What are the different ITIL processes? The complete guide

Are ITIL processes the best way of structuring and guiding the activities of your IT departments?

If this set of standards has been adopted and deployed in many countries over the years, it's because its effectiveness and adaptability have been proven. What's more, the model is constantly evolving, in line with market realities and new practices such as Agile.

So how can ITIL help you optimise your ITSM? To find out, discover what the Information Technology Infrastructure Library is, what its objectives are and what the main principles are in each of its versions (ITIL V2, ITIL V3 and ITIL V4).

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What is an ITIL process?

ITIL processes: definition

The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) process is a collection of best practices designed to improve IT service management (ITSM).

Initially written by experts at the British Office of Government Commerce in the late 1980s, its influence spread throughout Europe in the 1990s, before reaching the United States.

☝️ ITIL is constantly evolving, and new versions have been published over the years (ITIL V2, ITIL V3 and then ITILV4) so that the procedures laid down can be adapted to changes in IT service management and the business environment in which they operate.

Why use ITIL?

The ITIL framework has many objectives. Among other things, it helps to :

• organising information systems efficiently
• Optimise IT service management by structuring processes;
• Save teams time by using a tried and tested framework;
• Putting customers and users at the heart of the action;
• improve communication with customers and suppliers;
• manage and anticipate IT risks;
• enable traceability and better monitoring of IT department actions;
• make their activities part of a continuous improvement process.

Ultimately, ITIL processes help to increase the overall quality of IT services, and therefore customer and user satisfaction, by means of internationally established and adopted standards.

ITIL V2 processes

☝️ Please note that we are not going to dwell on the first version of ITIL (in force between 1986 and 1999), because it is above all from V2 onwards that the repository has gained its letters of nobility.

ITIL V2, in force until 2007, comprises several guides, but 2 in particular have contributed to its reputation and deployment:

Service Support

Customers and users are the source of change requests, malfunction reports and upgrade requirements. This guide explains how to ensure that they have access to the appropriate IT services.

It includes the following elements:

• The Service Desk,
• Incident Management,
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Release Management,
• Configuration Management.

Service Delivery

This book details the services that need to be provided to businesses in order to meet their needs effectively.

It includes the following elements:

• IT Financial Management,
• Capacity Management,
• Availability Management,
• IT Continuity Management,
• Service Level Agreement/ Service Level Management.

Other ITIL V2 guides

ITIL V2 also contains 6 other guides which, as mentioned above, have contributed less to its reputation. It is nonetheless worth returning to them in order to understand how ITIL processes have developed over time:

• ICT Infrastructure Management: good practice in the design and management of an IT infrastructure, as well as the hardware and software involved.
  
  
• Security Management: the management and control of corporate security at all levels (confidentiality, data integrity, etc.).
  
  
• Application Management: the interaction between application management and service management.
  
  
• Software Asset Management: management of software assets throughout their lifecycle: legal security, budget, planning, support, etc.
  
  
• Service Management Implementation Planning: aligning business needs with the integration of IT supplies.
  
  
• Small-scale implementation: deploying the ITIL framework within smaller IT departments.

ITIL V3 processes

Published in 2007, ITIL V3 now consists of 6 books. The repository now focuses on the service lifecycle, incorporating two major changes:

• processes involve the satisfaction of business services,
• ITIL V3 therefore takes this cross-functional view of IT service management into account.

In other words, whereas ITIL V2 focused more on processes, ITIL V3 takes greater account of the alignment of IT services with the company's overall objectives and strategy.

Differences between ITIL V2 and ITIL V3 :

Source : Freshservice

Let's now take a closer look at the books that make up ITIL V3.

☝️ Note that the first of the 6 guides, which we won't be looking at, is an official introduction to ITIL and the service lifecycle.

Service Strategy

The aim of Service Strategy is to increase the value produced by IT services, by working to align them with the company's overall strategy and business needs.

It comprises the following processes:

• Strategy Generation: establishing a strategy based on the market and the competition.
  
  
• Service Portfolio Management: putting in place a portfolio of services that meets the needs of customers and users, and the company's objectives.
  
  
• Financial Management: managing the budget and optimising service-related costs.
  
  
• Demand Management: anticipating and understanding the needs and demands of customers and users, then responding appropriately.
  
  
• Business Relationship Management: maintaining a good relationship with the customer, based on trust.

Service Design

This guide focuses on the design phase of new services (but also on the evolution of existing services) right through to production.

It includes the following processes:

• Coordination and design: coordinating all the processes and elements making up the IT service (technology, architectures, etc.).
  
  
• Service catalogue management: producing a service catalogue and keeping information on the various services up to date.
  
  
• Service level management: linking the specific features, requirements and resources associated with a specific service level.
  
  
• Availability management: maintaining a sufficient level of service to respond effectively to any request.
  
  
• Capacity management: ensuring that available resources, whether human or technical, can meet the company's objectives within budget and time constraints.
  
