ITIL

ITIL is a collection of comprehensive documentation for best practices related to IT Service Management and leadership. The comprehensive practices and guidelines contained within the ITIL books and the supporting professional qualification scheme have become very popular and are currently followed by thousands of organizations around the globe.

ITIL consists of a series of five books giving some best practice models to follow for the provision of quality IT services, and on the accommodation and environmental facilities needed to support IT management in the following processes:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operation
• Continual Service Improvement

In the modern days, it is quite clearly visible that there is a growing dependency of organisations on IT in order to satisfy their corporate aims and meet their business needs. This leads to an increased requirement for high quality IT services. ITIL was developed to cope up with the lack of any former guidelines for managing different aspects of IT Service Management and hence ensure high quality IT services. Moreover, ITIL also gives a common language and clear models to IT management. It also provides a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT service provision. Adopting its guidance offers users a huge range of benefits that include:

• reduced costs for the organization
• better productivity of the organization
• improved IT services through the use of proven best practice processes
• improved quality control
• improved utilization of skills and experience of the employees
• improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery
• utilization of industry standards and guidance for the provision of high quality IT services
• suited for implementation in small as well as large scale organizations
• improved delivery of third party services through the specification of ITIL or ISO 20000 as the standard for service delivery in services procurements.

Following are some of the criticisms faced by ITIL:

• ITIL concepts are comprehensive in natures and their extensive use may lead to considerable costs.
• Version 3 of ITIL covers the entire life cycle and is therefore not easily understandable, where as version 2 only focused on the production and support for simple processes and was therefore more easily understandable.
• The ITIL books are too expensive and hence not affordable for non-commercial users.
• Implementation and credentialing of ITIL requires specific training.
• Some ICT professionals criticize ITIL as being very subjective and mention the emotional degradation associated with the adoption of new, changed work practices.