The definition of Best Practice as detailed in the Dictionary of IT Service Management is "A proven activity or process that has been successfully used by multiple organisations. ITIL is an example of best practice."

By using a best practice approach there is no need to "reinvent the wheel" and it also means that similar organisations or departments will be speaking the same language. The itSMF strives to be the forum in which similarly minded Service Management professionals can share experiences and help others to learn by their mistakes.

The itSMF best practices are focussed on IT Service Management but in reality can be applied to any area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Currently, the source of "best practice" definition for IT Service Management can be found in the ITIL Service Management Practices publications from the Office of Government Commerce [OGC (formerly known as CCTA)] and in several publications from the British Standards Institution (BSI).

The Core Service Management Practices are formed of 5 books (published in 2007) focused on a lifecycle approach to Service Management.This is a major change to previous versions of ITIL which were more processed based.The core set of books is:

• Service Strategy
• Service Design
• Service Transition
• Service Operations and
• Continual Service Improvement

This material is available as a set of books, in pdf format (single user license) or via an internet subscription for concurrent access.

BSI published the code of Practice for IT Service Management (PD0005) in 1998 and subsequently BS15000 in 2000.This standard was fast-tracked to become and International Standard ISO/IEC 20000 in 2005.

ISO/IEC 20000 is formed of 2 parts:

• Part 1:Specification
• Part 2:Code of Practice

In essence Part 1 tells you what you MUST do and Part 2 gives you some idea of how to achieve the requirements in Part 1 by giving you SHOULD statements.

In addition to the 2 parts of the standard there is also a self-assessment workbook which enables an organisation to perform a gap analysis and to benchmark itself against the standard before needing to involve any 3^rd party consultants or auditing companies.

 

It is obvious that the better and more effective you are at your job in IT services, then the knock-on effect is that your customers, be they internal or external, are going to be better at their jobs as well.

Benefits include:

• Improved customer satisfaction
• Increased return on your IT investment
• Improved Staff Morale
• Reduced staff turnover

So Best Practice principles provide the framework to:

• Develop a good understanding of your customers' IT requirements - this is fundamental to being able to satisfy them. If you know what they want, it is much easier to deliver it
• Focus on delivering the services that the business needs. Become business-driven as opposed to technology-driven
• Improve the return on IT investment - put the processes in place that improve utilisation of resources and ultimately their effectiveness and reduce duplication of effort
• Improve the perception that your customers' have of the IT function, increasing their confidence in IT, which in turn improves staff morale and performance