What is ITSM?

Like the hardware and software they curate and maintain, IT functions have evolved. IT workers are expected to be leaders of business transformation, creators of competitive advantage, and guardians of business assets. They do this while still continuing to optimize software and hardware asset management for efficient business operations — a set of duties often referred to (rather casually) as “keeping the business running.”

As IT has evolved as a function, so too has ITSM (Information Technology Service Management) within it.

We’ve come a long way from the service desk stereotype — so let’s take a closer look at what ITSM means now.

First: What actually is ITSM?

ITSM is a practice within IT that focuses on maintaining, optimizing, and securing an organization’s technologies, as well as enabling the people working within an organization (and, in some cases, interacting with an organization) to make the most of those technologies.

Most people today have encountered ITSM, whether they know it or not. If you’ve ever started a new job that involved working with any type of hardware (like a laptop) or software (like a desktop program), it’s likely an ITSM team was involved in the process. ITSM helps with getting you the technology you need, making sure it works, keeping it secure and up to date over time, and, when the time comes to say goodbye, discarding or repurposing it.

How has ITSM evolved over time?

While ITSM has its origins in keeping software and hardware up and running well for businesses, the function has changed over time.

No longer solely meant for tech troubleshooting and machinery maintenance, ITSM is now viewed as a strategic service. ITSM teams often sit centrally within businesses, and can end up spending much of their time working across departments to enable colleagues in other functions.

This shift in perspective and central position means teams are, at a high level, focused on continually finding ways to deliver value and improve service, with ITSM strategy concentrated on optimizing every IT resource for every user across an entire business (and, in some cases, for every partner and customer, too).

Put simply: ITSM teams and departments are no longer just service providers. They’re expected to be peer enablers, drivers of value, and facilitators of innovation, too.

What does ITSM cover?

ITSM encompasses the entire spectrum of processes and activities that govern the creation, deployment, maintenance, and evolution of IT services and technologies within a company.

Modern ITSM strategies provide a comprehensive framework that aligns the entire IT lifecycle to meeting business goals and user needs – from streamlining service requests and customer service management, to safeguarding compliance and minimizing operational risk.

How do organizations manage and deploy ITSM?

Organizations tend to adopt ITSM practices via a combination of process optimization, intelligent automation, and specialist ITSM software. Each ITSM solution provides a range of tools to streamline processes and manage IT services more effectively.

The optimum selection of ITSM platform depends on various factors, including the size of the organization, specific service management needs, budget, and existing IT infrastructure.

What are some common ITSM practices and processes?

While the specifics of IT service management will vary from company to company, common ITSM practices and processes to know about include:

• Asset and Configuration Management: Tracking and managing IT assets (both hardware and software) throughout their lifecycles, including the financial and contractual details associated with each. This practice involves keeping a detailed inventory of all IT components, how they're set up, and how they work together.
• Availability Management: Ensuring IT services and technologies are available and accessible when needed through planning, measuring, and improving the availability of IT infrastructure, applications, and services.
• Capacity Management: Balancing performance, cost, and demand so that IT resources and services can meet current and future business needs efficiently.
• Change Management: Introducing structured, considered modifications to IT systems and services while simultaneously maintaining service quality and minimizing disruptions and risks via careful planning, evaluation, and implementation.
• Demand Management: Efficiently allocating resources and ensuring optimal service delivery by analyzing, predicting, and attempting to control customer demand for IT services.
• Incident Management: Restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible and with minimal business disruption following an unexpected service outage (an “incident’), such as an email server going down.
• Knowledge Management: Systematically collecting, organizing, and sharing IT-related information within an organization, usually via a searchable knowledge base or central repository for IT solutions, documentation, and resources. By providing easy access to collective knowledge, knowledge management reduces duplicate efforts and enables faster problem-solving across the organization.
• Problem Management: Investigating and analyzing the root causes of recurring IT incidents, and deploying process or system enhancements to prevent future instances.
  • Where incident management responds to urgent emergencies, problem management is more proactive — ITSM teams working on problem management are often trying to head off future problems, rather than solve something currently causing issues.
• Release Management: Preparing and transitioning new or changed technologies (both hardware and software) into the live environment.
  • Deployment management, a subset of release management, deals specifically with the technical aspects of installing or updating the new components or software.
• Service Catalog Management: Managing and updating a service catalog, which is a useful ITSM tool that lists and describes all IT services available to users (internal and external) in order to improve efficiency, user experience, and problem resolution.
• Service Level Management: Defining, agreeing upon, and monitoring the quality of IT services provided to customers through the creation and management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which outline specific service targets, performance metrics, and responsibilities. Service level management ensures IT services predictably and reliably meet business needs and customer expectations while providing a clear framework for measuring and improving service delivery.
• Service Request Management: Handling requests from users for IT services or resources in a way that streamlines the delivery of routine IT services, often incorporating self-service portals and automation to improve efficiency and user satisfaction. Service request management involves managing common tasks like password resets, software installations, or access permissions through a centralized service ticket system.

How is ITSM related to ITIL and DevOps?

ITSM often works better when organizations adopt both ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) and DevOps (software development and IT operations) in how they work. Both ITIL and DevOps share the ultimate goal: helping technologies (and the people using them) across the business work as efficiently and effectively as possible.

What actually are ITIL and DevOps, and how do they differ from one another?

• ITIL is aframework that provides a set of detailed best practices for ITSM, helping to align IT service with business needs. It’s essentially a set of standards for teams to adhere to — time-tested guidelines that have been proven to help ITSM work better.
• DevOps is a way of working that unifies software development (Dev) with IT operations (Ops) in order to improve collaboration and productivity during development, deployment, and support for a product or update. Basically, DevOps helps developers work more closely with the people actually deploying their code (IT, in most cases), so that the software can be iteratively improved over time based on users’ needs.

Both ITIL and DevOps complement ITSM. ITIL process provides a structured framework for managing IT services, while DevOps promotes more efficient service delivery and better, more effective software and code by facilitating better teamwork and collaboration between IT and Dev teams. Together, the two help organizations deliver high-quality IT services more rapidly and reliably.