Is ITIL(r) All Theory and No Practice?

IT organizations exist to provide computing resources and services needed by their customers. Customers range from businesses to academic organizations and government agencies, each having their own unique requirements. The technical practices discussed at this conference would not be needed were it not for customer needs and requirements. These customers pay our salaries. They pay for the hardware, the software, the datacenter space, and everything else we need to do our jobs. In return, they expect IT services. IT Service Management—specifically, ITIL(r)—is simply a way of looking at how we provide those services and determining whether we are doing it in the most effective and efficient ways.

This talk provides an overview of the IT Service Management lifecycle described in version 3 of the IT Infrastructure Library. Through references to papers and invited talks from previous LISA conferences, this talk offers concrete examples of the work we do in the context of the IT service lifecycle stages: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement.