ITIL v3 Processes

ITIL v3 introduces a wider conception of the IT organization. Most of the concepts included in  ITIL v2 are still present in version 3 of the library.

ITIL v3 processes are included in five volumes:

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

If you’re familiar with ITIL v2, maybe you’re starting to see the shift in perspective. The basic idea behind this library release is that the IT organization should be considered to be in a permanent cycle.

If you look at graph, you’ll see that the strategy (ITIL Service Strategy volume) is at the core of everything else. It is composed of the processes:

• Service Portfolio Management
• Demand Management
• IT Financial Management

And it includes activities such as value definition, market research and business case creation.

Going outwards in the chart, you’ll see the inner cycle of volumes. These are: Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation.

Service Design focus on everything you need to do in order to create a new service. Not only the technological aspect of the service, but just as important, the things you need to do to make the service work as you want inside the organization in which IT operates, and inside the world/market where the organization operates.

Service Design includes the following processes:

• Service Catalogue Management
• Service Level Management
• Risk Management
• Capacity Management
• Availability Management
• IT Service Continuity Management
• Information Security Management
• Compliance Management
• IT Architecture Management
• Supplier Management

Service Transition

As you could imagine, this volumes deals with the issues that rises when you try to deliver your new service into production. How do you change what is already working to incorporate the new service, how do you minimize the risk of service interruption. It includes the following processes:

• Service Asset and Configuration Management
• Service Validation and Testing
• Evaluation
• Release Management
• Change Management
• Knowledge Management

Service Operation

The battlefield. This volume describes what to do to keep things running. How should you face service interruption, and of course, ideally avoid it. Monitoring of your services is a key issue. The processes:

• Event Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Request Fulfillment
• Access Management

Lastly, the outer circle in the graph. Continual Service Improvement. Where you measure and report, to feed a new iteration of Service Design. It also handles the stress that new business needs put on IT, and how to restore balance. The processes:

• Service Level Management
• Service Measurement and Reporting

We’ll be getting into more detail in upcoming posts.