All about ITIL - 1

ITIL, the latest and the hottest in certification !!!

It has caught the fancy of almost everyone in IT :)

But what is it and why do you need to get into ITIL is a doubt that haunts alomst everyone....

Well, i tought with my time in implementing ITIL and learning on the job, a little clarity would be welcome by all IT'ers :)

ITIL is actually a set of 5 books that describe IT implementation BEST Practices which have been collected over time and by the master practitioners.

It talks about maintaining a documentation of all processes and tasks that have been performed while following the ITIL best practices for your organisation. Each ITIL implemntation would vary depending on the companies requirements. hence it is very difficult to arrive at a standad set of practices followed by every company. It is hihgly customisable and can adapt to every IT requirement.

For eg. Your company wants to implement a firewall for managing basic security. What happens during this process ??

Ideally;

1. A discussion follows the idea stage
2. Points are frozen from the discussion
3. A technical and commercial discussion then takes place
4. A final product is zeroed in
5. Implementation takes place
6. Maintenance work is carried out on a regular basis

Now if you look at the steps above, they can be broken down into individual task lists and then a time frame can be set onto each task to finally complete the whole project.

Primarily this is what an ITIL implementation would look like at an early stage.

I will continue to contribute to this column on ITIL if i get a decent number of requests for the same :)

Warm Regards
Avid
MCSA (M+S), ITIL, CEH