ITIL v3 Foundation Test Study Notes, Summary and Braindump

IT Service Management Concepts

Definitions

• Customer: Someone in your organisation or company who needs the resources or services of I.T
• Service: A way to deliver value to customers by facilitating the outcome that a client wants to achieve.
• Service Asset: Any capability or resource that can be provided by a service provider.
• Service Management: A set or a group of specialised organisational capabilities or functions that provide value to customers in the form of services.
• Process Management “Manage to Process” – After why this is the where and the how as an organisation. Done by “Measurement and Control” measured with “Metrics”.
• Process Relationships Service Desk Support

Service Desk vs. Help Desk and Call Centres.

• Helpdesk is historically involved in incident response.
• Not a single point of contact for users or customers.
• Call Centre typically handles the large call volume.
• Service Desk has more significant responsibility than telesales or incident support
• The service desk is the consolidation, comprehensive, single interface between users and IT.

A service desk is the front end office for all other IT departments, and it is a single point of contact for requests or issues, responsible for incident management, service level management, change management, configuration management and release management.

Functions and Activities:

• Enhance users access to IT services, the first line liaison.
• Faster response or turnaround to requests while recording and tracking incidents and complaints.
• Improve communication and teamwork by informing about status, progress, assessment, changes (Short term and long term).
• Escalate Procedures based on SLA’s
• Managing request, ticket and change life cycles
• Coordinate with 3rd party solution providers.
• All of this should increase productivity.

Centralised Service Desk

• Centralised Responsibility for accepting and recording service calls, routeing, monitoring and escalation.
• Unified Business operations support.
• Uses a standard incident reporting and recording system.
• Bridges physical with operation via direct communication.
• Rapid response and proximity are objectives.

Local Service Desk (Distributed): Still has a centralised service desk but has multiple distributed local service offices. These are distributed by business units, geographically or roles.

Virtual Service Desk

• Modern Specialised version of the local service desk.
• Several Local service desks virtualised as single telecom unit.
• Provides global, round the clock (follow the sun) support.
• Difficult to provide on-site support.
• Phone numbers are often rerouted. During times when network centres business hours transition.
• Excellent solution for large multinational organisation.

Service Desk Personnel

• Call Centre Personnel
• Unskilled / call recording
• Skilled Service Desk
• Expert Service Desk

Personnel Attributes

• Articulate, organised and end user focused.
• Must understand business objectives and that
• User problems affect Business.
• “There is no support desk w/o the user or customer.”
• Might need bilingual skills
• Must be willing to find the answers.

Critical Factors for Success

• Know the business needs and goals – especially customer or user requirements.
• Invest in training in all affected areas.
• Clearly, define Service Desk objectives and deliverables.
• Service Level agreements should be practical with broad buy – in and reviewed / asses regularly.
• Benefits of service desk should go straight to bottom line.

Incident Management

Overview of Incident Management

• To lower or even eliminate effects or occurrences of IT interruptions, disturbances or quality reduction.
• Must get users back to work as soon as humanly possible.
• Hire appropriate specialists to record, classify and allocate (Route) all incidents.
• Progress should be monitored
• Incidents must all resolve.
• The process must be closed after resolution.

Objectives and Benefits of Incident Management

• Reduce impact on business by solving the issue as soon as possible
• Improve User Productivity
• Obtain independent customer focused incident monitoring
• Make SLA info readily available
• Lower cost of doing business
• React quickly and efficiently
• Active Monitoring of user domains and services
• Keep problems from escalating
• Improved user or customer satisfaction
• More accurate operations
• Prevent “too many cooks’”

Incident Records vs. Problem Records

• Incident records are end user focused.
• Incident reporting management focuses on measurements of downtime and business impact.
• Problem records start with IT management decision to invest IT recourse’s and end user downtime for cause investigation and implementation of the resolution.
• Problem records focus on internal IT processes.
• Management reporting on issues focuses on root causes and implementing structural recommendations.

