When companies are interested in managing their IT operations, there is what we call an ITSM culture to adopt. This culture helps their teams acquire maturity and improve their productivity.
ITIL, is one of the most popular frameworks and standards for ITSM. It is a set of methods and processes describing how IT operations should be managed and it comes with a set of definitions. Here are some of them :
· Incident : An unplanned interruption or a degradation of an IT service. A failure of a configuration item, whether it has impacted a service or not is also considered as an incident.
· Major incident : A major event, an incident with the biggest impact. An incident requiring measures that surpass the ones that are usually taken in case of a regular incident. An example of a major incident is an issue that might compromise the security of the organisation such as a data leak, loss of critical equipments, etc.
· Problem : The cause of one or multiple incidents. Usually when a problem is recorded, its root cause is still not known. It is important for everyone in the organisation to know the difference between an incident and a problem. Besides, in ITIL, it is a good practice to have the incident manager different from the problem manager. This simple habit can help both managers better prioritize their operations.
· Change : The addition, modification or removal of any component that might affect IT services. This includes all IT services, configuration items, processes, documentation, etc.
· Release : If changes are approved, they go to release. Thus, a release is a set of methods, processes, software and hardware required to implement an approved change.
· Service Request : One might ask what is the difference between a service request and a change request. Service requests are, for example, requests to provide additionnal accesses or IT services to a new employee. This is handeled by the service HelpDesk and do not require a request for change to be performed. Stakeholders or teams in charge will have established this rule. Thus, they are now considered as service requests and not changes.
It is important to popularize these definitions and to assure their global understanding in any organization. In fact, the maturity of IT processes in regards to the ITIL framework should be measured and monitored. On a scale of 0 to 5, ITIL describes a process as having a maturity level of 0 as being an incomplete and chaotic process. However, having a measure of 5 out of 5 means the process is optimized and completely integrated.
Author : Waddhah Mhamdi