Frequently Asked Questions

What is ITIL®

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ITIL is the IT Infrastructure Library.  ITIL® is a registered trademark of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in the UK.
ITIL is a collection of best practice guidelines for IT Service Management.

What is the difference between ITIL®V2 and ITIL® V3?

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The ITIL® framework underwent a review and refresh which was released in May 2007 as ITIL® V3.  V3 is presented as a lifecycle of IT Service Management, encompassing 5 phases:

1. Service Strategy
2. Service Design
3. Service Transition
4. Service Operation
5. Continual Service Improvement

If you are familiar with ITIL® V2 you will recognise all the Service Delivery and Service Support Processes in V3.  These have been augmented by additional processes to support the lifecycle structure.  For more information visit our resources section and read our ITIL® Whitepapers.

We want to implement IT Service Management processes - Where do I start?

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They key to a successful process improvement project is to get management support right from the outset.  If you do not have this you will struggle to get the resources you need for a successful project.
If you have the support in place you should start with an assessment of where you currently are… if you do not know where you are starting from you will never be able to prove that you have made any improvements&*#33;

When you are considering which processes to start with first, look at your biggest areas of pain for your customers.  In an organisation which has not implemented any ITIL® processes, incident management is a good place to start.

Are there any options besides ITIL® for improving our IT Service?

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Yes, ITIL® is not the only framework available to help you make improvements in your IT Service Management.

You may want to investigate frameworks such as COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and related Technology) or MOF (Microsoft Operations Framework).

Where can I get help on IT Service Management topics?

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The IT Service Management Forum is an international organisation for IT Service Management professionals .  There are over 40 chapters worldwide providing a variety of service for members including regular meetings and newsletters.  See our resources section for links to local and international chapters.

How long will it take us to implement ITIL®?

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How long is a piece of string?  The idea of implementing ITIL® is a misnomer.  You can use ITIL® processes and guidelines to improve your IT Service but, in my opinion, there is no such thing as an ITIL® implementation. 

You will never finish…ITIL® is a framework which allows your Service to grow and evolve, this is part of the Continual Service Improvement (CSI) phase of the lifecycle which never ends.  So the answer to your question is that you can never say you have finished, all you can hope for is that you have the mechanisms in place to allow you to continually fine tune and improve your services.

If we buy Serio how long will it take to "go-live" with our new system?

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This is going to be dependent on the resources you have available to work on the project.  Typically, for a full Serio ServiceDesk installation we would expect you to put time into planning the install over a 2 - 4 week period prior to installation. 

Once installation has been completed we can generally have you running with ITIL® based incident management withing 2 weeks.

A Serio HelpDesk installation can be achieved in a far quicker timeframe.  We are able to get sites up and running withing 1 - 2 weeks of committing to purchase the system.