include:

• The documented and agreed definition of a service
  
• Updates to service portfolio - status
  

Catalog should contain:

• Details of every live service
  
• Current state of service
  
• Interfaces
  
• Dependencies
  

The product manager and relationship manager both use the service catalog. The product manager tracks: Popular services, Viable services and Services to be phased out. The Relationship manager tracks: Well-serviced demand, under served demand, and un-served demand. The active services are visible to customer. The SLM assists with the production and maintenance of an accurate service catalog.

Capacity Management

The aim of CM is to ensure cost-justified IT capacity in all areas always exists and matches to the current and future needs of the business in a timely manner.
Scope: operational and development environments including hardware, software, peripherals, scheduling of HR, staffing, skill level and capability.
About finding the balance between resources, capability and demand. It includes:

• Business Capacity Management
  
• Manage capacity to meet future requirements
  
• Service Capacity
  
• Managing service performance - SLA, SLR
  
• Component capacity management
  
• Identify and manage components of IT infrastructure
  

Activities:

1. Perform monitoring, measuring and timely performance
   
2. Influence demand on capacity - apply policy set in service strategy phase.
   
3. Determine hardware, network to support application and the predicted workload.
   
4. Forecast the behavior of infrastructure under certain conditions
   
5. Tuning for better utilization of current infrastructure
   
6. Storage of capacity management data
   
7. Capacity planning
   
8. Reporting
   

Availability Management

The aim of AM is to ensure the level of availability delivered in all services matches to or exceeds the current and future agreed to needs of business in a cost effective way. The scope is service components, not people.

Pro-active and Re-active components

• Availability of service or component to perform its required function when needed and overtime.
  
• AMIS: Availability management Information System
  
• Reliability = freedom from failure
  
• Resilience = withstand failure
  
• Maintainability (internal) - retain or restored to an operational state, based on skill, knowledge, technology, backups, availability of staff.
  
• Serviceability (external) - meeting the contractual obligations with 3rd party external suppliers. Measured by availability, reliability and maintainability of service and components under control of the external suppliers. managed by supplier management in Service Design.
  

VBF Vital business Function: Critical elements of the business process supported by IT staff.

MTRS:' Meantime to restore service = downtime
'MTBF:' Meantime between failures = uptime. How reliability is measured. Sometimes called MTBSI Meantime between Service Incidents.

IT Service Continuity Management

The aim of SCM is ensuring that the infrastructure and the service provision can be recovered within required and agreed business time scales.

• focus on major disruptions
  
• Recovery options
  
• Do Nothing
  
• Manual Backup
  
• Reciprocal Agreement
  
• Gradual Recovery
  
• Fast Recovery
  

Disaster is NOT part of daily operation activity.

Scope includes all identified critical business processes and IT services that underpin them.
BCM: Business Continuity Management: Strategies and actions to take place to continue Business process in case of a disaster.
Risk Assessment: evaluate assets, threats and vulnerability
Counter measure any type of control and is most often used when referring to measures that increase resilience, fault tolerance or reliability of an IT service.

Information Security Management

The aim of ISM is to align IT security with business security and ensure security is managed effectively.
Scope: Defines policies, standards and measures. Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) of assets, information, data and services.
Four perspectives of security

• Organizational
  
• Procedural
  
• Physical
  
• Technical
  

Security measures

• prevention / reduction
  
• detection / repression
  
• correction / recovery
  
• evaluation
  

ITP Information security policy

'confidentiality: protecting information against unauthorized access and use.
Integrity: Accuracy, completeness and timeliness
Availability: Accessible at agreed upon times.

Security Incident: Interfere with achieving the SLA security requirement; a threat.
Security should work with availability and service continuity management to conduct risk assessment.

The objective is to development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new and changes services into operations.

Developing the capability for the IT department to transition (build, test, and release) ANY service in a consistent and repeatable way. enable IT departments to effectively manage MANY changes.

Service transition plans and manages capacity and resources to package, build, test and deploy to production.

