ITSM and ITIL

Importance of Defining Services in ITIL Implementation

ITIL is service centric. Everything that ITIL defines and proposes is based on the premise that services are well known, and are identified. But, imagine being asked to take over IT support without having the slightest clue on what services you are tending to.

This situation is not made-up. It happens. You may not have issues to begin with but when the shit hits the fan, your support starts to disintegrate.

OK. I don’t want to sound morose, but it is indeed true that if you do not know the services that you are working for, how could you do an accurate business impact when you change something, when your server stops working or when a switch fails in the dead of night.

ITIL defines a service catalog, which is basically like a menu that you get in a restaurant. The potential customer looks at it and says, I want this, this and this. In a situation, where you are taking over support from an incumbent, you probably will have to build one yourself (and charge the customer for it too).

If you don’t have a service catalog, but have a configuration management database (CMDB), the job is half done. You need to map the configuration items to the service catalog. In the ITIL Service Design publication, the technical service catalog is defined, which gives you an overview of services mapped with the CMDB.

When this has been mapped out, you could trace the configuration item (CI) back to any one or multiple services that you are offering to your customer. And, this setup places you in a perfect position to identify the business impact whenever you make IT changes. And, helps you troubleshoot incidents when a component fails.

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6 comments

Amanda Bastos December 17, 2015 at 10:37 PM

Hello Abihnav.
Very good content!
So would you know what is the case that Problem and Change relates to Incident Management? If I´m an incident manager when can I see these situations and How will it occur?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Amanda Bastos

Reply
Abhinav Kaiser January 19, 2016 at 12:34 PM

Amanda,

Changes give rise to incidents.

Incidents are resolved by implementing changes.

Repetitive incidents lead to a problem.

Resolution of a problem is through a change.

I hope this helps.

Reply
Amanda Bastos January 19, 2016 at 6:31 PM

Yeah, Thank you! Pretty corar idea in an overview.

I’ve looked for some bridge meetings to feel how exactly it is, but so far the best was from your material on YouTube. I wish to hear a real one. Is it possible for you to get me in one bridge meeting just to see how the Incident Manager do it?
Thank you in advance!

Reply
Abhinav Kaiser January 26, 2016 at 5:13 AM

I am afraid that is not possible. All these meetings are confidential to respective organizations and nobody would allow such requests.

Reply
Amanda Bastos January 26, 2016 at 5:38 AM

Yeah. I completely understand it.
I asked because I’ll start working as an Incident Manager and I wish I could feel how it’s and find more ways to get prepared.
I’ve studied so far about ITIL and Incident Management process and also talking to some technicians ( Windows, network, data base) to know about more details in a conceptual way to help me to understand better the troubleshootings.

Anyway thank you so much for your reply and tips.

Reply
Products and Services: Explained with Examples - Abhinav PMP February 24, 2021 at 3:36 AM

[…] lets try and understand a service. The laptop you purchased refuses to turn on two months after the purchase. You call in the support […]

Reply

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