ITIL®4 Management Practices:

                                                                                                                                                                                                          By Ganesh Shrishrimal

Practices: In ITIL, a management practice is a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.

One of the most significant improvements in ITIL 4 is concept of practices.

The origins of the practices are as follows:

• General management practices have been adopted and adapted for service management from general business management domains.
• Service management practices have been developed in service management and ITSM industries.
• Technical management practices have been adapted from technology management domains for service management purposes by expanding or shifting their focus from technology solutions to IT services.

‘Practices’ considers holistic view not only focusing on processes alone but people, tools and partners(suppliers) as well. Process flow is of course extremely important but if one misses the focus of People or products(tools) or partners; it will be challenging to achieve the business objectives.

Let’s see purpose of each practice

General management practices:

1. Architecture management: The purpose of the architecture management practice is to provide an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization and how those elements interrelate, enabling the organization to effectively achieve its current and future objectives. It provides the principles, standards, and tools that enable an organization to manage complex change in a structured and Agile way.

2. Continual improvement: The purpose of the continual improvement practice is to align the organization’s practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing improvement of products, services, and practices, or any element involved in the management of products and services.

3. Information security management: The purpose of the information security management practice is to protect the information needed by the organization to conduct its business. This includes understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, as well as other aspects of information security such as authentication (ensuring someone is who they claim to be) and non-repudiation (ensuring that someone can’t deny that they took an action).

4. Knowledge management: The purpose of the knowledge management practice is to maintain and improve the effective, efficient, and convenient use of information and knowledge across the organization

5. Measurement and reporting: The purpose of the measurement and reporting practice is to support good decision-making and continual improvement by decreasing the levels of uncertainty. This is achieved through the collection of relevant data on various managed objects and the valid assessment of this data in an appropriate context. Managed objects include, but are not limited to, products and services, practices and value chain activities, teams and individuals, suppliers and partners, and the organization as a whole.

6. Organizational change management: The purpose of the organizational change management practice is to ensure that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented, and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of the changes.

7. Portfolio management: The purpose of the portfolio management practice is to ensure that the organization has the right mix of programmes, projects, products, and services to execute the organization’s strategy within its funding and resource constraints.

8. Project management: The purpose of the project management practice is to ensure that all projects in the organization are successfully delivered. This is achieved by planning, delegating, monitoring, and maintaining control of all aspects of a project, and keeping the motivation of the people involved

9. Relationship management: The purpose of the relationship management practice is to establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels. It includes the identification, analysis, monitoring, and continual improvement of relationships with and between stakeholders.

10. Risk management: The purpose of the risk management practice is to ensure that the organization understands and effectively handles risks. Managing risk is essential to ensuring the ongoing sustainability of an organization and creating value for its customers. Risk management is an integral part of all organizational activities and therefore central to the organization’s SVS.

11. Service financial management: The purpose of the service financial management practice is to support the organization’s strategies and plans for service management by ensuring that the organization’s financial resources and investments are being used effectively.

12. Strategy management: The purpose of the strategy management practice is to formulate the goals of the organization and adopt the courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for achieving those goals. Strategy management establishes the organization’s direction, focuses effort, defines or clarifies the organization’s priorities, and provides consistency or guidance in response to the environment.

13. Supplier management: The purpose of the supplier management practice is to ensure that the organization’s suppliers and their performances are managed appropriately to support the seamless provision of quality products and services. This includes creating closer, more collaborative relationships with key suppliers to uncover and realize new value and reduce the risk of failure.

14. Workforce and talent management: The purpose of the workforce and talent management practice is to ensure that the organization has the right people with the appropriate skills and knowledge and in the correct roles to support its business objectives. The practice covers a broad set of activities focused on successfully engaging with the organization’s employees and people resources, including planning, recruitment, onboarding, learning and development, performance measurement, and succession planning.

Service management practices:

1. Availability management: The purpose of the availability management practice is to ensure that services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.