Incident Escalation

• Pass the problem on to a higher expertise or authority level.
• Functional (Horizontal) Escalation.
• Hierarchical (Vertical) Escalation.
• Develop Horizontal first then vertical.

Benefits, Costs and Challenges

• Greater effectiveness, reduced business impact.
• Proactive enhancements and changes
• Business focused SLA management
• Improved monitoring and performance, service quality.
• Better staff utilisation and efficiency
• Eliminate future incidents and service requests
• more accurate database
• Enhanced customers or user satisfaction.

Costs

• Initial Planning and implementation – communication
• Training and ramp up
• Hardware and software tools

Challenges

• Users and staff bypass procedures
• Incident backlog – process overload
• Too many escalations
• Lack of precise definitions, SLA’s commitments.

ITIL V3 Study Notes

Problem Management

• Problem management is closely related to the service desk and incident management.
• Primary concern is eliminating infrastructure errors.
• Underlying causes of actual and potential failures.
• Problem Management also tracks and monitors infrastructure.
• Problem > Known Error > Request for change

Problem Management vs. Incident Management

• The two have contradictory goals; many organisations combine the two processes – detrimentally.
• Problem Management supports incident management workstations and temporary solutions – no conflict resolution.
• Problem management takes the time to identify root causes of conflicts often extended periods of unplanned downtime.
• Optimally the two processes should be separated.
• Problem management is often escalation point for service desk IM.

PM Goals and objectives

• The difference between firefighting and fire prevention
• Minimise adverse effects on business
• Proactively prevent the occurrence of incidents, problems and errors.
• 1. ID Errors 2. Decision Making 3. Act accordingly
• Present proposals for improvement, rectifying mistakes, responding to RFC’s
• Identify weaknesses or vulnerabilities in infrastructure.

Problem Management Process

• Inputs: Incidents, Service Desk, Fixes, Configs, Data from vendors, Service Level Agreements, records, logs, performance metrics.
• Main Actions: Problem Control, Error Control, Proactive Management, Reports / Documentation.
• Outputs: Problem Database, Request for changes, problem records, closed records.

Problem Control

• Identifying problems, investigating and diagnosing the root causes.
• Turn problems into known errors through classification, investigation and diagnosis
• Generate RFC then resolve and close the case.
• The classification includes categorization, impact, urgency, priority and status.
• Investigation and diagnosis are repeated to get closer to resolution.
• Temporary or emergency fixes may be applied.

Error Control

• Monitoring and managing known errors until resolved.
• Issues RFC to change management IT service.
• May evaluate shifts in a post-implementation review.
• Can involve several departments or units.
• Includes error identification and recording, error assessment, documenting resolution closing the case.
• Tracking and monitoring are done through all stages.

Proactive Problem Management

• Focuses on quality of infrastructure and services.
• Uses trend analysis to prevent problems and incidents.
• Look for weaknesses, perform penetration testing, and keep up with vendor alerts and bulletins.
• Firewall to prevent inter-domain problems.
• Overall identification and ongoing investigation of systems.

The Problem Manager

• Maintain all problem or error control procedures.
• Asses effectiveness of project management process.
• Protect Integrity and Independence of incident management.
• Govern proactive prevention campaigns.
• Manage personnel and resources (Acquisition).
• Develop and improve processes.
• Conduct “Postmortem” reviews.

Change Management

• Most incidents are directly related to change.
• Change management is like a thermostat.
• The goal of change management is to manage the change process and limit the introduction of errors and incidents related to the changes.
• Innovation, improvement, modifications, corrections.
• Change management is tightly coupled with configuration management and release management.

