Glossary - ITIL Foundation 2011

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Terms
What is ITIL?

What is Service
Management?
What is IT Service
Management (ITSM)?
Service

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4 perspectives of ITSM
What is a process?

Characteristics of a process

Function

Role

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Service owner

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Process owner

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What is RACI?

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Capabilities

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Resources

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Description/Explanation
Information technology Infrastructure Library- A set of
best-practice publications for IT service management
A set of specialized organizational capabilities for
providing value to customers in the form of services
The implementation and management of quality IT
services that meet the needs of the business
A means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating
outcomes customers want to achieve without the
ownership of specific costs or risks.
People, partners, process, products
A set of coordinated activities combining and
implementing resources and capabilities in order to
produce an outcome and provide value to customers or
stakeholders
Processes are measurable, delivers specific results,
deliver primary outcomes to customers or stakeholders,
responds to specific events (Triggers)
A team or group of people and the tools or other
resources they use to carry out one or more processes or
activities. E.g. Service desk
A set of responsibilities, activities and authorities
assigned to a person or team
A role responsible for managing one or more services
throughout their entire lifecycle. Responsible for
developing strategy for their service
E.g. Owner of Email service
The person who is held accountable for ensuring that a
process is fit for purpose. His responsibilities include
sponsorship, design, continual improvement of the
process and its metrics
A model used to help define roles and responsible. RACI
stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and
Informed
The ability of an organization, processes, people,
management, and Knowledge. They are intangible assets
of an organization.
A generic term that includes IT infrastructure, people,

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Types of service provider

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Best Practice

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Customer
User
Value creation
What is Utility?

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What is Warranty?

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3 Service Packages

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Business case

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Risk

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5 Lifecycles of ITIL

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Purpose of Service Strategy

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Processes of Service
Strategy

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Purpose of Service Portfolio

management

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What does Service portfolio

contain?
Service pipeline

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Service catalogue

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money, or anything else that might help to deliver an IT

service. Resources are also considered to be tangible
assets of an organization.
Internal (Type1), Shared Services unit (Type II), External
service provider (Type III)
Proven activities or processes that have been successfully
used by multiple organizations.
E.g. ITIL is an example of best practice
Someone who buys goods and services.
A person who uses the IT Service on a day to day basis.
Created by combination of Utility and Warranty
Fit for purpose Functionality/Features offered to meet
a particular need (what a service does).
Fit for use How the service is delivered
Warranty refers to Availability, Capacity, continuity and
Security
Core Service package, Supporting Service package,
Service Level package
Justification for a significant item of expenditure.
Includes information about costs, benefits, options,
issues, risks and possible problems
Risk is defined as uncertainty of outcome, whether
positive opportunity or negative threat
Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition,
Service Operations and Continual Service Improvement
Design, develop and implement service management as a
strategic asset and assisting growth of the organization.
Define the strategic objectives of the IT organization.
Strategy management for IT services, Service Portfolio
management, Finance management for IT services,
Demand management, Business Relationship
management
To ensure that the service provider has the right mix of
services to balance the investment in IT
To track investments throughout their lifecycle and
ensure that appropriate returns are achieved
Service pipeline, Service catalogue and Retired services
A document listing all IT services that are under
consideration or development, but are not yet available
to customers
A document with information about all live IT services,

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Retired services
Service Portfolio
management process
activities
Investment categories

What is the purpose of

Financial management for
IT services?
Benefits of Financial
management process
3 activities of Finance
management
Purpose of Demand
management

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Objectives of Demand
management

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What is PBA?

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User profiles

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Purpose of Business
Relationship management
process
Key activities of BRM
process
Scope of BRM

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Purpose of Service Design

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What are the aspects of

Service Design?

