If ITIL is the answer, what's the question!?
Nov
27
Written by:
HelpMaster Administrator
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
There's a lot of talk about ITIL in the industry at the moment and it seems as if ITIL has all the answers for better service delivery and management...but what's the question?
Over the last few years, ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) has been getting a lot of attention and gaining momentum around the world. What started in the UK as a set of best-practices for the support industry has become a mature framework for the management of not only IT related support, but for the management of the entire enterprise IT infrastructure.
ITIL is a subject that anyone involved in the support industry needs to be aware of, and especially so for vendors such as PRD Software who provide solutions that fit in this space. Over the years, PRD Software has often been asked about how HelpMaster Pro and ITIL relate.
It’s a good question, however what’s been really interesting to hear though, is the context in which the question has been asked. Sometimes it’s a question that’s just part of a tender document. Other times the questions may go something like
- “What’s ITIL!?”
- “How much it your ITIL version of the software?”
…or the ever popular …
- “Is your software ITIL compliant?”
Regarding this last question, it’s interesting to note the official response from the industry about such a question. Quoting from the publication “An introductory overview of ITIL” from the itSMF group, page 7 says…
“ITIL provides “best practice” guidelines and architectures to ensure that IT processes are closely aligned to business processes and that IT delivers the correct and appropriate business solution. ITIL is not a standard, nor is it rules or regulations and therefore neither tools, processes or people can be deemed “ITIL compliant”. Processes and organizations can be assessed against BS 15000, the IT Service Management standard. However, neither tools nor individuals can be certified against BS 15000…”
Interesting stuff – no “ITIL compliant” software actually exists!
Trade shows are great source of such questioning. So much so, that at Australia’s largest annual helpdesk trade show I decided to put the following question to the convention audience. Writing on a large sheet of paper in a prominent position near the PRD Software booth I wrote the following...
“If ITIL is the answer, what’s the question!?”
It was a topic that got immediate attention…and a lot of varied responses.
So what’s this got to do with HelpMaster Pro?
This week at PRD Software I spent a lot of “brain-storming” time with the principal consultant from one of Australia’s leading ITSM consulting firms, Solisma. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the state of the industry as well as looking at training and consulting opportunities for HelpMaster Pro. (There are some exciting developments in this area which I’ll be writing about in future postings so stay tuned…). We also discussed how PRD Software can work toward making HelpMaster Pro compliment the ITIL framework even better than it already does.
There were a lot of good ideas thrown on the table.
The result?
Since coming to market, HelpMaster Pro has always been a competitive product in the helpdesk and service industry marketplace. Regarding ITIL, HelpMaster Pro has at all times been able to apply and implement the principles of incident and problem management - core features within the ITIL framework. However, there’s always room for improvement, and no software is ever complete – it’s always a work-in-progress.
As a result of the ideas talked about this week, we’ve got some great ideas for future development regarding HelpMaster Pro and ITIL. Here’s a shortened shortlist.
· Better support for “Priority” codes. ITIL encourages the concept of having the priority of a call determined via a calculation of both “Urgency” and “Impact”. Currently HelpMaster Pro does not have any native support for such codes, however it can be achieved via the use of custom fields appearing on the “Custom” tab of a job. We plan to make this aspect of logging a job intuitive, fast and in-line with the ITIL specifications for specifying the priority of a call.
· Better job linking support. HelpMaster Pro already supports the linking of jobs to other job, either in a simple bi-directional link, or via a parent-child relationship. In future releases of HelpMaster Pro we plan to make this whole process a lot easier, as well as a lot more intuitive.
· Better support to link Knowledge Base articles to Jobs. HelpMaster Pro currently links jobs with Knowledge Base articles via their common use of the Issue classification. Our plan is to build a system where Knowledge base articles can be explicitly linked to individual jobs and vice-versa. This will make problem resolution and searching for known work-arounds a lot easier.
There are a lot of other ideas, but I’ll just mention these 3 for now.
So what do you think? Do you agree / disagree with this focus for future development? What have we missed? I would love to hear about your HelpMaster Pro / ITIL ideas. There are a lot of long-time HelpMaster Pro users out there, so it would be good to get some feedback and get some discussion going on where PRD Software should focus their development efforts in the future. With the release of v8 now imminent, we’re ready to develop, and we’re listening….
Some options for providing feedback are:
- Reply to this blog
- Create a discussion post in our discussion board
- …or email me direct using rod @ prd-software.com.au
Best regards,
Rod
4 comment(s) so far...
Re: If ITIL is the answer, what's the question!?
Interesting no one has commented. Usually a mention of ITIL kicks off some kind of discussion.
I would add change mgt to it. By this I mean a request for change follows a slightly different path than an incident/service request. The concept is the same, log it with as much revelant information as required. Next is authorisation to continue, this can be self authorisation or other parties. Basically the statues might differ. What I would suggest is to add a type of record. these can be user definable but somethign along, incident, problem, service request, change. With in each of those you have categories. The normal 3 would be good see http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol2iss49.pdf a very good articel regardless ig ITIL.
Having not seen helpmaster for 6 years I do not know what it is like now so some of my comments might be wrong.
By Nigel on
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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Re: If ITIL is the answer, what's the question!?
Hi Nigel, thanks for stopping by and contributing.
Implementing a change management process with HelpMaster Pro is quite easy. You use the Template Manager to define a series of Action Templates that correspond to each milestone within the project. Each of these templates can then be completed once the milestone has been reached. Once completed, HelpMaster Pro will automatically re-assign the job (complete with email) to the next person along the line of action. When you combine this with relevant job-statuses and action codes, you can build quite a complex change management process.
That's a great article you linked to. I agree with a lot of what he says, especially the line...
"Interestingly, most trapped in the endless loop of Einstein’s insanity believe they don’t have time
to perform root cause analysis; yet they always have time and resource to fix a failure..."
So true.
Root cause analysis is something that we'd really like HelpMaster Pro to become very good at. We're currently improving the way knowledge base articles are linked to other entities within the system, however one thing that we'd like to get going is a new "resolution screen" that will allow the helpdesk tech to enter a root cause(s).
HelpMaster Pro has come a long way in 6 years.
Best regards,
Rod
By Rod on
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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Re: If ITIL is the answer, what's the question!?
Hi
We are currently still using Helpmaster pro v7.5 and are in the process of upgading to HMP v11. I have had a request to report what is the most common job closure based on ITIL Root cause Analysis. Is there some way of implementing a closure code/description so that i am able to gather data relating to this.
I would be grateful if you could send us any information relating to the latter.
Regards
Randolph
By Randolph on
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
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Re: If ITIL is the answer, what's the question!?
5 years on, and this question is still as relevant as it has always been. Has ITIL proven it's ROI and worth? Would love to hear your experiences.
By Rod Weir on
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
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