• consistent framework for evaluating service capability and risk
  
• maintain integrity of assets and configuration
  
• provide knowledge and information for change
  
• efficient, repeatable build and install
  
• Ensure service can be managed
  

Roles include:

• Service asset manager
  
• Configuration manager
  
• change manager
  
• Change Advisory Board (CAB)
  
• Release Package and build manager
  
• Deployment manager
  

Service design manager would hand over the service design package to the Service Transition manager.
Service transition should be involved early int he design of services.

• reduce variation of transitioned service
  
• reduce known errors and minimize risks from transitioning into production
  
• fit for use
  
• plan and manage resources to establish a change into production
  
• ensure proper use of service
  
• align plans to customer business
  

Knowledge Management

The aim of KM is to improve the quality of management decision making by ensuring that reliable and secure information and data is available throughout the service life cycle.
Purpose: improve efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge. Accessible, quality and relevant data and information to be available to staff.

Data to wisdom graph: Data ---> information---> knowledge---> wisdom.

SKMS: Service Knowledge Management system include:

• CMS: Configuration management System
  
• CMDB: Configuration management Database
  

Service Asset and Configuration Management

The aim of SACM is managing, controlling storing and providing information about configuration items (CI) and service assets through the life cycle. Configuration items include plans.

• Optimizes the performance of services assets and configuration.
  
• Improves the overall performance and optimizes the costs and risks caused by poorly managed assets such as service outage, fines, correct license fees and failed audit.
  
• Provides better forecasting and planning of changes.
  
• Better adherence to standards.
  
• Improve ability to identify the cost for a service
  
• Configuration Items can feed financial asset system
  

Organizational CI's: strategy and plans
Interal CI's: tangible assets
External CI's: customer requirements and agreements.

Logical model that correlates services and CI. Relationship between CI's. Make note of term logical model for SACM.

Scope: interfaces to internal and external service providers where there are assets and CI that need to be controlled (shared assets). Key activities:

• management and planning
  
• identification
  
• status accounting
  
• reporting
  
• verification and audit
  
• control
  

Configuration Item: any component that supports an IT service
Attribute: specific information about CI
CI Level: recording and reporting of all current and historical data about each CI through the life cycle.
Configuration baseline: configuration at a point in time includes structure and details. Reference for later comparison.

Change Management

The aim of CM is to standard methods for efficient handling of changes to minimize impact of change related incidents, improve day to day operation. Big overseer of changes. Change management process does not design the change - hand off from service design. It does not manage services, it managed the changes to those services.
Type of Change Models:

• Normal: follow steps. Assessed by change manager or change board.
  
• Standard: pre-approved, low risk, RFC not required, they are logged in other ways.
  
• Emergency: implement sooner to resolve major incidents, i.e. security.
  

Change manager chairs CAB. Makes the final decision.
Change Schedule: approved changes and planned implementation:

• PSO: Projected Service Outage - effect of change
  
• CAB: Change Advisory Board (evaluate for approval)
  
• Emergency CAB: subgroup with authority to approve urgent changes.
  
• PIR: Post Implementation Review
  

Assessing and evaluating - 7 R's used to assess the impact of change.

• Who raised the change
  
• What is the reason for the change
  
• What is the return required from the change
  
• what are the risks involved
  
• What resources are required to deliver
  
• Who is responsible
  
• What is the relationship between changes
  

Many service requests are actually changes but they are low risk, low cost and frequent and you don't want these to congest the normal change management process.

An emergency change should only be used when a service is negatively affected. Number should be kept small.

Release and Deployment Management

The aim of RDM is to deploy releases into production and establish effective use of the service in order to deliver value to the customer. Manages the work flow of changes. Starts with receipt of a RFC to deploy a production ready package. Hand over to operations. Deployment is completed with a transfer of the new/change service to operations. the transfer occurs when change management successfully completes a post implementation review. Responsible for:

• Definitive Spares (DS) and definitive media library (DML)
  
• Building, testing and releasing new/changed service
  
• Works closely with change and configuration
  
• Accountable to ensure training of new service to service desk and users occur.
  

Release identification: Major --- Minor --- Emergency
Types of releases options:

• Big Bang vs phased
  
• Push vs Pull
  
• Manual vs automatic
  

Release: collection of authorized changes.
Release Unit describes the portion of a service of IT infrastructure that is normally released together according to the organizations release policy.
Definitive Media Library (DML): secure library in which the definitive authorized versions of all media CI's are stored and procted. Contains software, license, internal software.
Definitive spares: Physical storage of all spares recorded in CMDB, controlled by release management.
Master copies of controlled documentation is included.

