Making ITIL Work

by Ann All

I recently wrote an article and a follow-up blog post based on discussions I had with several IT analysts and with IT professionals on the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). They offered lots of great advice on how to effectively implement ITIL, only some of which made it into the article. I'd like to recap some of the advice in the article and mention some of the suggestions that didn't make it. Hopefully other folks with ITIL experience will join the discussion and share some suggestions of their own.

• Start with realistic expectations. If you start out thinking ITIL will help you cut IT costs in half, you will be disappointed.
  
• Begin with a solid baseline, looking at unit costs, quality and productivity.
• Measure in granular enough detail so improvements can be tied directly to an ITIL process or tool.
• Concentrate on your most critical business processes. Ask users to help you determine which processes are the strongest candidates for improvement.
• Enlist a strong executive-level sponsor.
• Invest time in educating users about ITIL's benefits, preferably with diagrams showing how workflows can be streamlined.
• Reassure staff that their roles won't be automated out of existence. Rather, ITIL will allow them to apply their time and energy to more strategic issues. They shouldn't have to spend as much time firefighting, and firefighting will become less stressful for them, when necessary, if processes are better defined.
• Focus on achieving small, incremental wins, and the momentum will take care of itself.
• ITIL is an organizational effort and thus cannot be confined to IT.
• Training is important. Make sure users understand how to use ITIL tools and processes.
  
• Change management can get costly if and when users try to circumvent ITIL processes. With the CIO's blessing, send a weekly e-mail listing all of the 'emergency' changes made the prior week.
• Pick and choose the ITIL principles that will benefit your organization. You don't have to adopt them all.
• Promote posiitve results to create enthusiasm.