Service Design Package Template – a beginning

Just a quick update to let you know that the Service Design Package template will continue to be updated and refined as we work through documenting all our services.  It will start off as a series of headings but will be completed with example information in the future.  One of the things I find frustrating with the ITIL information provided is that in some cases it is not really clear about the level of information that should be included.  As with all writing, it is a much easier process to edit than it is to start with a blank page, so hopefully once it’s out there we’ll be able to work together to improve it and make it a useful resource for everyone.

Finding the right tools

What a minefield!  So many tools to choose from.

To keep things simple we are using Confluence from Atlassian.  Confluence is a cross between a wiki, a blog and a document management tool that also has (internal) social networking features.  It has what is known as Spaces  and each space can consist of pages, blog posts, conversations, attachments, diagrams and more.

Things we like about Confluence for the purpose of our IT Service and System information:

• Support for Space and Page templates – helps streamline the setup required for each service and ensures consistency
• Great plugin support – for example the Gliffy plugin for infrastructure diagrams and the JIRA plugin
• Cost effective
• Easy to use and easy to access (web based)
• Ability to export to Word and PDF on the fly (to share system information with a third party when outsourcing)

At this point in our journey, it is working really well for us and proving very useful already.

 

Getting started on ‘My ITIL Journey’

Many organisations start their ITIL journey with the service desk.  Pretty soon you’ll be required to define your services in a Service Catalogue.    The Service Catalogue consists of the Business Service Catalogue (the customer view) and the Technical Service Catalogue (non-customer focused, relationships to other services) and is part of the Service Portfolio.

Information about services for the Service Catalogue ‘should’ be readily available as it is developed through the Service Design phase.  In many cases though, it is quite a challenge to pull together information from various units in your organisation and then work through the process of defining the ‘official’ set of services that will be included in the Service Catalogue.  At this point, the Service Catalogue can be fleshed out to include the appropriate information.

My ITIL Journey – the story so far

I have only really just dipped my toe in the ITIL pool.  In 2009/2010 I completed the ITIL Foundation V3 and ITIL Intermediate ‘Service Offerings and Agreements’ courses.  I’ve also spent a fair amount of time with the ITIL publications.

Since that time I’ve changed roles (same organisation) and, after a bit of time finding my feet, it came back to ITIL (albeit from a different perspective).  However, a couple of lone voices against a tide of resistance is a tough gig.  There are some with legitimate concerns but in many cases the resistance stems from a fear of the unknown – what does this ITIL thing mean for me?

What is ITIL?

So, with all this talk about ITIL, what exactly is it?

In basic, every day terms, ITIL is a framework to help organisations develop and refine their processes around IT Service Management. ITIL stands for Information Technology Infrastructure Library.  This Library, now in its third version, assists organisations as they design their own IT management processes as they can benefit from the well developed and documented best-practices.

Welcome to ‘My ITIL Journey’

Hi there!

I’m Kerrin and this is my journey.

Haha, in the right voice, it could sound really interesting 🙂  But, to be honest, most people probably couldn’t think of anything worse than reading a blog about implementing best-practice processes in the area of IT Service Management.

However, I am hoping that over time, My ITIL Journey will help fill the gap between the sites that are simply regurgitating headings from the official ITIL books, calling them templates or passing them off as helpful information and the sites that assume you have been studying ITIL for the last twenty years and are only looking for somewhere to debate the finer points of specific definitions in use or some such thing.