Basics of ITIL® Service Management

ITIL® orginally stood for “Yay, more acronyms!”. I understand that acronyms are a quicker and easier way of putting a message across, but honestly, there are a lot in this project management business isn’t there? No, but I have digressed slightly. ITIL® stood for Information Technology Infrastructure Library (this acronym has since been withdrawn, but still gives a good idea of the aim of this methodology) and is a framework created by AXELOS for IT Service Management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of a business.

Service Management is the entirety of IT activities performed by an organisation to plan, design, deliver, operate and control IT services offered to customers.

ITIL® began as a service management framework that was used by the UK government but is now utilised worldwide in both the public and the private sectors, a characteristic that most of the AXELOS qualification armoury share.

The ITIL® processes are grouped into five stages: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.

Just to confuse things more, ITIL® also has five levels to the certification: Foundation, Practitioner, Intermediate, Expert and Master and to pass through these levels you need to adhere to the Credit System, which supports the certification scheme by recognising your investment in ITIL® certifications.

The credits earned through this system can then be used towards the ITIL® Expert level of certification, for which candidates must have earned a required number of credits (22) from a selection of certifications, including ITIL® Practitioner (3 credits), which cover the full spectrum of ITIL® best practice.

Now, don’t worry, you don’t need to do all the Intermediate level, that would be nine separate courses which would be ridiculous! But you can pick the ones which would assist you in your career in service management; almost like a lucky dip which isn’t lucky because you have an open choice… so it’s just a dip.

I like to think of ITIL® as a video game qualification. If you want to progress further in the main story, you need to gather the set number of collectibles. But, if you want to settle at this level you have progressed to then you can.

Join us later this week where I’ll be talking about MSP®, which is a programme management methodology.

Interested in studying ITIL®? We offer a range of project management courses to help with your training.