ITIL v5 defines 5 stages:
* Service Strategy: design, develop, implement Service Management.
* Service Design: design a Service.
* Service Transition:
* Service Operation:
* Continual Service Improvement:
Incident Management: the process of capturing, tracking,
assigning and managing incidents (non-standard operations that may interupt or reduce the quality of service) and communicates with the
end-user.
Benefits are:
Reduced business impact of Incidents by timely resolution, thereby increasing effectiveness
The proactive identification of beneficial system enhancements and amendments
The availability of business-focussed management information related to the SLA.
* Problem Management: the process of managing the lifecycle of all the problems including detection, analysis, resolution and prevention of incidents. Problem
management also collects and analyse data about incidents for proactive problem solving. ITIL defines a problem as the cause of one or more incidents.
The benefits of problem management are:
Higher availability of IT services
Higher productivity of business and IT staff
Reduced expenditure on workarounds or fixes that do
not work
Reduction in cost of effort in fire-fighting or resolving
repeat incidents.
Change Management: the process that ensures standardized methods, processes and procedures are used for all changes, facilitate efficient and prompt handling
of all changes, and maintain the proper balance between
the need for change and the potential detrimental impact
of changes. In ITIL, change management is responsible
for controlling change to all configuration items in the
configuration management database, within the live
environment, test and training environments. The benefits
of change management are:
Configuration Management: the discovery and identification of hardware and software assets (CIs), configurations, tracking of changes, patch management and introduction of new assets. ITIL defines configuration management as the management and traceability of every aspect of a configuration from beginning to end, a process
that tracks all individual Configuration Items (CI) generated
by applying all of the key process areas in a system. The benefits of configuration management are:
Increased control over IT assets through improved visibility and tracking
Enhanced system reliability through more rapid detection and correction of improper configurations that could negatively impact performance
The ability to define and enforce formal policies and procedures that govern asset identification, status monitoring, and auditing
Improved asset maintenance through the ability to better utilize proactive, preventative, and predictive measures
Service Level Management: the definition, capture and measurement of the level of service to the end-user. ITIL describes service level management as the process that
provides for continual identification, monitoring and review of the levels of IT services specified in the service level agreements (SLAs). Service level management ensures that arrangements are in place with internal IT support-providers
and external suppliers in the form of operational level agreements (OLAs) and underpinning contracts (UCs). The benefits of service level management are:
Setting more accurate service quality expectations and effectively measuring, monitoring and reporting service quality
Providing the necessary flexibility for business to react quickly to market conditions
Creating more accurate infrastructure sizing based on clearly defining service levels
Avoiding or mitigating the costs of excess or insufficient capacity