The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework for IT Service Management. If you haven't heard of ITIL yet, you will soon. From the ITIL website:
ITIL is best practice in IT Service Management, developed by OGC and supported by publications, qualifications and an international user group.
ITIL is intended to assist organisations to develop a framework for IT Service Management. Worldwide, ITIL is the most widely used best practice for IT Service Management.
...and...
IT Service Management is a top-down, business driven approach to the management of IT that specifically addresses the strategic business value generated by the IT organisation and the need to deliver a high quality IT service. IT Service Management is designed to focus on the people, processes and technology issues that IT organisations face.
ITIL started out in the UK as an effort to collect and publish IT service management best practices. It is managed and published by the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC) at http://www.itil.co.uk. There are other organizations that have great websites on ITIL and IT Service Management, but for today's post, I will focus on resources available to you on the official ITIL website. The intent of this post to provide those who have little or now knowledge of ITIL pointers to pages and resources provided by OCG that would make a good beginners map.
ITIL Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.itil.co.uk/faqs.htm
This FAQ gives you the who, what, when, where and how answers for using ITIL as a framework for IT service management.
ITIL Glossary
http://www.itil.co.uk/glossary.htm
We data management people just love terms and definitions. This glossary, available after you agree to their terms of use, is extensive. It contains hundreds of terms and abbreviations relevant to ITIL.
ITIL Publications
http://www.itil.co.uk/publications.htm
ITIL's framework is described in a series of relatively pricey books and CDs.
ITIL Best Practices
http://www.get-best-practice.co.uk/
Via an external link, you can subscribe (annual fee required) to ITIL and Prince2 (Project Management) Best Practices online content.
ITIL Successful Delivery Toolkit
http://www.ogc.gov.uk/sdtoolkit/
The OGC also offers a free Successful Delivery Toolkit that includes sections targeted at various IT roles. There are references, case studies, documentations templates and role based views. Some of these are focused on Requirements Management, which may be of interest to our members.
With the above overview of resources on the ITIL websites, I've given you some great places to start your learning in ITIL. My take on ITIL is that in a way, it is much like the Zachman Framework -- not in content, but in how both frameworks describe concepts that are already being done but probably not done well because most people don't even know they exist. John Zachman is often quoted as saying that an enterprise's models exist, they just exist in everyone's heads. I believe that IT Service Management exists in organizations, it's just not well managed, mentored, trained, budgeted for, formalized or recognized. The ITIL Framework provides a tool for managing mentoring, training, budgeted and recognizing IT management.
Watch for future posts on ITIL Certifications: Myths and Misunderstandings.