13. ITIL

Question 1

Give some examples of service management practices that ITIL cover:

Answer 1

• Availability mngmt
• Incident M
• Monitoring and event M
• Problem M
• Release M
• Service design
• Service desk
• Service level M
• Service request M
  and so on…

Question 2

What is Service Design about (in ITIL)?

Answer 2

It is a service model for an IT service. Son on the top we have an IT service and this goes into different branches - for ex we might have:

• A SaaS component - a supplier providing Cloud infrastructure.
• A local application that has a local server and a local storage coming from a data center.
• A client app that is available on client devices that users have.

So this design is something you can model. To see what each service do and come from.

Question 3

What is Service level management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 3

It’s about SLAs where you specify the utility and warranty of a service. For ex “it should work with 99% certainty during office hours”.

Question 4

Watermelon SLA effect:

Answer 4

The watermelon effect - everything on the outside is green and looks good, but inside it is red and not working. If OLAT crashes under exam time, it is a catastrophy, then it doesn’t matter that it works 99% of time. Then you might not have the appropriate measurements –> Need a higher level of agreement.

Question 5

What is Release management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 5

It is the steps taken from setting a release plan until it is released and reviewed:

1. Release plan
2. New or changed infrastructure + new or changed software + training and documentation.
3. Deploy
4. Release
5. Review.

This is how it looks in the agile way, in the waterfall, we have deploy and release at the same fourth step. Allt at once.

Question 6

What is Availability management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 6

The purpose is to ensure that services deliver agreed level of availability to meet the needs of customers and users. The contribution of AM in the value chain activities are most important in the plan, improve and the box of design/build/deliver in the middle.

Question 7

What is Service desk about (in ITIL)?

Answer 7

It’s the first access point for users. The desk handles everything from exceptions , requests, complaints, bookings, communication etc and directs the user or set up a plan to solve it with the different management fields. ex if there is an exception –> direct to the incident management or the problem management. and so on

Question 8

What is Service request management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 8

The purpose is to support the agreed quality of a service by handling all pre-defined, user-initiated service requests in an effective way. The contribution of SRM in the value chain activities are most important in the engage + deliver and support fields.

Question 9

What is Incident management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 9

An incident has happened, how to deal with it?

1. Document it. So that it does not get lost.
2. Classify and provide first help. What is the underlying problem?
3. Locate incidents - if we can locate it, we can support help beyond just first help.
4. Restore service - make it work again.
5. Close incident.

Question 10

What is Problem management about (in ITIL)?

Answer 10

Attempts to minimize the negative consequences of failures in the IT structure on the business. Need preventative actions and examine the causes for problems and improve how you resolve problems.

Question 11

Difference between incident and problem management?

Answer 11

Incident is about being reactive and take corrective actions when something fails.
problem is about being proactive and identify and solve problems before they appear visibly so this is about taking preventative actions.

Question 12

Steps in the problem management cycle:

Answer 12

It’s about 4 things being interrelated, no 1-4 step but it includes:

• Detect error cause
• Analyze trends
• Initiate measures
• Eliminate causes

Question 13

What is Monitor and Event management about (in ITIL)? The first logging and filtering step.

Answer 13

An event is logged and goes through a filter to classify where it belongs: is it an exception (problem/incident), or is a warning (not a problem yet but an indicator of something that needs to take a look at), or is it just information?

Question 14

If the filter tells us that the event is an exceptions, what do we do?

Answer 14

We investigate it and classify it either as an incident, problem or RFC (request for change).
–> Incident management OR Problem management OR change management.

Question 15

3 technical management practices in ITIL:

Answer 15

• Deployment management
• Infrastructure management
• Software development management