1. Incident management: quickly restoring services
Goal: Reduce the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service as quickly as possible.
Benefits:
- Reduced time and effort associated with resolving incidents
- Improved user satisfaction
Key concepts:
- Incident identification and recording
- Incident classification and prioritization
- Incident escalation and tracking
- Incident resolution and closure
► The benefits of this practice are highly visible to users and customers, and have a real impact on satisfaction and perceived reliability.
➡️ ITIL®4: Incident Management
2. Problem Management: Addressing root causes
Goal: Reduce incidents by identifying their actual or potential causes and managing workarounds and known errors.
Benefits:
- Proactive problem identification
- Reduction in recurring incidents
- Improved service quality
Key concepts:
- Problem detection
- Cause analysis
- Known error management
- Workarounds and permanent resolutions
► It promotes continuous improvement by addressing the recurring causes of incidents in a sustainable manner.
3. Enabling change: balancing speed and control
Goal: Effectively manage change while assessing risks and their impact on the IT environment.
Benefits:
- Increased and sustained velocity of the IT department and organization
- Reduction of risks associated with change
- Improved planning and implementation of change
- Increased success of change
Key concepts:
- Impact and risk assessment
- Change authorization
- Change planning
- Change implementation and review
► Essential for supporting digital transformation, this practice promotes agility without compromising operational quality.
4. Service level management: alignment with expectations
Goal: Define, monitor, and adjust service commitments in line with business requirements.
Benefits:
- Alignment of services with customer needs
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Increased understanding of services and target service levels, both for the IT department and for customers and users
- Monitoring and continuous improvement of service performance
Key concepts:
Ongoing involvement between customers and service owners
Service level agreements (SLAs) and underlying agreements
Performance monitoring and reporting
SLA reviews and adjustments
► It builds a lasting relationship of trust between IT and customers by aligning services with their expectations.
5. Service configuration management: controlling dependencies
Goal: Maintain a reliable view of configuration items (CIs) and their relationships to support all ITSM practices.
Benefits:
- Effective interventions to meet compliance requirements through increased visibility and control of configuration items (CIs)
- Reduced risk associated with changes by providing relevant information for risk analysis
- Most service management practices will benefit directly or indirectly from access to reliable and comprehensive information about information systems.
Key concepts:
- Configuration management database (CMDB) and relationships between CIs
- Identification and control of CIs
- CMDB discovery and population
- Configuration verification and audit
- Links between service configuration management and IT asset management
► It provides a reliable information base that benefits all ITSM practices.
6. Knowledge management: capitalizing on experience
Goal: Maintain and improve the effective, efficient, and practical use of information and knowledge within the organization.
Benefits:
- Improved decision-making
- Reduced incident resolution and change request processing times
- Increased analytical capacity for better risk management
- Sharing and reuse of knowledge needed across the IT department and organization
- Reduced time and effort wasted searching for information in disorganized environments
Key concepts:
- Knowledge base
- Identification, classification, and importance of knowledge types
- Capturing and structuring knowledge
- Maintaining knowledge articles
- Accessing and using knowledge
Why this practice is in the top 7: Knowledge management allows you to capitalize on available expertise and information, thereby improving work efficiency and service quality. The presence of reliable, easy-to-consume knowledge will increase the efficiency of the organization as a whole.
► It supports all operational activities and promotes organizational maturity, particularly through knowledge transfer.
7. Continuous improvement: driving service evolution
Goal: Identify, prioritize, and implement the improvements needed to maintain alignment between services and business needs.
Benefits:
- Continuous, organized, and visible improvement in service quality
- Continuous, organized, and visible improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of practices
- Adaptation of quality, effectiveness, and efficiency targets in line with the changing needs of the organization
Key concepts:
- Continuous improvement model (7-step cycle)
- Service performance evaluation and measurement
- Planning and implementation of improvements
- Continuous improvement register
- Key roles: Continuous improvement manager, service owners, practice owners, product owners.
► This practice places service management within a sustainable framework of continuous progress and adaptation.
What about other ITIL practices?
Obviously, this selection of seven practices reflects the observations of a large number of organizations with which we interact. Depending on the reality of each organization and the objectives sought, it is common to see practices other than these being prioritized. We could have considered other practices that are very beneficial to organizations depending on their context, such as “supplier management,” “service request management,” “information security management,” or “service desk.” We will have the opportunity to return to these topics in the coming weeks.
Each organization must develop its own ITSM program, and establishing an action plan based on key ITIL concepts and practices provides a thoughtful and intentional approach. To discuss the ITIL framework, you can attend the iQ7 conference on the subject.
Conclusion
ITIL practices play a crucial role in IT service management by providing structured frameworks for improving quality, efficiency, and user satisfaction. The seven practices presented in this article stand out for their significant benefits and their ability to address common challenges faced by organizations. By adopting these practices, companies can not only optimize their operations, but also prepare for a future where innovation and continuous improvement are essential to remaining competitive.
