Why Even a Little Bit of ITIL Does You Good

Even now, almost 20 years since ITIL was first created, there are still huge misconceptions about it; what it is, what it can do and what the benefits are. One of the most common fallacies is that ITIL is an ‘all or nothing’ endeavor and that to take advantage of the ITIL approach, an organization must implement all elements across all aspects of the Service Desk. Not true! Having implemented over 500 ITIL-compliant service desks, I’m here to tell you that even a little bit of ITIL does you good.

ITIL is such a helpful, logical and systematic approach to dealing with IT service issues that even adopting single elements can bring significant benefits. In fact, this is the most common and successful approach for many companies who choose to pick off the ‘best bits’ according to what may be most relevant to them; incident, problem or change management for instance.

The groundswell of support for ITIL is growing internationally, but for many ITIL just sounds like hard work, a lengthy process working with a dusty engineering approach with dubious payback! It’s true that the IT Infrastructure Library was originally collated for an engineering community, but it has moved on massively since then. All public sector organizations across the UK are working towards adopting the framework over the coming months.

For other organizations, it’s usually pain, or even a disaster, that forces the change. A company may find that it can’t restore files from a back-up as either they weren’t done, or they weren’t tested appropriately for instance. Or they may find that support demands have outgrown their current infrastructure and documented processes of some kind are called for. The service desk consultants may find that they’re spending all their time providing reactionary support, and are unable to be proactive, to analyze the root cause of problems and fix them, let alone work on interesting and challenging projects.

But, the ITIL path cannot be embarked upon lightly; it does call for commitment from all staff and certification can be a considerable expense. One of the most common reasons for ITIL to flop is that companies fail to allocate sufficient time or effort or have unrealistic expectations. We’re all still waiting for that magic wand that can cure all IT woes; ITIL isn’t it.

But it is undeniably the key to multiple benefits. In my experience effective processes for problem management can result in around 60% improvement in service, as the time to resolve issues is slashed and it becomes possible to recognize trends and patterns to avert future incidents. Getting a grip on change management can be equally dramatic as the number of successful changes increases and roll-back procedures are laid out in advance rather than being developed on the fly.

CRMWorks are one of the leading helpdesk software firms in the UK. They specialize in helpdesk software and IT service management.