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including those available for deployment

Decommissioned services
Define, Analyze, Approve, Charter

Run the Business (RTB)

Grow the Business (GTB)
Transform the Business (TTB)
To secure the appropriate level of funding to design,
develop and deliver services. It identifies the balance
between cost and quality of service
Enhanced decision making, Financial compliance and
control, Improved insight and communication of the
value created by IT services etc.
Budgeting, Accounting and Charging
To understand, anticipate and influence customer
demands for services and to work with Capacity
management to ensure the Service provider has capacity
to meet its demand
Identify and analyze patterns of business activity (PBA).
Define and analyze User profiles and influence the
demand
A workload profile of one or more business activities.
Represents changing business demands
A pattern of user demand for IT services. Each user
profile includes one or more PBAs
To establish and maintain relationship between the
service provider and customer based on understanding
the customer and their changing business needs
Being the voice of the service provider to the customer
Being the voice of the customer to the service provider
Business outcomes that the customer wants to achieve
How to optimize services for the future
Ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction etc.
The main purpose of service design stage of the lifecycle
is the design of new or changed services together with
governing IT practices, processes and policies for
introduction into the live environment
Design Management information systems and tools
Design of service solutions
Design of technology architectures

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Primary output of Service

Design
Contents of Service Design
Package (SDP)

4 Ps of Service
Management
Processes in Service Design

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Purpose of Service
Catalogue Management

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2 view structure of Service

Catalogue
What is Business Service
Catalogue?

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What is Technical Service

Catalogue?

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3 view structure of Service

Catalogue
Purpose of Service Level
management

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Service level requirements

(SLR)
What is service Level
agreement (SLA)?

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Design processes
Design measurement methods and metrics
Service Design Package (SDP)
Business Requirements, Service Applicability, Service
Contacts, Service Functional Requirements, Service Level
Requirements, Service Program, Service Transition Plan,
Service Operational Plan, Service Acceptance Criteria,
Service Design & Topology, Organizational Readiness
Assessment etc.
People, Products, Partners, Processes
Service Catalogue Management
Service Level Management
Supplier Management
Capacity Management
Availability management
IT Service Continuity management
Information Security management
Design co-ordination
To provide and maintain single source of consistent
information on all operational services, and those being
prepared to run operationally, and to ensure that it is
widely available to those who are authorized to access it
Business Service Catalogue, Technical Service Catalogue
This contains details of all the IT services delivered to the
customer (customer facing services) together with the
relationships to the business units and business
processes that rely on the IT services
This contains details of all the supporting IT services,
together with relationships to the customer facing
services they underpin and the components
Wholesale Customer view, Retail customer view,
supporting services view
To ensure that all the current and planned IT services are
delivered to agreed achievable targets and to correct or
improve the level of service delivered
Detailed recording of the customers needs, forming the
basis for design criteria for the new or changed service
An agreement between an IT Service provider and a
customer. The SLA describes the IT service, Service level

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targets and specifies the responsibilities of the IT service

provider and the customer
Operational level
Internal agreement with another function of the same
agreement (OLA)
organization which supports the IT service provider in
their delivery of their services
SLAM chart
A service level agreement monitoring (SLAM) chart is
used to help monitor and report achievement against
Service Level targets
SLA structures
Service-based SLA, Customer-based SLA, Multi-levelbased SLA (Corporate level, Customer level, and Service
level)
Service Improvement plan
Formal plans to implement improvements to a process or
service.
Purpose of Supplier
To manage suppliers and to obtain value for money from
management
suppliers to provide seamless quality of IT service to the
business and ensure that underpinning contracts and
agreements with suppliers are aligned to business needs
and they meet their contractual commitments
Categorization of Suppliers Strategic, Tactical, Operational and Commodity
Under Pinning contract (UC) Contract with an external supplier that supports the IT
organization in the delivery of their services
What is SCD?
Supplier and Contracts database
Purpose of Capacity
To ensure that cost justifiable IT capacity in all areas of IT
management
always exist and is matched to the current and future
agreed needs of the business in a timely manner
Sub processes of Capacity
Business capacity management, Service capacity
management
management, Component capacity management
Business capacity
Manage capacity to meet future business requirements
management
for IT services
Service Capacity
Management, control and prediction of the end to end
management
performance and capacity of the live operational service
usage and work loads
Component capacity
Management, control and prediction of the performance,
management
utilization and capacity of individual IT technology
components
Contents of Capacity
Capacity performance reports, data, forecasts and
management information
Capacity plans
systems (CMIS)
What is Application sizing?
Determining the hardware or network capacity to
support new or modified applications and the predicted
workload
What is modeling?
A technique that is used to forecast the behavior of the

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What is fine tuning?

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Purpose of Availability
management

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Availability

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Formula to calculate
availability

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Reliability

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Maintainability

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Serviceability

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Vital Business Functions

(VBFs)
What is MTRS?

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What is MTBF?

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What is MTTR?

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Purpose of IT service
continuity management
process?

