More information about ITIL

ITIL focuses on aligning IT and business, or supporting the achievement of the organisation's strategic and business objectives. What do you mean by that? It is a set of best practices (examples of proven practices) that help in the day-to-day agenda of a project manager.

The use of ITIL best practices is free of charge. The necessary knowledge is contained in the ITIL books, or you can obtain it through ITIL training with an Accredited Training Organisation (ATO) including ITIL certification. The ITIL framework is nowadays supported by software tools as standard, but also by cloud services.

ITIL originated in the 1980s and was originally created by the UK government. It is now owned by Axelos methodology. The current version is ITIL 4 (official release is February 2019) and is an update of the previous version ITIL v3 or ITIL 2011. On the same date, the basic course is officially launched with a three-year certification period.

The methodology gives you guidance on how to manage structured ITIL processes.

It shows managers the right approach to one of the most important domains of a successful organisation: delivering IT services to support, automate and make operations more efficient. It doesn't matter how big a company you are. Nor does it matter whether you run a company, handle IT in a government organization, or are responsible for an IT project. By the way, you can find a comprehensive list of benefits in the ITIL benefits section.

ITIL4 is an agile methodology and focuses much more on users than on processes. It supports modern approaches and technologies. It delivers greater efficiency in an era of digital transformation and shows how to deal with increasingly demanding user requirements. Ultimately, these best practices strengthen competitiveness.

Overall, the holistic approach of ITIL v4 supports not only IT Service Management, but also other dominant elements of IT governance that are needed to integrate and optimize IT. In addition, it leverages the best elements from DevOps, Lean IT and Cloud Computing.

ITIL 4 has completely restructured processes and activities that were contained in the ITIL v3 framework. The methodology has been upgraded or transformed to meet the requirements in times of digital transformation. All best practice procedures support the 6 key activities of the ITIL service value chain.

• 14 general management practices

• 17 service management practices

• 3 technical management practices

ITIL 4 combines ITIL v3 + ITIL® Practitioner + includes new principles of service management through the so-called Service Value Chain, so there are no longer 5 phases of the IT service life cycle, as in ITIL v3

The new service model of ITIL 4 is built on the so-called Service Value Chain, through which we deliver IT services using modern methods and approaches, such as Agile, Lean and DevOps.

Agile elements of the ITIL 4 methodology (e.g. collaborative approach, feedback loops, etc.) are used in all 9 principles that are adopted with the original version of ITIL Practitioner, where 2 more are added to the original 7 principles.

• ITIL v3 is still valid and translated into Czech

• ITIL 4 Update is only available in English (with Czech interpretation)

Best practice ITIL v3 contains 26 ITIL processes that are governed by 5 basic phases of the service life cycle.

A new feature in ITIL 4 is the concept of development and management of IT services, which has already abandoned the structure of 5 life cycle phases on which ITIL v3 is built, namely:

• Service Strategy

• Service Design

• Service Transition

• Service Operations

• Continuous Service Improvement

Best practice ITIL 4 adds 13 completely new processes / practices to the 26 processes that are part of ITIL v3, such as:

• Risk management

• Business analyses

• Project management

• IT asset management

• Architecture Management

• Measurement and reporting

• Workforce and talent management

• Infrastructure and platform management