Change Management Actions

1. 1.   Recording
2. 2.   Acceptance
3. 3.   Classification
4. 4.   Planning and approval
5. 5.   Coordination
6. 6.   Evaluation

Recording

• All RFC’s are logged with a reference number of known error.
• Routine, standard changes don’t generate RFC’s (Service requests not assessed by change management).
• RFC;s come from Problem Management, IT Staff, customers, legislation and mandates, vendors and suppliers, projects.
• The log should contain: RFC unique ID, cross-referenced known-error/ problem number, description, the reason for the change, current/ new version, info about submitter, submission date, estimated time frame, resource allocations.

Acceptance

• Initial assessment with re-request option for RFC, change incident (CI) (AKA Change item or instance).
• Acceptance will lead to 1- status change of existing CI, change in the relationship between CI’s, New CI, new location or owner of CI.
• Information needed to further process change is included in the change record.

Classification

• Priority and Category are designated for accepted RFC.
• Example Priorities: 1. Low 2. Normal3. High. 4 Highest (Critical).
• Priorities and categories determined with Change advisory board possibly steering committees.
• Sample Categories, minor, substantial and major impact.

Planning and Approval.

• Change Management uses change calendar or FSX – Forward schedule of changes to the plan.
• FSC contains Approved change details, planned implementation dates.
• Change management with CAB accepts three aspects of change. 1 Financial, 2. Technical, 3. Business impact of change.
• Also, includes estimating impact and resources.

Coordination

• Approved changes go to product specialists who construct and integrate changes.
• Before implementation, changes should be pilot tested.
• This may involve release management IT service.
• Phases: Build – Test – Implement.(Coordination between these three stages)

Evaluation

• All applied nonstandard changes should be assessed.
• Did change meet intended goal?
• Are all parties satisfied with the result?.
• What were unplanned side effects of change?
• Did implementation exceed estimated costs or downtime?
• RFC is closed after success and evaluation.
• Results are documented in the P.I.R.

Change Manager Role

• Overall responsibility for change management in consultation with the administration liaison and change advisory board.
• Maybe a single individual or steering committee.
• In charge of reaching all change management goals and developing a method of ensuring effectiveness and efficiency.
• Defines the scope of change management and associated process.
• Receives, logs and priorities RFC’s, convenes CAB to review. Submits change advisory board recommendations.

Release Management

Release Management Basics

• Major release – major roll out, a substantial increase in overall functionality, eliminate errors. e.g. v.1 v2 v3 etc
• Minor software release – includes minor enhancements, interface changes, fixes, hardware support e.g. v1.1 v1.2 v3.2
• Hardware upgrades – improved support or functionality.

The Goals of Release Management

• Garner Holistic view of IT Service change.
• Assure Technical and Non-technical Aspects are considered. RM is Hands on a working group for change management.
• Manage Release Planning and Policy, design, building and configuration.
• Campaigns for acceptance plans the eventual rollout.
• Conducts extensive training and auditing (Post)
• Preparation, Installation Training
• Storage, Release, Distribution, install of software.

Release Types – Full (Test and distribute all the components of the release unit, whether or not they have changed since the last released) – Delta (Does not alter all elements, also known as a partial release) – Package- (like Microsoft Office)

Release Management Development Environment

• Release Policy
• Release Planning
• Design and Develop Software OR –
• Purchase Software or Hardware

Release Management Control Test Environment

• Build and configure (With back out plan)
• Fit for purpose tests
• Release Acceptance
• Roll out planning
• Communication, preparation and training

Release Management Live Environment

• Release Distribution.- Audit trails, the chain of custody.
• Installation.
• Costs and Potential Problems.

Costs and Pitfalls of Release Management

• Personnel, DSL / DML / DHS storage (Backup and Recovery too)
• Build / Test / Distribution environments
• Software and Hardware Costs – Installation
• Pitfalls / Challenges: Resistance from parties, circumventing release management process, distribution is out of sync, inadequate testing.