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Business Impact Analysis

(BIA)

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Activities of IT service
continuity management
What is Business Continuity
management (BCM)?
Purpose of IT Security
Management

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system, process, CI etc. under certain conditions

Modifications made for better utilization of current
infrastructures
To ensure both the current and future availability needs
of the business are met and the level of service
availability delivered in all services is matched to or
exceeds the current and future business requirements, in
a cost effective and timely manner
The ability of an IT Service or component to perform its
required function at a stated instant or over a stated
period of time.
Availability = Agreed Service Time (AST)- Down Time
(DT)/Agreed Service Time*100
A measure of how long a component or IT service can
perform its agreed operation without interruption
A measure of how quickly and effectively a component or
IT service can be restored to normal working of a failure
The ability of a third party supplier to meet the terms of
its contract
The business critical elements of the business process
supported by an IT service
Meantime to restore service - The average time taken to
restore a service Down time
Meantime between failures is the average time that an
IT service or CI can perform its agreed function without
interruption Uptime
Mean time to repair The average time taken to repair
an IT service or CI after a failure
To support overall business continuity management
(BCM) process by ensuring that the required IT technical
and service facilities can be resumed within the required
and agreed business timescales
Quantifies the impact to the business that loss of IT
service would have and identifies the most important
services to the organization
Initiation, Requirements and Strategy, Implementation,
Ongoing operations
Strategies and actions to take place to continue business
processes in case of a disaster
To align IT security with business security and ensure that
information security is effectively managed in all service

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Confidentiality

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Integrity

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Availability
Purpose of Design
coordination

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Scope of Design
coordination

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Purpose of Service
transition lifecycle phase

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Purpose of Transition,
planning & support process

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Processes of Service
Transition

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Purpose of Change
management

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Change types
Normal change

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Standard change

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Emergency change

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Remediation

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and IT service management activities

Protecting information against unauthorized access and
use
Accuracy, completeness and timelines of services, data
information, systems and physical locations
The information should be accessible at any agreed time
To ensure that the objectives of the service design stages
are met by providing and maintaining a single point of
coordination and control for all activities and processes
within this stage of the service life cycle
All design activities and all new or changed service
solutions that are being designed for transition into the
live environment or retirement
To ensure that new, modified or retired services meet
the expectations of the business as documented in
Service strategy and Service design
The purpose of the Transition, planning and support
process is to provide overall planning for service
transitions and to coordinate the resources that they
require
Transition Planning and Support
Change Management
Service Asset and Configuration management
Release and Deployment management
Knowledge management
The purpose of change management process is to control
the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to
be made with minimum disruption to IT services
Normal changes, Standard changes, Emergency changes
A change that is not an emergency or standard change
which follows the defined steps of the change
management process
A pre-authorized change that is low in risk, relatively
common and follows a procedure or work instruction.
E.g. Password reset
A change that must be introduced as soon as possible
(e.g. to resolve a major incident or implement a security
patch). the change management process will normally
have a specific procedure for handling emergency
changes
Recovery of a known state after a failed change or
release

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Change proposal

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Change Advisory board

(CAB)

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7 Rs of Change
management

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Purpose of Service Asset

and configuration
management

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What is a Configuration
item (CI)?

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Configuration baseline

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Configuration management
database (CMDB)

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Configuration management
system (CMS)
Definitive media library

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Definitive Spares

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Purpose of Release and

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A document that includes a high level description of a

potential service introduction or significant change
A group of people that support the assessment,
prioritization, authorization and scheduling of changes.
Usually made up of representatives from all areas within
the IT service provider, business and suppliers
Who Raised the change? What is the Reason for the
change? What is the Return required from the change?
What are the Risks involved in the change? What
Resources are required to deliver the change? Who is
Responsible for the build, test and implementation of the
change? What is the Relationship between the change
and other changes?
The purpose of SACM is to ensure that the assets
required to deliver services are properly controlled and
that accurate and reliable information about these assets
is available when and where it is needed
Any component or other service asset that needs to be
managed in order to deliver an IT service which are under
the control of Change management
E.g. Hardware, Software, people, Formal documentation
etc.
The baseline of a configuration that has been formally
agreed and is managed through the change management
process which is used as a basis for future builds, releases
and changes
A database used to store configuration records
throughout their lifecycle and stores attributes of CIs and
their relationships
A set of tools, data and information that is used to
support service asset and configuration management.
A secured library in which the definitive authorized
versions of all media CIs are stored and protected. It
stores master copies of versions that have passed quality
assurance tools
Physical storage of all spare IT components and
assemblies maintained at the same level as those within
the live environment. These can then be used when
needed for additional systems or in the recovery from
incidents. Details are recorded in the CMDB, controlled
by Release Management
To plan, schedule and control the build, test and

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What is a release unit?

