Why does my organization need ITIL?

There are many benefits of ITIL. Here are just a few:

• It gives you the benefit of hindsight over the last 20-plus years of the development of IT technical support techniques.
• It contains tried and tested processes.
• It provides simplified and ready to use processes that can be used immediately.
• It contains templates, checklists and downloads that can be used as they are or personalised.
• It has a quick-start approach to help you make the best use of time and resources available and see quick results.
• It separates administrative tasks and technical tasks to help you assign the most appropriate resources.
• It helps you keep costs to a minimum.
• It helps you protect non-technical staff from having to get too involved in technical support issues.
• It helps you measure technical support performance.

I'm starting to implement ITIL today, where should I start first?

The first question should be 'Does the organisation need ITIL?' or 'What could the organisation gain from ITIL'. If the answer is negative on either account - stop.

ITIL books emphasise that organisations that have succeeded in implementing ITIL have one important thing in common - a strong 'Executive Sponsor'. This means a senior manager - ideally on the Board of Directors, the Corporate Information Officer or some similarly important role - is passionate about ITIL being implemented. When conflicts arise (as they do), the Sponsor will champion the cause, making sure the ITIL project has the funding and the authority to succeed.

Some organisations have started with a technical enthusiast, but it has taken a lot longer and usually only works once that person has a senior and powerful sponsor.

ITIL is not just a technical thing. Actually it isn't really technical at all - not like Java programming anyway! ITIL is ultimately concerned with aligning IT with the business - that means that the business is ultimately the driver, not IT.

I'm starting to implement ITIL today, which tools do I need?

In a small organisation a pencil and paper would be all the tools needed. If you have the proper process in place you could, in theory, write your Service Calls, Incidents, Problems Change Requests, and so forth on pieces of paper and circulate them. Thus you could say that paper and ink are 'ITIL-ready' tools and should be certified as such!

Naturally, a large organisation probably will do better with software, but an e-mail system might well be enough. The important thing, and the point of this answer, is that the processes and procedures make sense, are in place and that people use them - what software tools are used and exactly how they work is secondary to that.

How long to implement ITIL?

How long is a piece of string?

One answer to this is 'never'! ITIL is a quality process that is based on continual improvement based on Business needs. Since Businesses change continually, so their needs change, so, together with the continuous improvement process, ITIL is never complete.

If that is too depressing an answer, one company in South Korea implemented the 10 core ITIL processes + Application Management + Security Management + ICT Infrastructure Management in 6 months! OK, it was a pilot - it was implemented in one company out of 36 - and the culture in South Korea is very well adapted to rapid deployments of this nature. It is certainly not to be recommended to anybody! It is worth mentioning that this project worked because of extremely strong, sustained commitment from both the Board of Directors and the CIO. Without these powerful Executive Sponsors, this effort would have failed!

Most companies deploy ITIL in stages. This makes lots of sense as it allows 'picking low hanging fruit' first - do things that are relatively easy and show the greatest improvement first. It would be normal to have three or four quarterly projects to implement the core processes.

It does, of course, depend on the size of your company. A major multinational may take considerable time to deploy ITIL across many countries and cultures - a small IT shop can, with energy and willingness, get most of it in place in six months.