Configuration Management

Concepts and Objectives

• The goal is to keep information about IT Infrastructure current, specific item details and relationship to other elements.
• Makes sure changes have been correctly logged or documented.
• Maintains accurate topology of existing config items (CI)
• Provide information about product policy, troubleshooting Data, Impact assessment, provisioning of services.
• Concepts – Configuration Item

CMDB (Service Transition)

• CMDB is a DB store of config records through the lifecycle.
• Configuration Management system contains one or more CMDB’s
• Each DB stores attributes of CI’s and interrelationships
• CMDB is Designed Based on a configuration structure

Configuration Item Attributes

• ITIL Mandatory = Unique Identifier, Status
• Optional Attributes = Revision Number, location, owner, asset number, manufacturer, manufacturer serial number, part number, cost, release date, expiry date, configuration details, license data, link to documentation, category, the value after depreciation, comments.
• Other Linked fields to other Databases = RFC Numbers, change numbers, problem numbers, incident numbers.

Benefits of Configuration Management

• Manage IT Components and services.
• Contributes to faster troubleshooting and change processing
• Better control of software and hardware.
• Improved security and compliance
• Enhanced planning for procurement or expenditures
• Support for capacity management and availability management
• Configuration management is the foundation for IT continuity management.

Configuration Management Process Planning – Identification – Control – Status Accounting – Verification – Reporting

Costs and Challenges

• Added hardware, software licenses, fees.
• Database and CMS design, implementation, maintenance.
• Erroneous CMDB scope and CI detail are challenges.
• Timing is moving from manual to automated systems.
• Effects of sudden changes

Service Level Management

Key SLM Terminology

• Service Level
• Service Level Target
• – S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely)
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• SLM
• Service Level Requirement (SLR)
• Service Hours – period
• Service Capacity Management (SCM)j

Goals and Scope of SLM

• Maintain and Improve IT Service Quality via Continual Consensus, Monitoring and logging by eliminating poor service.
• SLM Builds long term relationships with all parties.
• SLM Covers every aspect of IT Service Provisioning
• Also concerned with customer or vendor negotiations
• SLM is at the top of responsibility chain.

Costs vs. Benefits

• Informed Decisions with customers must be made.
• Costs are Staffing, Accommodation, Support tools, hardware costs, and marketing costs.
• Benefits of Service Level Management are extensive.
• Improved relationships and customer perception of IT.
• Clear Demarcation between IT groups / IT and clients.
• Isolated Targets for measuring and reporting.
• IT goals are much more “Business-Centric.”
• Expectations are easier agreed upon and Met.
• The baseline for measuring vendor performance.
• Clearly defined IT services.

The SLM Process

• Identifying
• Defining (According to ISO 9001 Model)
• Finalising – Contract, SLA
• Monitoring – Logs, Documentation and Reporting.
• Reporting
• Reviewing

The SLM Manager

• SLM manager manages to interface with customers and IT.
• SLM Manager is both customer and IT advocate
• Must be a diplomat and facilitator.
• HE/She must strive to be objective or impartial.
• Rare combo of technical expertise and interpersonal manager.
• SLM manager needs to be intimate with all other IT service areas.
• Aligns all operational and tactical IT processes with business objectives.

IT Services Financial Management

Basic Concepts

• Goal is to promote cost awareness and Providence
• IT services Must address Quality, Cost and Customer Needs (First 2 often contradict)
• Budgeting – List
• Accounting
• Charging (All the things you do to bill your customer for the provided service)
• Costs

Types of Costs (Categories)

• Direct costs vs. indirect costs
• Fixed vs. Variable costs
• Capital vs. operational costs
• Cost elements: ECU, SCU, OCU, ACU, TCU, CA

Goals of IT Financial Management

• Reduce long-term costs – empower management
• Declares Added Value of IT.
• Improved Total cost of ownership and return on investment
• Forces business to make service levels and their costs more visible.
• Assures senior management/ stakeholders that IT is well managed and meeting business needs.
• Assists change management processes.