Release

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Release package

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Release types
Major release
Minor release
Emergency release
Release and deployment
approaches
Purpose of knowledge
management

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What is DIKW?
What is SKMS?

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Purpose of Service
Operations lifecycle

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Processes in Service
Operations lifecycle

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Functions in Service
operations lifecycle

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Purpose of Event
management

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deployment of releases and to deliver new functionality

required by the business while protecting the integrity of
existing services
CIs that are normally released together
One or more changes to an IT service that are built,
tested and deployed together
A set of CIs that will be built, tested and deployed
together as a single release
Major release, Minor release, Emergency release
Containing large proportions of new functionalities.
Contains small enhancements and fixes
Normally lined to an emergency change
Big bang versus phased approach, Push versus Pull
approach, Automated versus Manual deployment
The purpose of the knowledge management is to share
perspectives, ideas, experience and information and to
ensure that these are available in the right place, right
time to enable informed decisions and to improve
efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge
Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom
Service knowledge management system which is a set of
tools and databases that is used to manage knowledge,
information and data
To coordinate and carryout the activities and processes
required to deliver and manage services at agreed levels
to business users and customers and responsible for the
ongoing management of technology that is used to
deliver and support services
Event management
Incident management
Problem management
Request fulfillment
Access management
Service Desk
Technical management
Applications management
IT operations management
The purpose of event management is to manage events
throughout their lifecycle. The activities are to detect
events, make sense of them and determine appropriate
control action is coordinated by the event management
process

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Event

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Alert

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Trigger

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Types of events
Purpose of Incident
management

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What is an incident?

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What is an impact?

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Urgency

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Priority

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Incident model

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2 types of escalations
Major incident
Purpose of Problem
management

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Problem
Reactive Problem
management
Proactive problem
management

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What is KEDB?

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A change of state that has significance for the

management of a Configuration Item (including IT
Services). This can be detected by technical staff or can
be automated alerts or notifications created by CI
monitoring tools
A warning that a threshold has been reached or
something has been changed (an event has occurred).
An indication that some action or response to an event
may be needed
Informational, Warning and Exceptional
To restore normal services operation as quickly as
possible and thereby minimize the adverse impact on the
business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible
levels of service quality and availability are maintained.
An unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in
the quality of an IT service. Failure of a CI that has not yet
affected service is also an incident
A measure of the effect of an incident, problem or
change in business processes
A measure of how long it will be until an incident,
problem or change has a significant impact on the
business
The relative importance of an incident, problem or
change. Priority is based on impact and urgency
Predefined steps for handling a particular type of incident
that has been seen before
Functional and Hierarchical
The highest category of impact for an incident
Problem management seeks to identify the root cause of
incidents or to minimize the adverse impacts of incidents
and problems that are caused by the underlying errors
Eliminate recurring incidents and to minimize the impact
of the incidents that cannot be prevented
Underlying cause of one or more incidents
Resolution of underlying root cause
Prevention of future problems by analyzing incident
records and using data collected by other IT service
management processes and external sources to identify
trends or significant problems. Generally it is undertaken
as part of Continual service improvement
Known Error Database

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What is Work around?

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Purpose of Request
fulfillment

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Service Request

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Request model
Purpose of Access
management

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Activities of Access
management
What is Access?

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Identity

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Rights

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Purpose of Service Desk

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Service Desk Organizational

structures
What is Self help?

