ITIL V3, also known as ITIL Refresh, is the latest version of ITIL. ITIL V3 consists of five core publications. Each publication offers guidance to improve IT service providers’ capabilities and resources in order to effectively and efficiently provide IT services to business users and customers.

The core publications are:

Service Strategy
Service Strategy publication provides guidance on how to design, develop and implement service management as a strategic asset.

Service Strategy Processes:

 
Service Design
Service Design publication provides guidance for the design and development of new or modified services and their related service management processes.

Service Design Process:

Service Transition
Service Transition publication provides guidance for the development and improvement of capabilities for transitioning new or changed services into operational environment.

Service Transition Process:

Service Operation
Service Operation publication provides guidance on achieving efficient and effective day-to-day delivery and support of services to customers and business users.

Service Operation Processes:

 
Service Operation Functions:

 
Continual Service Improvement (CSI)
CSI publication provides guidance for the continual improvement (effectiveness and efficiency) of IT services in order to meet the changing business needs.

CSI Process:

One of the most important tasks in a change management process implementation is to setup the Change Advisory Board (CAB) “right” from the start. This will give change management the credibility and authority to successfully manage the process. Let’s look at the top three things that must be done “right” for the CAB to be successful.

1. CAB Composition
The Change Advisory Board should consist of those people who have a clear understanding of business needs, technology trends, regulatory requirements and the organizational culture and be able to quickly assess, prioritize and authorize a request for change.

The CAB may include people from various stakeholder groups such as customers, users, developers, testers, project managers, and technical specialists.

2. Documented Guideline
Clearly documented and approved Change Advisory Board guidelines will ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used by the CAB for overseeing the change management process.  Typical CAB guidelines will contain the following sections:

• Purpose
• Scope
• Overview
• Role and responsibilities
• CAB Composition
• Meetings Agenda
• Meeting Frequency
• Emergency Change Advisory Board guidelines
• Change classification guidelines (urgency, impact, priority)
• Change types (major, minor and emergency)
• Critical success factors

3. Standard Agenda
A standard CAB agenda will assist the CAB to formally review any authorized changes in terms of impact, urgency, benefits and risk. A standard CAB agenda should include the following:

• The status of previously deployed changes (success/failure)
• A list of the “Requests for Change” to be assessed
• Status of testing (verification and validation)
• Status of release planning activities such as training, documentation readiness and rollback procedures
• Assessment of impact, urgency and priority
• Assessment of risks and business benefits
• Schedule of changes to minimize risk
• Review of all unauthorized and emergency changes
• Suggestions for improvement of the change management process

One of the most common questions asked before any ITIL implementation is: “Which process I do implement first?”The usual answer is: “It depends”. But we’ll try to be a little more helpful in answering this question.There are two options. If you have already identified the key “pain areas” in your IT organization, you can start with option 1. But if you have not already identified the key pain areas and want to quickly improve your IT organizations’ credibility, you can start with option 2.Option 1: Identify one or two key pain areas in your IT department and implement ITIL best practice processes to fix the issues. This will immediately improve the image of your IT organization.Option 2: To quickly improve the image of your IT department you could start with customer-facing processes such as incident and change management. By successfully implementing incident and change management you can gain immediate credibility throughout your organization.

The top three Critical Success Factors (CSF) in a successful ITIL implementation are:1. Management Commitment and Involvement.Management commitment is about involving, motivating and leading by example, not just financial commitment. Having an influential project sponsor who believes in ITIL and setting up a project steering committee with all relevant IT and customer stakeholders (usually business departments) will help secure management commitment.2. Dedicated Process Owners (e.g., Change Manager).One of the biggest mistakes is to give an employee processes responsibilities in addition to existing function responsibilities. Although this may work for some time during the project hype period, the process owner’s commitment will soon fade. Having a dedicated process owner will ensure that process is managed efficiently and effectively and is continuously improved, in order to meet the process objectives.3. Don’t be Over-Ambitious (i.e., implement one or two processes at a time).Many ITIL projects have failed because of IT organizations trying to implement all ITIL processes at the same time. Implementing one or two process at a time will give you the necessary focus and urgency to successfully complete the ITIL process improvement project.