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Ebk A Practical Approach To Itil 4 Adoption

Ebk a Practical Approach to Itil 4 Adoption

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65 views

Ebk A Practical Approach To Itil 4 Adoption

Ebk a Practical Approach to Itil 4 Adoption

Uploaded by

amaite baab
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 9

A practical approach

to ITIL 4 adoption
10 mistakes to avoid and 10 steps
to follow

START
1
10 mistakes to avoid and 10 steps
to follow
ITIL adoption is widespread, with tens of thousands of organizations
already reaping its benefits globally. But, as with any new ways of
working, there are a number of common ITIL adoption mistakes to
avoid—with these applicable to ITIL v3 and the newer ITIL 4.

When you adopt ITIL best practices, it’s important to learn from those
who have gone before and the drivers of successes and failures. This
will increase the speed and success of your ITIL adoption and likely
save you and others heartache.

2
The top 10 ITIL vision mistakes
Different organizations have different interpretations as to what
ITIL is and isn’t. In fact, many common mistakes stem from those
involved in ITIL adoption not fully understanding what ITIL is, how
it should be used, and the extent to which it will improve IT service
delivery and support.

Ten common mistakes to avoid when you’re educating your


organization on ITIL adoption are:

1 Believing the goal is "ITIL compliance."


ITIL is a service management best practice framework and not
a gold standard for your organization to be measured against.
Importantly, there’s no such thing as “ITIL-compliance.”

2 Thinking that ITIL is an industry standard.


ITIL is merely guidance. It’s a collection of good things to do,
as opposed to a standard that can be measured against or
complied with. ITIL is about adopting and adapting, not the
blanket application of one fixed set of activities.

3 Viewing ITIL adoption as the desired outcome.


It’s not about doing ITIL but rather using ITIL to achieve better
outcomes—so ITIL is not the end (or desired outcome) but the
means to an end.

4 Adopting ITIL as a silver bullet.


ITIL will not magically improve everything that’s wrong; however,
ITIL will improve operations and outcomes for organizations that
commit to the concepts of the ITIL 4 service value chain (or the
v3 service lifecycle).

3
5 Incorrectly positioning ITIL.
Organizations must understand that ITIL is about following
guidelines for improving IT and business operations, as opposed
to simply adopting ITSM best practices.

6 Running an “ITIL project.”


Instead, it needs to be viewed as a business-focused project,
for example, to improve productivity, the speed of innovation,
and customer satisfaction to reduce costs, risks, and business-
debilitating IT issues.

7 Not understanding the difference between


ITIL and ITSM.
While there’s a lot of overlap between ITIL and ITSM, they’re
not the same thing. Plus, with ITIL 4, the focus is now on
service management, not solely ITSM, which helps to facilitate
enterprise-wide use of ITIL best practice.

8 Believing that ITIL is the only ITSM framework


or standard.
It might be the most popular ITSM approach, but there are
many others such as COBIT, ISO/IEC 20000, IT4IT, and VeriSM.
In fact, many organizations have applied multiple frameworks
to align with their business goals rather than just choosing one.

9 Not appreciating the effort needed for success.


As with any project, insufficient effort will adversely affect the
expected results and ROI. This is across people, process, and
technology and the investment in organizational change
management in particular.