  

• Business Continuity Management (BCM ): supporting service continuity in the event of an incident, in particular by means of a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP).
  
  
• Information security management: deploying resources to guarantee the security, confidentiality and availability of information.
  
  
• Supplier management: managing supplier contracts and ensuring that they meet the company's needs.

Service Transition

Service Transition describes best practice for ensuring that changes to IT services are carried out properly.

It includes the following processes:

• Transition Planning and Support: organising changes to services or the creation of new services.
  
  
• Change Management: examining changes and limiting their negative impact.
  
  
• Service Asset and Configuration Management: controlling assets and ensuring the accuracy and availability of related information.
  
  
• Release and Deployment Management: ensuring the correct deployment of production releases, particularly from a hardware point of view.
  
  
• Service Validation and Testing: carrying out tests to check that the elements put into production meet customer and user expectations.
  
  
• Change Evaluation: assessing all the impacts of change.
  
  
• Knowledge Management: collecting, storing and sharing knowledge in order to constantly improve and adapt.

Service Operation

This guide deals with the best practices to be observed in order to provide a service that meets the needs of end users and customers, while taking problem resolution into account.

It includes the following processes:

• Event management: categorising events (information, warning, exception and alert) and deciding on the actions to be taken for each of them.
  
  
• Incident management: remedying incidents to restore the service to its optimum operating level.
  
  
• Executing requests: managing the lifecycle of user requests (changes, requests for information, etc.).
  
  
• Problem management: understanding the causes of incidents, minimising their impact and preventing them.
  
  
• Access management: organising access rights according to user profiles.
  
  

• Technical infrastructure management: providing a high-performance infrastructure and technical support.
  
  
• IT operations management: controlling operations, in particular ensuring that day-to-day tasks are carried out correctly.
  
  
• Application management: managing the application lifecycle as part of a continuous improvement approach.

Continual Service Improvement

The aim of this final book is to help IT departments adopt a continuous improvement approach:

• Has the company correctly adopted the ITIL framework?
• Have the departments deployed the right processes and achieved their objectives?
• Is the alignment with business needs and their evolution respected?
• Are costs under control?

To support ITSM in this respect, ITIL V3 offers several application techniques:

• Definition of the scope of the activity being analysed,
• gathering the necessary data
• processing and analysing this data
• deployment of areas for improvement and corrective action, etc.

💡 Analysis methods, such as the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check and Act or Adjust), provide good support for easily identifying the steps to be taken to improve the quality of a service.

☝️ Good to know: if you want to focus on a specific area of improvement to make your services run more smoothly, each of the processes described above can be run independently. However, these various modules are designed to be activated together, particularly when a new service is created.

ITIL V4 processes

Released in 2019, this latest version of ITIL is designed to be more flexible and modern, and therefore better suited to today's organisations. In particular, it includes the new agile and devops practices.

How can I do this? By relying on :

• A service value system,
• and a 4-dimensional model.

The ITIL V4 service value system

The ITIL V4 value system is based on 7 guiding principles, or recommendations, to be observed throughout IT service activities:

1. focus on value ;
2. Start from where you are;
3. progress iteratively, allowing for feedback;
4. collaborate transparently;
5. think and work holistically;
6. Keep it simple and practical;
7. optimise and automate as much as possible.

The 4-dimensional model

The second pillar of ITIL 4 is the 4 dimensions, which can be likened to the 4 Ps (People, Products, Partners and Processes).

It is advisable to consider each of these components throughout the course of activities, in order to respect the SVS (Service Value System) as closely as possible.

• Organisations and employees: understanding their contribution to the SVS and integrating it into their day-to-day operations.
  
  
• Information and technology: intelligently and securely manage information linked to constantly evolving technologies (artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain, etc.).
  
  
• Partners and suppliers: ensuring that the use of partners and suppliers creates value, and defining the right levels of dependency according to the company's constraints (availability of resources, budgets, corporate culture, etc.).
  
  
• Value chains and processes: determining which value streams linked to processes lead to the best products or services.

How can ITIL be integrated into my company?

For companies wishing to adopt the framework, there are numerous ITIL training courses and individual certifications provided by accredited organisations. By way of illustration, ITIL V3 certification has 5 different levels:

• ITIL Foundation,
• ITIL Practitioner,
• ITIL Intermediate,
• ITIL Expert,
• ITIL Master.

But while the ITIL approach is defined as a guide listing a set of best practices, it does not provide the technical means to achieve its objectives.

This is why it is advisable to use a number of tools in parallel. One example is Freshservice. A modern Service Desk software package (using AI to manage IT incidents automatically), it is based on ITIL principles to deliver quality customer service.

See all software IT Service Management (ITSM)

The limits of ITIL?

While ITIL is a solid foundation for ITSM, it does not stand alone. Many experts recommend using it in conjunction with other tools and methodologies to manage IT service operations.

Ultimately, ITIL offers a structured and competitive framework. It's up to each company to adapt it to its own needs and organisation.

How are you using ITIL? Tell us about your experience in the comments.