Service validation and testing

The aim of SVTT is to ensure new/changed services match the design specification and will meet the needs of the business.

Service V Model is used to organize the level of testing and validation required for new or changed services in order to justify release to the customer for trial and assessment.
The left hand side represents the specification of the service acceptance criteria that was developed in service design phase.
the right hand focuses on validation and test activities against specification defined in service transition phase.
Validation and test should happen early in the life of the service based on service requirements. Used throughout the life cycle.

Know the levels of testing in the model!

1. Customer / business needs
   
2. Service requirements
   
3. Service solution
   
4. Service release
   
5. Component and assemblies
   

Objective: to enable effectiveness and efficiency in delivery and support of IT services. Where value is seen from the customer perspective. Service transition hands off services that have been thoroughly tested to ensure they are designed to meet business needs.

Service operations deals with achieving a balance between conflicting priorities.
Early life support: engaging development teams to assist with initial support, incident management and rapid knowledge development.
Reactive organization does not act unless prompted by an external driver.
Proactive organization is always looking for a way to improve.

Achieving the balance to ensure the service is operating within the limits defined in service levels:

• Internal IT view vs external business view
  
• Stability vs responsiveness
  
• Quality of service vs cost of service
  
• Reactive vs proactive
  

Goals of service operations are:

• allow for changes and improvements
  
• achieve effectiveness and efficiencies of IT services
  
• maintain stability
  

Includes: Service Desk Function, Technical Management Function, Application Management Function, IT operations Function and Event, Incident, Problem, Request fulfillment and access management processes.

Service Desk Function

The purpose of SDF is to support agreed IT service provision ensuring accessibility and availability of IT organization and by performing support activities.

Single point of contact for users 1st line. As a user I have one single point of contact for all my incidents and Service Requests but others users in the organization may have other points of contact. Structure:

• Local Service Desk, collocated with user community
  
• Centralized Service Desk, consolidated service desks
  
• Virtual Service Desk, use technology to use remote staff
  
• Follow the Sun, transfer to region based on timezone
  

Note: A help desk is NOT a structure of a service desk.

Self Help: any means where a user may assist themselves:

• FAQ
  
• Intranet forms/requests
  
• Web based support
  
• Back end process handling
  

Calling the service desk is NOT a form of self help.
Service desk is a good training ground to develop skills

Incident: any event that is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes (or may) a disruption. Failure of a CI.
Service Request for information or status
Request for Service: move, add, change. not a pre-approved change.
Access Right: providing users rights to a service or prevention of non-authorized request.

Technical Management Function

The purpose of TMF is to provide guidance to IT ops about how to carry out the ops management of technology. Begins in service design but is an everyday communications with the IT ops to achieve optimal performance.

Be aware of what is not the responsibilities of the Technical management function, e.g. they don't define OLA, SLA for technical teams.

Teams/departments of IT support and design staff that manage, support, build, test the hardware side of IT:

• Custodian of technical knowledge
  
• Detail technical skills/resources
  
• Provides resources to support ITSM lifecycle
  
• Ensure training
  

Application Management Function

The purpose of AMF is designing and supporting application software to assist with service delivery. Starts in service strategy, expands in service design, tested in service transition and refined in continual service improvements. Can be broken into two departments, includes:

• Managing applications through life cycle
  
• Supports and maintains ops applications, plays role in design, test and improvement of applications part of IT.
  
• Support business processes by helping to identify functional and managerial requirements for application software
  
• Assist in design and deployment of those applications
  
• Provide ongoing support and improvement of those applications
  
• Identify skills required to support the applications
  
• Deciding whether to buy or build.
  