10 Treating ITIL as a one-off project.


Instead, ITIL requires ongoing attention and investment,
for continued success. After all, it’s all about continual
improvement.
4
5 key ITIL planning steps
Once you understand what ITIL is and isn’t, there are some key steps 3 Fully appreciate the required timeframe for change.
to take when planning how your organization is going to adopt ITIL. It’s critical to build out a realistic ITIL adoption timeline. Importantly,
These include ensuring that you: ITIL adoption extends beyond the timeframe for technological
implementation, and a phased approach is usually better than
a “big bang” ITIL adoption.
1 Create a robust business case.
ITIL needs to be more than a leap of faith that’s done because 4 Get your people approach right.
other organizations are doing it. Successful adoption requires a This includes not valuing ITIL qualifications over experience, work
carefully thought out and articulated roadmap to ITIL success, ethic, and common sense. You also need to place sufficient focus
with the costs and benefits clear to all. on people and organizational change management for what is
ultimately a change in the way of working.
2 Start your planning with an agreed ITIL
and ITSM vision. 5 Avoid planning for ITIL in a vacuum.
What are your short through long-term goals for where ITIL Required linkages exist between different ITSM or IT management
will take your organization? What happens after the new ITIL practices and integrations to consider—even if they’re a future
practices have been introduced? These and other questions will enhancement. Plus, be sure to involve end users early, as they’ll
need to be answered before moving forward. be the true test of whether ITIL is a success.

5
5 key implementation steps
So, you have a solid vision and a plan, what else is needed for
your ITIL adoption? Some of the following five key steps are purely
implementation-related, but others have strong links back to
getting the ITIL vision and planning right. Ensure that you:

1 Avoid the term “ITIL implementation.”


Unfortunately, “implementation” can encourage people to
focus on the technology at the expense of organizational
change management. Or they might miss that ITIL is a certain
mindset and a specific approach to IT delivery and support.

2 Don’t aim for perfection from the outset.


Instead, get the basics right first. ITIL is about improvement,
but that improvement doesn’t need to all come at once.
Yet, don’t ignore ITIL’s enabling practices such as continual
improvement and knowledge management.

3 Appreciate the need for more than


the technology.
Technology alone can’t deliver the optimal outcomes of
ITIL adoption. For example, the right people can work with
less-than-perfect technology, but the right technology will
struggle in the hands of the wrong people.

6
4 Focus on more than the easy stuff.
It’s human nature to start with the easiest stuff and get to
the more difficult stuff later; however, organizations often fail
to progress past ITIL’s easier, reactive elements to proactive
elements such as availability management. If these are
valuable, consider an early rather than delayed introduction.

5 Use project staff well.


Third-party resources can be badly managed—for example,
when consultants aren’t focused on higher value-add
activities and there’s no knowledge transfer to employees.
Another example is when key internal people aren’t freed up
from their day jobs to participate.

7
How do most companies start
with ITIL?
This is a question that can only be answered with “it depends”
because it really does depend on the challenges and opportunities
an organization needs to address.

Traditionally, organizations start with one of these three pairs of


activities:

• Incident and problem management


• Incident and change management (now called “change control”
in ITIL 4)
• Change and configuration management (now called “service
configuration management” in ITIL 4).

Incident, change, and problem management have traditionally


been the three most commonly adopted ITIL practices. More
recently though, the importance of continual improvement at
the outset of ITIL adoption is now commonly recommended. It
makes sense because ITIL is about improvement and, assuming
that you don’t start with perfection, your organization will need the
ability to improve over time. Additionally, self-service and service
catalog are now more commonly in the mix for organizations
starting with ITIL.

Ultimately, your organization should start with the ITIL practices


that will make the biggest difference to IT, business operations, and
outcomes.

8
Next steps
Are you ready to help your organization adopt ITIL to achieve improved IT service delivery
and business operations as well as better outcomes? ITIL best practice has already
improved IT service delivery and support capabilities for tens of thousands of companies
worldwide. Now, it’s your turn.

LEARN MORE

About ServiceNow
Corporate IT organizations in pursuit of best practice IT automation look to frameworks like ITIL for guidance on
improving business performance and outcomes through better IT delivery and support practices. ServiceNow ITSM
delivers on that promise while increasing IT productivity and achieving new insights by consolidating fragmented IT
tools to the most innovative ITSM solution.

© 2020 ServiceNow, Inc. All rights reserved. ServiceNow, the ServiceNow logo, Now, Now Platform, and other ServiceNow marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ServiceNow, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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