Whether you're on the certification path or just exploring the field of IT services, before you start training for the ITIL exams, it's valuable to learn the basic ITIL concepts and terms and the ITIL processes to familiarize yourself with them. With the main components of the exam. So if you're wondering what ITIL is and what the specific ITIL concepts and techniques are, you've come to the right place.

What is ITIL?


ITIL stands for "Information Technology Infrastructure Library." It is a set of best methods for giving IT services that maximize efficiency in line with customer needs. The standards have been adopted by small, medium, and large companies to select, plan, deliver and support IT services. It has its roots in the 1980s and comes from the UK government. Guidelines aimed at economic and quality-oriented provision of IT services focus on optimized use of resources.

IT service management is an activity that can help manage the services provided to end users. Based on the ITIL best practice framework, ITIL service management offers a set of best practices and techniques for selecting, planning, delivering, and maintaining IT services within an enterprise that align IT activities and spending with changing business requirements.

ITIL objectives


  • Providing optimized service value to customers
  • Ensuring efficient use of capabilities and resources
  • Providing information about costs and risks
  • Anticipating trust through guarantees and practical tools
  • Optimizing process plans to meet specific goals
  • Task-oriented definition of roles

Why is ITIL required?


ITIL helps business and IT managers effectively serve customers, thereby gaining their trust and pleasure. Here are some areas where ITIL plays an influential role ?
  • IT and strategic business planning
  • Integrating and aligning IT and business goals
  • Implementing continuous improvement
  • Obtaining and maintaining the right resources and skills
  • Lower costs and total cost of ownership
  • Demonstrating business value for IT
  • Reaching and demonstrating value for money and return on investment.
  • Estimating the effectiveness and efficiency of an IT organization
  • Developing business and IT partnerships and relationships
  • Improving the success of project implementation
  • Managing continuous business and IT change

Some ITIL Key Terms

  1. Abilities

Specialized skills or capabilities that an organization applies to resources to create value.

  1. Function

Separate subsets of an organization designed to perform typical tasks. They often take the form of a group of people and their tools.

  1. Processes

Structured groups of activities organized to achieve a specific goal. The four essential characteristics of processes are:
They transform inputs into outputs
They deliver results to a particular customer or stakeholder
They are measurable
They are triggered by specific events

  1. Resources

Resources such as money, equipment, time, and staff contribute to the service.

  1. Role

Defined collection of responsibilities and privileges. 

  1. Service assets

Also called assets, they refer to the resources and capabilities a service provider must distribute to offer a service.

  1. Service Management

Specialized abilities for providing value to customers in the shape of services.

  1. Services

A mechanism of providing value to customers without bearing typical costs and risks.

  1. Value, utility, and warranty

The value of the service contains two components: utility and warranty. For services to have value, they must offer both utility and warranty. Utility, also named fitness for purpose, refers to a service's ability to remove limitations or enhance customer performance. A warranty, also called fitness for use, is the ability of a service to function reliably.

Main Concepts and process of ITIL


The main concepts and principles of ITIL are:

1. Alignment of IT with business


One of the main procedures of IT should be to support the business in achieving its goals. This is a central concept of ITIL and establishes processes whose sole mission is to match what IT delivers (or will provide) with what the business needs (or will need).

2. Service


ITIL groups what IT provides to businesses as services.
A service provides value to customers by facilitating the results customers want without returning the costs and risks associated with achieving those results.
The key word here is results that will enable the company to achieve its goals. Customers pay for results, i.e., WHAT, not HOW.
Service must provide service and warranty. For example, an order processing service should allow the recording of orders through the company website (utility) for 8x5 hours without interruption.
Service management is a group of organizational capabilities to deliver customer value through services.

3. Functions, processes, and roles


Organizations are usually structured by function.
A function is a specialized unit performing a specific activity responsible for its outcome. A function includes the team of people who serve it and the equipment used to complete it.
Functions are usually powerful due to specialization. Yet this specialization can present a problem if the parts do not work in a coordinated manner to achieve the organization's overall goals.
Processes are used to avoid this problem. They improve coordination and control between functions.

A process is a group of interrelated activities to accomplish a specific goal.
All processes have the following properties:
  • Have specific inputs, outputs, and results.
  • They are initiated in response to an event.
  • They are measurable.
  • Have a process output receiver.

A role is a collection of responsibilities, activities, and permissions assigned to a specific person or team. In ITIL, roles are determined for each process to ensure that all necessary tasks are performed within the process.
A person can be assigned multiple roles.

4. Measure to drive


Measurement is a core concept in ITIL that helps us identify areas for improvement and verify that advance has met expectations to warn us early about a potential problem.
  • You can't control what you can't control.
  • You can't manage what you can't measure.
  • You cannot measure what you cannot define.

ITIL Service Management role

ITIL Service Management is still very relevant to ITSM and its framework. It plays a vital role in business. In addition, ITIL Service Management approves performance measurements against a set of definitive benchmarks and monitors the overall success of IT providers.
With this, it makes sense for all other departments in the business to benefit from incorporating ITSM. After all, most operational business divisions follow a set of recommendations and follow processes. By adopting an ITSM framework, these processes and requirements can be measured for effectiveness. For example, HR or finance departments could adopt the ITSM philosophy and use it to measure their performance and deliver real business value.

ITIL certification


ITIL certifications demonstrate that you have been educated in service management best practices, using the processes, terminology, and methods standard in modern IT. ITIL-certified professionals are in high demand: they have the skills to grow and transform a business.
Digital services commonly rely on ongoing project management that concentrates on the service's goals while paying attention to the inevitable problems in service development, delivery, and maintenance. An excellent approach to IT service management is knowing exactly how to integrate all these ever-changing factors into your development process.

Benefits of ITIL certifications

The benefits of earning certification are valuable. With ITIL certification:
  • Get a solid foundation in product knowledge
  • Accelerate your professional development
  • Increase your earning potential
  • Improve productivity
  • Increase your credibility
  • Become a leading solution-oriented professional

The benefits are not limited to the certified person. Organizations see far-reaching benefits from adopting ITIL, including:
  • Aligning IT with business
  • Providing quality services that better fulfill the necessities of our customers
  • Enhancing the quality of the IT services you provide
  • Reducing time, money, and other resources spent on the entire service development life cycle
  • Increasing customer satisfaction
  • Boosting employee morale

Conclusion

There are five main phases of ITIL: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operations, and Continuous Service Improvement. Each of these phases has subparts of processes. The Service Operations category has both functions and processes. All ITIL processes and steps work together to maximize service efficiency and reliability and ensure continuous service improvement.