Category: ITIL

  • The importance of CSI

    CSI – that’s Continual Service Improvement, by the way, not Crime Scene Investigation – is, to my mind, the single most important stage in the ITIL service life cycle. It evaluates what has gone before, identifies areas for improvement, and aids in the implementation of improving. In an ideal situation, CSI informs all the other…

  • Managing expectations

    Some years ago, I wrote about Tom Peters‘ Formula for Success, which hinges on doing two things; promising less than you can deliver, and delivering more than you have promised. I can’t foresee a future when this will not be true, however, I think it bears expanding on. Simply put, by telling the user what…

  • Incidents, Requests and what separates them

    To the front-line technician, the two most important ITIL processes are Incident and Service Request Management. These are the bread and butter of front-line work, and most tickets handled by a support desk will fall into one of these categories. Incidents A ticket is an incident when something has gone wrong. A file may have…

  • Critical incidents: the aftermath

    For many technicians, a critical incident will trigger something akin to an adrenaline response. With experience, this will give you focus and clarity of thought as the incident unfolds. However, the response can only be sustained for a limited amount of time, and once it is over, you will likely experience some tangible aftereffects. These…

  • Handling Critical and High priority incidents

    Last week, we discussed urgency, impact and priority, as these things pertain to incidents in ITIL. As I mentioned, critical and high priority incidents are mercifully rare. When they do, inevitably, occur, it is imperative that we respond appropriately, and immediately. Thinking back to the priority table we created last week, we learned that response…

  • Understanding Incidents: Urgency, Impact and Priority

    It is part of the nature of IT service and support that you will, from time to time, be called upon to handle a high priority, high urgency incident. In most production systems these are mercifully rare, but it is still important that you understand how to identify them. The key to identification is prior…

  • ITIL adoption numbers – a critical review of one interpretation

    A while back, one of my fellow students questioned to what extent ITIL has been adopted outside of the UK. He cited a source, which claimed that the adoption was very low. This assertion was based on a single statistic; the Global TSO book sales figures. The original blog post can be found here.  …