What Are The 7 Key ITIL Practices?

ITIL 4 has come up with a group of management practices for IT service providers to achieve their targeted goals. This version of ITIL has included automation and data management practice in its infrastructure along with IT service management. The newly added functions can enhance the IT service desk services to the maximum extent.

One of the most crucial parts of ITIL Service management is its practicing regulations. It recommends providing an adaptable and continuing direction to IT service outsourcing companies. Further, the process applies to all circumstances, regardless of the industry type, business strategy, and management system.

ITML practices illustrate the core functions of ITIL service management. It supports effective efforts and the right predictions of all types and sizes of businesses. In this post, we will discuss the 7 key practices of ITIL.

The 7 key practices of ITIL 4 are the guiding rules for managing this IT approach. These principles can direct your decisions and activities to efficiently manage and operate the service portfolio.

We can distinguish ITIL 4 management practices into three categories. These are general management, service management, and technical management.

The procedure of services currently under development, deployment, delivery, and support come within service management practices. Those functions acclimated from technology management to conduct service management are technical management practices.

Any function in any part of the organization for the successful delivery of the services is the general management practice. So, the below 7 ITIL practices will fall into one of the three categories. Let’s go through it.

• Continual Improvement
• Change Enablement
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Service Desk
• Service Level Management
• Service Request Management

The objective of this approach is to upgrade the IT functions and services of the organization to sync up with the changing business scenarios. So, the rule suggests constantly recognizing and enhancing the processes and services. It includes every aspect that determines the efficient and effective delivery of services. Continual improvement practices include:

• Promoting constant refinement throughout the enterprise.
• Creating business cases for a progress measure
• Ensuring time and funding for planning and executing advancements
• Recognizing and recording improvement prospects
• Estimating and assessing outcomes
• Evaluating and prioritizing options
• Conforming to enhancing actions throughout the enterprise.

One of the most crucial efforts for IT service desk outsourcing companies is to pursue appropriate change management. It supports businesses in coping with the effects of cultural, technical, and other internal organizational changes.

Change enablement practice suggests healthy changes in the process to balance end-users demand with the business requirements. Further, authorized and experienced staff should evaluate the risks and advantages of the proposed changes.

Incidents in IT services refer to unexpected situations leading to server downtime, data loss, or other issues. It is of utmost importance to create proper incident management procedures to prevent such situations. The incident management practice includes:

• Designing appropriate processes for managing various kinds of incidents
• Prioritizing incidents
• Using a powerful tool to evaluate and manage risks
• Creating a coordinated system for service desk, end-users, suppliers, and business heads
• Developing a self-help portal
• Keeping a service desk and support team
• Coordinating with supporters or suppliers
• Maintaining interim cross-operational team
• Setting disaster recovery process

In the IT-enabled process, there might be various issues resulting in incidents. So, businesses need to handle problems effectively to prevent incidents. They need research and investigation to determine the reasons, design methodology and suggest a long-term solution.

The outcome incorporates detailed documentation from logs and defined errors. Additionally, it may operate data in a knowledge management approach to analyze, identify and settle issues. The steps in problem management practice involve:

• Issue identifying exercises to evaluate and specify problems
• Problem management tasks for problem estimation and establishing procedures to manage understood errors
• Error managing exercises to control errors identified after the initial investigation
• Organizing problems in a precise order for threat management
• Initiation of settling the issue through change managing and assessment of post-implementation scenarios.
• Identification of improvement prospects in all areas of service management, including a continuous improvement log.

A service desk enables end-users to register problems, queries, and service requests through automatic ticket generation and assignment. The assigned service desk associate then takes the initiative to solve the issue. The primary service desk tasks include:

• Arrange, explain, and coordinate different issues raised by the users
• It determines the grade of user experience and business benefits of hiring IT service desk services
• Realistic interpretation of the broader association, the business procedures, and the user experience.

The goal of this ITIL practice is to develop precise business-oriented objectives to enhance service quality. It allows proper assessment, monitoring, and control of service delivery at par with these targets. Service level management practice involves:

• Creating SLAs or service level agreements which is a documented contracts between an IT service outsourcing company and its client. The agreement includes the mandated services with the desired level of quality.
• Presenting a clear picture of the services that the service provider offers.
• Sharing details of the services and service levels goals with clients
• Gathering, exploring, keeping, and documenting appropriate metrics to ensure service goals are fulfilled
• Performing service assessments to confirm the existing services can adequately fulfill the business needs
• Creating documents on service problems and performance status based on specified service grades

This approach deals with any temporary service request arising as a consequence of normal service delivery. Though not a fixed condition, this service criteria comes under a predefined agreement. Service request management request practice involves:

• Initiation, support, completion, and control of services
• Providing maximum efforts to meet the demand regardless of the service type:
• Ensuring advanced and automatic process
• Setting a realistic timeline for the completion of user demands and expectations.
• Creating standard approaches for a transparent process leading to service fulfillment.
• Recognizing and executing possibilities for modification
• Creating standard procedures for registering and diverting service change requests or managing incidents.

ITML practices describe the procedures of ITIL service management. It sustains adequate measures and the appropriate predictions of all business conditions. In the above post, we have discussed the 7 key practices of ITIL that can enhance your IT service delivery process.