Sunday, May 27, 2012

ITIL: Study Notes for “ISEB BH0-012 – The Foundation ITIL” Exam

Source :-  http://cosonok.blogspot.in/2012/03/

ITIL was built around Deming's plan-do-check-act cycle.

Definitions
+ Definitive media library (DML) = a secure library where definitive authorized versions of all media configuration items (CIs) are stored and protected
+ Governance = is concerned with policy and direction.
+ ITIL Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
Implementation of ITIL service management requires the preparation and planning of the effective and efficient use of the four Ps = PeopleProcessProductsPartners
+ Service Management = a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providingvalue to customers in the form of services.
+ Service request = a request from a user for informationadvice, or for a standard change.
+ SLA Service Level Agreement: An agreement between the service provider and their customer

ITIL Service Lifecycle
1. Service Strategy
2. Service DesignDesign the Processes
3. Service TransitionPlan and Prepare for Deployment
4. Service OperationIT Operations Management
5. Continual Service Improvement
1. Service Strategy
1.1 Strategy Management for IT services
1.2 Service Portfolio Management
1.3 Financial Management of IT Services
… ensuring that the IT infrastructure is obtained at the most effective price (which does not necessarily mean cheapest) and calculating the cost of providing IT services so that an organisation can understand the costs of its IT services.
1.4 Demand Management
1.5 Business Relationship Management

2. Service Design
A service should always deliver value to customers.
Resources and capabilities create value for customers.
The Service Design Stage is MOST concerned with defining policies and objectives, and includes:
Producing quality, secure, and resilient designs for new or improved services
Taking service strategies and ensuring they are reflected in the service design processes and the service designs that are produced
Measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of service design and the supporting processes
service design package (SDP) contains information that is passed to service transition to enable the implementation of a new service.
2.1 Design Coordination
2.2 Service Catalogue
The responsibility of service catalogue management:
+ Ensuring that information in the service catalogue is accurate
+ Ensuring that information in the service catalogue is consistent with information in the service portfolio
+ Ensuring that all operation services are recorded in the service catalogue
2.3 Service Level Management
The purpose of service level management = to ensure an agreed level of IT service is provided for all current IT services.
Service level management process is responsible for discussing reports with customers showing whether services have met their targets.
2.4 Availability Management
Reliability: Ability of an IT component to perform at an agreed level at described conditions.
Maintainability: The ability of an IT component to remain in, or be restored to an operational state.
Serviceability: The ability for an external supplier to maintain the availability of component or function under a third-party contract.
Resilience: A measure of freedom from operation failure and a method of keeping services reliable (e.g. redundancy)
Security: refers to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of that data.
2.5 Capacity Management
The capacity management process includes business, service, and component sub-processes. The high-level activities include:
+ Application sizing
+ Workload management
+ Demand management
+ Modelling
+ Capacity planning
+ Resource management
+ Performance management
2.6 IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM)
Involves the following basic steps:
prioritising the activities to be recovered by conducting a business impact analysis(BIA)
+ performing a risk assessment (risk analysis) for each of the IT services to identify the assets, threats, vulnerabilities and countermeasures for each service
+ evaluating the options for recovery
+ producing the contingency plan / business continuity strategy
testing, reviewing, and revising the plan on a regular basis
2.7 Information Security Management System
2.8 Supplier Management
Third-party contracts are the responsibility of supplier management to negotiate and agree.

3. Service Transition
Service transition stage responsibilities:
+ To ensure that a service can be managed and operated in accordance with constraints specified during design
+ To provide good-quality knowledge and information about services
+ To plan the resources required to manage a release
3.1 Transition planning and support
3.2 Change management
The RACI Matrix – Who's Responsible, Accountable, Consulted... and kept Informed
R(esponsible) – Who is responsible for actually doing it?
A(ccountable) – Who has authority to approve or disapprove it?
C(onsulted) – Who has needed input about the task?
I(nformed) – Who needs to be kept informed about the task?
The main aims of change management include:
Minimal disruption of services
+ Reduction in back-out activities
+ Economic use of resources involved in the change
Emergency change advisory board: group that should review changes that must be implemented faster than the normal change process
3.3 Service asset and configuration management
The configuration management system is part of the service knowledge management system.
The configuration management system (CMS) can help determine the level of impactof a problem.
The relationship in service asset and configuration management describes how theconfiguration items (CIs) work together to deliver services.
Includes the following key process areas:
+ Identification
+ Planning
+ Change Control
+ Change Management
+ Release Management
+ Maintenance
3.4 Release and deployment management
Objectives of release and deployment managementTo define and agree release and deployment plans with customers and stakeholders. The goals of release management include:
Planning the roll-out of software
Designing and implementing procedures for the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems
+ Effectively communicating and managing expectations of the customer during the planning and roll-out of new releases
Controlling the distribution and installation of changes to IT systems
3.5 Service Validation and testing
3.6 Change evaluation
3.7 Knowledge management

4. Service Operation
Service operation stage of the service lifecycle, delivers and manages IT services atagreed levels to business users and customers. Service operations contribution to business is adding value, and the service value is visible to customers.
The following areas of service management can benefit from automation:
+ Design and modelling
+ Reporting
+ Pattern recognition and analysis
+ Detection and monitoring
List of processes:
4.1 Event management
The event management process is involved in monitoring an IT service and detecting when the performance drops below acceptable limits
4.2 Incident management
*Major incidents require separate procedures.
The objectives of incident management:
+ To restore normal service operation as quickly as possible
+ To minimize adverse impacts on business operations
4.3 Request fulfilment
4.4 Problem management
problem = a condition often identified as a result of multiple incidents that exhibit common symptons.
Objectives of problem management:
+ Minimizing the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented
+ Preventing problems and resulting incidents from happening
+ Eliminating recurring incidents
4.5 Access management
Access management process is responsible for providing rights to use an IT service.

5. Continual Service Improvement (CSI)
Where to we want to be?
Define measurable targets (Service metrics measure: The end-to-end service.)
Improvement initiatives typically follow a seven-step process:
5.1 Identify the strategy for improvement
5.2 Define what you will measure
5.3 Gather the data
5.4 Process the data
5.5 Analyse the information and data
5.6 Present and use the information
5.7 Implement improvement

Appendix A: ITIL Function – Service Desk (function of Service Operation)
Service desk features include:
+ single point of contact (SPOC)
+ single point of entry
+ single point of exit
+ make life easier for customers
data integrity
incident control: life-cycle management of all service requests
communication: keeping a customer informed of progress and advising on workarounds
Types of service desk structure:
Local service desk: to meet local business needs
Central service desk: for organisations having multiple locations
Virtual service desk: for organisations having multi-country locations
+ Follow the Sun

Appendix B: ITIL Function - Software Asset Management (function of Service Operation)
Software asset management (SAM) practices include:
+ maintaining software license compliance
tracking inventory and software asset use
maintaining standard policies and procedures surrounding definition, deployment, configuration, use, and retirement of software assets and the DML