IT Best Practices to bring Value to your Organization

I am a certified  ITIL Expert and can provide consulting, training and guide deployment in IT best practices. Earning the ITIL certification is a very challenging ordeal for anyone. It consist of taking 5 test over each subject area, Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement, and then a much more difficult exam called Managing Across the Life cycle which is inclusive of all subject areas. ITIL is based on IT Best practices in IT governance and helps IT operations to optimize their resources and produce a value based service to their organization.

If you would like assistance in implementing some of these best practices in your organization please reach out to me.

Brian Neal Bond Boerne

Areas Covered are:

Service Strategy-

Strategy Management for IT Services

Process Objective: To assess the service provider’s offerings, capabilities, competitors as well as current and potential market spaces in order to develop a strategy to serve customers. Once the strategy has been defined, Strategy Management for IT Services is also responsible for ensuring the implementation of the strategy.
Service Portfolio Management
Process Objective: To manage the service portfolio. Service Portfolio Management ensures that the service provider has the right mix of services to meet required business outcomes at an appropriate level of investment.
Financial Management for IT Services
Process Objective: To manage the service provider’s budgeting, accounting and charging requirements.
Demand Management
Process Objective: To understand, anticipate and influence customer demand for services. Demand Management works with Capacity Management to ensure that the service provider has sufficient capacity to meet the required demand.
Business Relationship Management
Process Objective: To maintain a positive relationship with customers. Business Relationship Management identifies the needs of existing and potential customers and ensures that appropriate services are developed to meet those needs.

Service Design –

The relationship between business value and service design
The principles of balanced service design (functionality, resources, schedule)
How to identify meaningful service requirements
The relationship between service, application, infrastructure and data architectures
The key roles and organizational capabilities of service design
The relationship of design constraints to service utility and warranty
The advantages and disadvantages of various strategic sourcing and delivery models (insourcing, outsourcing, co-sourcing, etc.)
Review of Service Design processes, and their associated policies, challenges, risks and critical success factors, including:
Design Coordination
Service Catalog Management
Service Level Management
Capacity Management
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Information Security Management
Supplier Management
Interaction of Service Design processes with other Service Lifecycle processes
Technology and implementation considerations for Service Design

Service Transition –

Transition Planning and Support
Knowledge Management
Service Asset and Configuration Management
Change Management
Release and Deployment Management
Service Validation and Testing
Change Evaluation

Service Operation –

Event Management
Process Objective: To make sure CIs and services are constantly monitored, and to filter and categorize Events in order to decide on appropriate actions.
Incident Management
Process Objective: To manage the lifecycle of all Incidents. The primary objective of Incident Management is to return the IT service to users as quickly as possible.
Request Fulfilment
Process Objective: To fulfill Service Requests, which in most cases are minor (standard) Changes (e.g. requests to change a password) or requests for information.
Access Management
Process Objective: To grant authorized users the right to use a service, while preventing access to non-authorized users. The Access Management processes essentially execute policies defined in Information Security Management. Access Management is sometimes also referred to as Rights Management or Identity Management.
Problem Management
Process Objective: To manage the lifecycle of all Problems. The primary objectives of Problem Management are to prevent Incidents from happening, and to minimize the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. Proactive Problem Management analyzes Incident Records, and uses data collected by other IT Service Management processes to identify trends or significant Problems.
IT Operations Control
Process Objective: To monitor and control the IT services and their underlying infrastructure. The process IT Operations Control executes day-to-day routine tasks related to the operation of infrastructure components and applications. This includes job scheduling, backup and restore activities, print and output management, and routine maintenance.
Facilities Management
Process Objective: To manage the physical environment where the IT infrastructure is located. Facilities Management includes all aspects of managing the physical environment, for example power and cooling, building access management, and environmental monitoring.
Application Management
Application Management is responsible for managing applications throughout their lifecycle.
Technical Management
Technical Management provides technical expertise and support for the management of the IT infrastructure.

Continual Service Improvement –

CSI and organizational change

Ownership of CSI
The CSI register
CSI and Service Level Management
CSI and Knowledge Management
The Deming Cycle
Service Measurement
The seven step Improvement Process
Governance
Frameworks, models, standards and quality systems

Continual Service Improvement is one of my favorite subject areas in ITIL. In every aspect of your organization you should be looking for ways to improve your processes, your people, and your technologies to optimize the value that you are bringing to your organization.