IT Service Management and ITIL

As you can see from my previous assignments (and my qualifications) I have a great deal of experience of helping organisations to use ITIL.

In the main I use ITIL as a 'vehicle' to drive improvements. That is, I use specific ITIL processes, adapted to meet the needs of the individual organisation, to help deliver real IT operational improvements.

For example, I use the ITIL Incident Management process (and the Service Desk) to help improve the quality of 'front line' IT Support, and in particular the speed with which IT respond and resolve service impacting outages. Or I will use the Problem Management process to help organisations dramatically reduce the number of service impacting outages, etc.

The one thing I try to avoid is 'implementing' ITIL. This is a pointless activity, and leads to nothing but process for the sake of process. Unfortunately this is the case in the great majority of organisations that currently use ITIL. These organisations have spent large sums of money and thousands of man hours training their staff and implementing ITIL, and the end result is no tangible or discernible benefit whatsoever – no improvement in service performance, quality etc.

A great deal of my time is spent working with these organisations helping them really understand what ITIL really is, how to use it properly, and how to get some real and tangible operational benefits from their investment in ITIL.

As well as using ITIL to help drive direct IT Operational benefits my areas of specialist ITIL expertise also include:

• Developing Service Catalogues. Having an IT Service Catalogue This is one of the absolute key requirements for any IT organisation that wants to deliver high quality IT Services (after all how can you deliver high quality IT Services if you do not know what IT Services you have?). Unfortunately developing a true IT Service Catalogue (and not simply a listing of IT Technical components) is not an easy task. This is where I can help. Through experience I have learnt the 'pitfalls' and 'shortcuts' of developing Service Catalogues. I can also help develop the technical service catalogue that underpins your business service catalogue.

• Developing Service Level Agreements. I help you to develop short, sharp, business focussed (no IT based performance targets!) Service Level Agreements that help to bind IT and the business together by clearly stating the two way goals and obligations that exist between them. They are also invaluable internally within IT because by clearly documenting what is required of IT (in terms of Service quality) they provide a real focus as to how IT needs to organise and manage itself in order to deliver on it's commitments to the business. If required I can also help to develop the all important Operational Level Agreements (and 3rd party contracts) that underpin the Service Level Agreements.

If you would like to know more about how I can help you to use ITL to drive real IT Operational benefits please do not hesitate to contact me at Charles.Fraser@CharlesFraser.net