IT Operation Management Function

The purpose of IT OMF is to perform daily ops activities according to performance standards defined during service design.
Objective is overseeing the evaluation and monitoring of IT events and activities, it includes:

• Daily maintenance
  
• Regular scrutiny
  
• Swift action to diagnose/resolve
  

Watch over the network, ensure all is running well and performing daily activities to maintain delivery and support services.
Includes:

• IT ops control OPS or NOC
  
• Facilities management
  
• Manage physical environment of computer room/data centers
  
• Console management, observation and monitor
  

Event Management

The aim of EM is monitoring all events that occur throughout the IT infrastructure to allow for normal service ops and to detect and escalate exceptions. Provide the ability to detect events, make sense of them and determine the appropriate control action.
Monitoring and escalating events which may have significance for the management of the IT infrastructure. The entry point for execution of many service ops activities. A method of comparing actual performance and behavior against design and SLA. A basis for service assurance, reporting and improvement.

Not just exception events:

• Disk reaching capacity
  
• Successful backup
  
• Failed backups
  
• Print output
  

Event: an occurrence (change of state) that has significance for the management of the IT infrastructure (a CI detected by technical staff or be automated by alerts or notifications created by CI monitoring tools) or the delivery of service.

Alert: a warning that a threshold has been reached or something has changed.

Trigger: indication that some action or response to an event may be needed.

Incident Management

The aim of IM is to restore normal service operations quickly, minimize impact and service quality. Responsible for 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support groups.
Activities order: identification, logging, categorize, prioritize, initial, diagnosis, functional, escalation, investigation, diagnosis, resolution, recovery, closure.
Major incident: shorter timescales; separate procedure; high impact or urgency; defined by process
Incident:

• unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in the quality of an IT service.
  
• failure of a CI that has not yet affected a service.
  

Incident model or modules: pre-defined steps for handling a particular type of incident that has been seen before. helps resolve recurring incidents with predefined resolution/actions.
Time scales: how long it takes to resolve

Priority = Impact + Urgency
Escalation types:

• Functional based on expertise - unable to resolve at 1st point of contact.
  
• Hierarchical - VIP, timeliness (missed target resolution)
  

Incidents do not become problems. They may become a major incident. A problem is the underlying cause of the incident. If the cause of the incident needs to be investigated the problem manager would be involved, however the incident manager must ensure that service is restored.

Every incident must have appropriate priority code to determine how the incident should be handled (resolution targets).

Impact is the extent to which an incident affects users or CI.

Problem Management

The aim of PM is to minimize adverse impact of incidents and problems on the business, prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors, also prevent problems and resulting incidents from happening:

• Reactive problem management
  
• Detection/logging/investigation
  
• Proactive problem management
  
• Trend analysis
  
• Major problem reviews
  
• Targeting preventive actions
  

Once or more incidents with the same characteristics can become a problem.

Problem unknown when the cause of one or more incidents is unknown.
Known error known underlying cause. Successful diagnostics of root cause with a work around or permanent solution. Known error record should be created as soon as it is useful to do so.
Work around set of predefined steps to take as a means of reducing or eliminating the impact of an incident or a problem. Documented in the known error database - KEDB. problem record remains open. Known error may generate a problem model.

Reactive is part of service operations
Proactive initiated in service ops but driven as part of continual service improvement.

Request Fulfillment

The aim of RF is to provide an effective channel for users to make requests, gain information and obtain standard service.

Carried out by the service desk function, desktop support or other groups as required.

Service Request:

• A request for information or advice
  
• A request for a standard change
  
• A request for access to an IT service
  
• NOT related to a loss of service
  
• NOT a normal change (i.e. change functionality of an application)
  

Access Management

The aim of AM is to grant authorized users the right to use a service while preventing access to non-authorized users. Protect confidentiality, integrity and availability. CIA of information or infrastructure.

Access management is the execution of policies and actions defined in information security and availability management.

Activities: verification; providing rights; monitoring; identify status logging and tracking access; removing or restricting rights.

The objective of CSI is to continually align and re-align IT services to the changing business needs by implementing improvements to IT services that support business processes. Ensure continual improvement of IT service management processes and IT services across the life cycle. Provides guidance in creating and maintaining value for your customer through better design implementation and support of services. CSI guides improvements on all phases except service strategy. Review and analyze SLA results. Implement activities to improve quality efficiency and effectiveness of process and cost effectiveness. uses Quality management methods.