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Purpose of Technical
management

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A set of predefined steps to take as a means of reducing

or eliminating the impact of an incident or problem (e.g.
restarting a failed Configuration Item). Workarounds for
problems are documented in the Known Error records in
the KEDB
The purpose of request fulfillment is to manage all
service requests raised by the users throughout the
lifecycle
A formal request from a user for something to be
provided. E.g. Request for information, advice, password
reset etc.
Specific procedures for handling certain types of requests
To grant access to other authorized users, the right to use
a service while preventing access to non-authorized users
by enforcing the policies defined by Information Security
and Availability management
Verification, providing rights, monitoring identity status,
logging and tracking access, removing or restricting rights
Access refers to the level and extent of services
functionality or data that a user is entitled to use
The information about the user that distinguishes them
as an individual and which verifies their status within the
organisation
Also called privileges, refer to the actual settings where
by a user is provided access to a service or group of
services.
Improved customer service, perception of IT and
satisfaction with IT services
Increase accessibility to IT services through a single point
of contact, communication and information
Better quality and faster turnaround of customer or user
IT requests
Local Service Desk, Centralized Service Desk, Virtual
Service Desk, Follow the sun and Specialized
Refers to any means where the user may assist
themselves to seek support (e.g. FAQs, Intranet
forms/requests, Web-based support, Back-end processhandling software)
To help plan, implement and maintain a stable technical
infrastructure to support the organizations business
processes and to provide detailed hands on skills and
resource to support the IT infrastructure

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Role of Technical
management

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Purpose of Application
management
Activities of Application
management

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Purpose of IT operations
management

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Sub functions of IT
operations management
Role of IT operations
control

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Role of Facilities
management

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What is CSI?
Purpose of CSI

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Goal of Service
measurement and
reporting
What is service
measurement?
Reasons to monitor and

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Custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related

to managing IT Infrastructure. Provides detailed technical
skills and resources needed to support the ongoing
operation of the IT Infrastructure. Plays an important role
in providing the actual resources to support the IT Service
Management lifecycle. Ensures resources are effectively
trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate
and improve the technology to deliver and support IT
Services.
Application management is responsible for managing
applications throughout their lifecycle
Application Management
Application development
Identify skills required to support the applications
Deciding whether to build or buy.
The focus is on building, repeatable, consistent actions
which if repeated frequently at the right qualitative level
will ensure the success of operations
The actual value of the services being delivered by the
organisation is delivered and measured
IT operations control and Facilities management
Oversees the execution and monitoring of the
operational activities and events in the IT infrastructure.
Includes console management, job scheduling, Backup
and restore, Print and output management and
maintenance activities
The management of physical IT environment, typically a
datacenter or computer rooms and recovery sites
together with all the power and cooling equipment
Continual Service Improvement
To align IT services with changing business needs by
identifying and implementing improvements to IT
services and processes that support the business.
Improve effectiveness, efficiency and economics of all
processes associated with delivering services
To coordinate the design of metrics, data collection and
reporting activities from the other processes and
functions
The ability to predict and report service performance
against targets of an end to end service
To validate

measure

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CSI Register

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Improvement

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Benefit
Return on Investment (ROI)

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Value on Investment (VOI)

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Baseline

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Types of Metrics

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Technology metrics

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Process metrics

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Service metrics

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What is PDCA?
Plan

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Do
Check

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Act
4 types of Key performance
Indicators
Purpose of Seven step
improvement process

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Seven step improvement

process- stages

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To justify
To intervene
To direct
Contains important information for the overall service
provider
Favorable outcome showing a measurable increase in a
desirable metric or a decrease in undesirable metric
Gain achieved from improvement
Quantifiable monetary benefit achieved by expending a
certain amount of money, usually expressed as a
percentage
Non-monetary benefit such as branding, achieved by
expending a certain amount of money
Benchmark used as a reference point for later
comparison
Technology metrics
Process metrics
Service metrics
Often associated with component and application-based
metrics such as performance, availability etc
Captured in the form of Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) and activity metrics for the service management
processes. They help to determine the overall health of a
process
The results of the end-to-end service. Component
metrics are used to calculate the service metrics
Plan, Do, Check, Act Deming cycle
Establish the objectives and processes necessary to
deliver results in accordance with customer requirements
and the organizations policies
Implement the processes
Monitor and measure processes and product against
policies, objectives and requirement for the product and
report the results
Take actions to continually improve process performance
Quality, Performance, Value, and Compliance.
To define and manage the steps needed to identify,
define, gather, process, analyze, present and implement
improvements
Step
1. Identify the strategy for improvement

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4.
5.
6.
7.
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Continual service
improvement model

Define what you will measure

Gather the data
Process the data
Analyze the information and data
Present and use the information
Implement improvement

What is the vision?

Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?
Did we get there?
How do we keep the momentum going?

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