IT Service Management An Introduction

There is a lot of confusion about ITIL, stemming from all kinds of misunderstandings about its nature. While the Service Management sets (Service Support and Service Delivery) are by far the most widely used, circulated and understood of ITIL publications, ITIL provides a more comprehensive set of practices as a whole. The Visible OPS Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps claims to be based on ITIL but to focus specifically on the biggest "bang for the buck" elements of ITIL.

The most current revision of PRINCE2 was released in 2005 by the Office of Government Commerce, and it is currently undergoing a refresh for 2008-9. Problem management is different from incident management. IT Service Management An Introduction The focus of release management is the protection of the live environment and its services through the use of formal procedures and checks.

Companies should realise that it is important to be liaising with Availability Management, Capacity Management, Incident Management and Problem Management to ensure that the required levels and quality of service are achieved within the resources agreed with Financial Management. These disciplines are less well understood than those of Service Management and therefore often some of their content is believed to be covered 'by implication' in Service Management disciplines.

The process of writing computer software for sale, or designing a microprocessor would not be the focus of the discipline, but the computer systems used by marketing and business development staff in software and hardware companies would be.