IT Service Management: the foundation for the design, delivery and use of IT services that meet the needs of the customer.
The fundamental concept of IT Service Management is that products never stand alone. They always form an almost sacred trinity with the people who keep the products operational, supported by all kinds of processes. Anyone who has ever implemented an (ITIL) management process will agree that a process description on itself will never work in real life, unless the supporting people and their roles are considered. And that the processes and people in turn are supported by a range of products and tools.
There are many ways in which IT Service Management is implemented. Companies all over the world use the guidelines (best practices) from the various ITIL publications. In addition, there are numerous standards to make it auditable as well. Examples are ISO 20000, ISO 27000 and ISAE. Moreover, there are also local guidelines per branch and/or country, e.g. NEN7510 for healthcare in The Netherlands.
The latest version: ITIL4
Although ITIL is the most used framework worldwide, it is no longer the only way to organize IT services. Combinations with DevOps, Agile sprints and Lean are becoming more and more popular. One does not have to exclude the other. In fact, they complement each other. ITIL4 (the latest version on the market, since February 2019) adopt these models into their framework, including cloud! I also use it to redesign processes and value streams for cloud services. Please read my opinion about ITIL4, the pros and cons. Let me know what you think of it…