Results in :

• Improved quality
  
• Reliable business support by incident, problem, and change management
  
• Increases staff productivity
  
• Better working relationship between customers and IT service providers
  
• Financial benefits
  
• Organization internal benefits:
  
• improved metrics
  
• alignment of cost to business need
  
• defined roles and responsibilities
  

CSI Manager works with service owner, service level manager to identify and deliver improvements.

Three models to know and discern
6 Steps Continual Service Improvement Model

1. what is the vision
   
2. baseline objectives
   
3. where are we now (baseline)
   
4. where do we want to be (targets)
   
5. how do we get there (measurements & metrics)
   
6. how do we keep momentum
   

Deming Plan, Do, Check, Act. PDCA: Continual loop. Act: At this stage it is determined to keep the status quo, close the gap or add necessary resources. You perform the steps in the order stated.

7 step Continual Improvement Process. Goal: coordinate structured approach.
Know the order: Think: SC-GPAIC Should, Can, Gather, Process, Analyze, Inform, Correct.

1. define what we should measure
   
2. define what we can measure
   
3. gather data
   
4. process data
   
5. analyze data
   
6. present information
   
7. implement corrective action
   

Service Management and Reporting

The aim of SMR is to coordinate the design of metrics, data collection and reporting activities from the other processes and functions. Baselines must be established at each level of service.

Four reasons why it is important to measure to improve services:

1. To validate that we support the strategy and vision
   
2. To justify actions/expenses taken or applied
   
3. To direct resources in the most appropriate way
   
4. To intervene when necessary (e.g. avoid breaching SLA).
   

It is important to understand when you can stop measuring. Is anyone using the data?

Types of metrics used in CSI:

• Technology metrics
  
• Process metrics
  
• Service metrics
  

Baseline: Establish baselines as a reference for later comparison. Reference Point - Benchmark.

Technology metrics: associated with component or application such as performance, availability. Managed by system architects/designers.

Process metrics: captured with KPI's and activity metrics for service management processes. Overall health. 4 key questions KPI's can answer are centered on quality, performance, value, compliance. Use these metrics to identify improvements. Managed by process owner.

Service metrics: Result of end-to-end service. Component metrics calculate the service metrics. Managed by service level manager.

Is used in Service Design and Continual Service Improvement. RACI shows how a process works end to end across functional groups by defining roles and responsibilities of stakeholders and organizational structure in a process or activity.

• R=Responsible: does the work. Is responsible to A.
  
• A=Accountable: ensures action takes place.
  
• C=consult/advice: information gained to perform action.
  
• I=Inform: told about the event after it happens.
  

Rules: Only 1 A per role. At least 1 R per role.

Types of service providers:

• Internal
  
• Shared
  
• External
  

Only a small number of glossary terms are listed here. It is best to understand these terms as the relate to the processes or functions they support versus only the definition of the terms.

• Availability: Ability to perform when required.
  
• Capabilities: intangible assets of an organization, cannot be purchased, but must be developed and matured.
  
• CMIS Capacity Management Information System.
  
• C.S.I.: Continuous Service Improvement.
  
• Continuous Availability: design at 100% availability.
  
• Continuous Operations: design to eliminate planned downtime.
  
• Customer: person who pays for the service or has authority to request the service.
  
• Fault tolerance: ability to continue to operate correctly after a failure.
  
• Functions: provide units of organization responsible for specific outcomes.
  
• Good Practice: Best Practice. Successful in wide company use.
  
• High availability: masks effects of IT component failures.
  
• IT infrastructure: all hardware, software, networks, facilities, services and support required to develop, test, deliver, monitor, control and support services.
  
• ITSM IT Service Management. Specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customer in the form of services.
  
• Maintainability: how quickly service is restored after a failure.
  
• Proactive: plans, recommendations design guidelines and criteria completed in service design and C.S.I.
  
• Reactive: monitoring, measuring, analyzing and reporting.
  
• Release: collection of authorized changes
  
• Reliability: How long service performs between failures.
  
• Resources: tangible assets of the organization that help deliver the services.
  
• Serviceability: meet terms of contract.
  
• System: range of repositories for storing and accessing information.
  
• Users: uses the service.
  
• Utility: Fit for purpose. Increases the average performance.
  
• Warranty: Fit for use. Reduces variation in performance.