Financial Management Activities

• Budgeting
• Accounting
• Charging
• Reporting

Budgeting

• Planning / managing financial activities of the organisation.
• Involves corporate and strategic long-term planning (One to five years)
• Incremental vs. Zero Base Budgeting
• Process = Sales & Marketing; production “Administrative “ cost and investment
• Determine the budget period.

Accounting

• Identifying and Qualifying Costs & Expenditures
• Understand the way costs are structured.
• Defining Costs Elements (One year fixed)
• The base cost structure on a service structure. (Cisco IIN)
• Subdivide cost, units for personnel, hardware, software and overhead.
• Budgets are formed annually for each cost element and service (Based on past analysis, growth).

Charging

• Tool to allow for careful usage of IT Resources.
• Should be compatible with organisations financial policies
• Used to recover all incurred costs of IT business unit.
• Charging Policy should include, communication, pricing, flex ability, notational charging.
• The pricing policy should cover, cost plus, going rate, target return, negotiated contract price.

Reporting

• Invoicing and Communicating to the customer
• Conduct Regular meetings with the customer under the umbrella of service level management based on service level agreements.
• Service level manager is reported to with the following: – IT expenditures per customer, differences in actual / estimated charges / Methods for accounting and charging/ Disputes and their solutions.

Possible Pitfalls

• IT personnel are often unfamiliar with monitoring calculating and charging costs.
• May often require substantial non-IT information.
• Difficult to find people with Dual Expertise.
• Difficult to accomplish if corporate strategy objectives have no focus set down in policy.
• Because of above factors, noncooperation is common.
• Lack of management commitment trickles down.

Capacity Management

Basic Terminology

• Capacity Management – Capacity is the maximum throughput of it service or configuration item can deliver while it meets the agreed upon service level target
• .Performance Management
• Application sizing
• Workload management
• Capacity Planning
• Modelling

Benefits of Capacity Management

• Efficient Management of resources to reduce IT risk through continuous monitoring.
• Understand the impact of new or changed services.
• Cost reduction and maximised investment.
• Reduced Disruption of Business via link to change management
• Quicker Response to customer needs. Lower Capacity, related expenditures.

Business Capacity Management

• Gain Knowledge of current and future business requirements and goals.
• Data gathered from customer, strategic planning, marketing campaigns, and trend analysis.
• BCM involves trending, proactive modelling, forecasting, prototyping, sizing and documenting present and future business requirements.

Service Capacity Management

• Determine usage of IT products/services to customers.
• Understand performance or peak loads to meet SLA’s
• SCM is tightly coupled to SLM
• Involved with SLA negotiations
• Service Capacity Management Engages in Monitoring, analysing, tuning, and reporting on service performance.
• Established baselines for service usage.
• Manages the demand for services.

Resource Capacity Management

• To decide on the use of IT Infrastructure / Components.
• Stay current on technological developments and actively monitor trends.
• Monitoring, analysing and reporting on infrastructure and component utilisation, profiling and base lining.

Activities of Capacity Management

• Develop the Plan
• Modelling
• Application Sizing
• Monitor
• Analyse

Costs and Related Issues

• Hardware & Software tools and CDB Management
• Project Management Costs
• Personnel, training and support overhead.
• Related facilities and services.
• Unrealistic expectations
• Lack of data and supplier input.
• Complex implementations
• Lack of Buy-in from management.

Availability Management

Availability Management in a Nutshell

• Making sure IT Services are there when needed. Defined in SLA’s via SLM integration.
• Monitors Availability from End to End
• Also, Works with problem management service
• The goal of availability management is to optimise IT infrastructure.
• Must maintain customer or user satisfaction.