2. Business analysis: The purpose of the business analysis practice is to analyse a business or some element of it, define its associated needs, and recommend solutions to address these needs and/or solve a business problem, which must facilitate value creation for stakeholders. Business analysis enables an organization to communicate its needs in a meaningful way, express the rationale for change, and design and describe solutions that enable value creation in alignment with the organization’s objectives

3. Capacity and performance management: The purpose of the capacity and performance management practice is to ensure that services achieve agreed and expected performance, satisfying current and future demand in a cost-effective way.

4. Change enablement: The purpose of the change enablement practice is to maximize the number of successful service and product changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule.

5. Incident management: The purpose of the incident management practice is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible.

6. IT asset management: The purpose of the IT asset management practice is to plan and manage the full lifecycle of all IT assets, to help the organization:
   • maximize value
   • control costs
   • manage risks
   • support decision-making about purchase, re-use, retirement, and disposal of assets
   • meet regulatory and contractual requirements.

7. Monitoring and event management: The purpose of the monitoring and event management practice is to systematically observe services and service components, and record and report selected changes of state identified as events. This practice identifies and prioritizes infrastructure, services, business processes, and information security events; it also establishes the appropriate response to those events, and conditions that indicate potential faults or incidents.

8. Problem management: The purpose of the problem management practice is to reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, and managing workarounds and known errors.

9. Release management: The purpose of the release management practice is to make new and changed services and features available for use.

10. Service catalogue management: The purpose of the service catalogue management practice is to provide a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings, and to ensure that it is available to the relevant audience.

11. Service configuration management: The purpose of the service configuration management practice is to ensure that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the CIs that support them, is available when and where it is needed. This includes information on how CIs are configured and the relationships between them.

12. Service continuity management: The purpose of the service continuity management practice is to ensure that the availability and performance of a service are maintained at sufficient levels in case of a disaster. The practice provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability of producing an effective response that safeguards the interests of key stakeholders and the organization’s reputation, brand, and value creating activities.

13. Service design: The purpose of the service design practice is to design products and services that are fit for purpose, fit for use, and that can be delivered by the organization and its ecosystem. This includes planning and organizing people, partners and suppliers, information, communication, technology, and practices for new or changed products and services, and the interaction between the organization and its customers.

14. Service desk: The purpose of the service desk practice is to capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. It should also be the entry point and single point of contact for the service provider with all of its users.

15. Service level management: The purpose of the service level management practice is to set clear business-based targets for service levels, and to ensure that delivery of services is properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these targets.

16. Service request management: The purpose of the service request management practice is to support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective and user-friendly manner.

17. Service validation and testing: The purpose of the service validation and testing practice is to ensure that new or changed products and services meet defined requirements. The definition of service value is based on input from customers, business objectives, and regulatory requirements, and is documented as part of the value chain activity of design and transition. These inputs are used to establish measurable quality and performance indicators that support the definition of assurance criteria and testing requirements.

Technical management practices:

1. Deployment management:

The purpose of the deployment management practice is to move new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes, or any other component to live environments. It may also be involved in deploying components to other environments for testing or staging.

2. Infrastructure and platform management:

The purpose of the infrastructure and platform management practice is to oversee the infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. When carried out properly, this practice enables the monitoring of technology solutions available to the organization, including the technology of external service providers.

3. Software development and management:

The purpose of the software development and management practice is to ensure that applications meet internal and external stakeholder needs, in terms of functionality, reliability, maintainability, compliance and auditability.

About Author: Mr. Ganesh with over 22+ years of experience; is one of the most experienced ITIL trainer across the globe. He is arguably the First accredited trainer in the world for ITIL® 4 Master/ ITIL®V2 Managers/ ITIL® Expert [67+Credits]/ ITIL®4 SL/ MP/ CDS/ DPI/ DSV/ HVIT/ MSF/ PIC/ CAI/ Prince2/ Agile /TOGAF9.2/ COBIT/ SIAM trainer and consultant.