IT Service Management Forum

The goal of 'Problem Management' is to resolve the root cause of incidents and thus to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on business that are caused by errors within the IT infrastructure, and to prevent recurrence of incidents related to these errors. In a 2004 survey designed by Noel Bruton (author of 'How to Manage the IT Helpdesk' and 'Managing the IT Services Process'), ITIL adopting organizations were asked to relate their actual experiences in having implemented ITIL. Although developed during the 1980s, ITIL was not widely adopted until the mid 1990s.

The focus of release management is the protection of the live environment and its services through the use of formal procedures and checks. This process builds on the work of the Start Up (SU) activity and the project brief is augmented to form a Business Case. IT Service Management Forum PRINCE2 was released in 1996 as a generic project management method.

Security is the means to be safe against risks. Incidents initiate a chain of processes: Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, Release Management and Configuration Management (see following sections for details).

The primary author of the IBM yellow books was Edward A. Van Schaik