Fundamental principles of Availability

• IT Services Must be Consistently Accessible
• One Time Disruptions Must be Addressed Rapidly and Completely – No Repeat Incidents.
• Availability is Mission Critical Business/ Infrastructure component.
• 4 Basic “Abilities of availability Availability – Reliability – Maintainability – Serviceability
• 3 Levels of Availability High Availability (Unplanned) – Users/Customers are shielded and isolated from component failures by clustered failover configurations and redundant appliances, circuits and routeing switching logic.
• Continuous Operation (Planned) – Attempts to protect the user from adverse effects of planned downtime/outage load balancing and clustering is used to allow individual components to be brought offline without service disruption.
• Continuous Availability (Planned and unplanned) – Attempts to isolate users from effects of planned OR unplanned downtime. This is a combination of high availability Availability Activities Determine Availability Requirements – Design for availability – design for maintainability – identify security issues – Maintenance management – measuring and reporting – develop availability plan.

Availability Management Metrics

• MTTR – Average time to repair after failure.
• MTBF – Measures and reports reliability / resilience
• MTBSI – Also measures reliability (MTBF + MTTR)
• MTRS – Average time to restore after a failure.

Methodologies for Availability Management

• Component Failure Impact Analysis (CFIA)
• Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
• CCTA Risk Analysis and Management Method (CRAMM)
• Service Outage Analysis (SOA)

Service Continuity Management

Overview

• Also known as disaster recovery
• Disaster – Goes far beyond Incidents
• Consists of business continuity planning and continuity planning
• Emphasis is on disaster prevention (avoidance)
• Supports overall business continuity management (BCM)
• Deals also with restoration and recovery.

Types of Disasters

• Fire, Flood (Water Damage), Lighting, Tornado (Wind), Burglary, Vandalism, Violence, Terrorism, sabotage, Power outage, brown outs hardware failure, DoS Attacks, Access Attacks.

Risk Assessment – Identify Asset, Analyse threats, ID and classify vulnerabilities, evaluate and estimate risk.

IT Service Continuity Strategy

• Elaborate Prevention Measures (Stronghold / Fortress)
• Choose recovery options – Personnel, Accommodations, IT Systems, Networks, Support Services, Archiving
• Viable Options: No response – paper-based system, reciprocal relationships, cold standby, warm standby, hot start / hot standby, hybrid approach.

Costs and Potential Problems

• Time and Finances are extensive for planning, initiating, developing and implementing
• Risk Management Personnel, software, hardware
• Recovery arrangements (Hot sire, warm site) are typically expensive solutions.
• Resources and commitment issues or budgeting.
• Assessing Recovery Sites
• No management responsibility / Buy in (Risk Takers? Let insurance handle IT )
• Perpetual Delays
• Black Boxing
• Lack of In-house IT Expertise
• Lack of Business Familiarity and Awareness.

IT Security Management

The Big Picture

• External Unstructured Threats
• External Structured Threats
• Internal Unstructured Threats
• Internal Structured Threats

Goals to guarantee in security

• Confidentiality
• Integrity
• Availability
• Non – Repudiation

More critical terminology

• Threat
• Threat Agent
• Risk
• Vulnerability
• Exposure
• Countermeasure

Security Management Process: Control – Plan – Implement – Evaluate(Self-assessment, internal and external audits) – Maintain – REPORT

Security and the SLA

• SLA must define extent that security is provided
• Security elements must be customer specific
• Customer Determines Security Policy
• Security Needs to be compared with providers service catalogue > Gap Analysis performed > Then negotiation.
• Operational Level Agreement (OLA) will have a security section as well.

Costs and Possible Pitfalls

• Personal, Cash outlay
• No security / Poor security = lost production, replacement, data loss/ damage, goodwill diminished, reputation, legal action, government fines.
• Lack of commitment and ambition
• Poor attitudes and human behaviour
• Lack of awareness training – verification checks
• No change management service.
• Lack of detection systems (IOA, IPS, FN)
• Over-reliance on reactive techniques.

  I hope that these notes help you in passing your ITIL v3 Foundation test!

Warmest Regards,

Sonny Brown