Introduction

IT service management is a broad topic, and this holds even for ITSM processes. This concept is typically divided into five stages that integrate the ITIL framework, which filters and sieves the perfect set of IT best practices for the enterprise. The five stages are service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and CSI. Each stage covers a particular part of IT service management. When a company decides to integrate ITSM and ITIL, they have to employ IT services from each stage to maintain a healthy and stable IT service management environment.

What is ITSM?

Before we begin, let’s recap what IT services management stands for. By definition, ITSM is the management of IT services that aids organizations in designing, producing, and delivering their products to their customers, thus improving business value and growth.

ITSM processes

• Service strategy: This stage marks the foundation of an ITSM set up in a company. Service strategy mainly focuses on enabling ITSM processes in strategy building and asset management-related business functions. ITSM processes are financial handling (which is used to make balance sheets and income statements) and service portfolio management (maintaining the IT service catalog to be used under budget).
• Service design: This stage specifically refers to the planning and designing processes that can be aided by IT services to meet business and customer demands. This stage includes services such as design coordination which includes managing and building designs for products, IT systems or other processes to ensure a stable work environment.
• Service transition and operation: When the IT systems and processes are in place, all the services have a good and healthy flow of communication between them. Transitioning from IT tools to upgraded and improved tools is a part of growth. ITSM has certain processes in place to carry that out. For example, change manager and evaluator (processes that manage IT services and make sure it causes minimum disturbances to the business functions) and release and deployment controller (schedules installation of new IT services and deployment of tried and tested services).
• CSI: This is where the famous business term kaizen comes into play. ‘Kaizen’ means ‘continuous improvement’. Even after transition and operation, companies still need to strive for perfection when a new issue pops up regarding production or internal systems. The quick fixes always need to be in place. At this stage, managers must have a good knowledge of KPIs (key performance indicators). ITSM processes in this diagonal include IT service reviewers and CSI initiatives clients (to overlook the fulfillment of CSI plans and programs).