Important ITIL Terminologies for ITIL Foundation

What are ITIL Terminologies? Why is it important? And how it helps?

What’s if we both speak different languages and don’t recognize the language of each other? Would we be able to understand each other?  NO !!!!
That’s where terminology came in the picture. Think it as the common language between ITIL & you. ITIL Terminologies are the standard words and nomenclature defined for each of the standard objects and terms referenced by ITIL. This is placed to standardize everything so that everyone in the world understands the same meaning of these terms.

Important Terminologies of ITIL: 

Although there are hundreds of Terminologies defined by ITIL, here we would learn about the common & important ones, only those which we are going to use throughout the ITIL tutorials. Rest of the terminologies we would learn under the specific topic. We also have a glossary of terminologies, you may refer to that to learn about all the terminologies.

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Baseline:

A Baseline is termed to be the starting point (or point of reference) of a project or service. In ITSM, baseline is used to measure the effectiveness of a Service Improvement Plan, or to measure that how the IT operation is performing.

For example:
A Performance Baseline can be used to measure changes in Performance over the lifetime of an IT Service.
A Configuration Management Baseline can be used to enable the IT Infrastructure to be restored to a known Configuration if a Change or Release fails.

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Business case:

Business Case is mostly about describing expected expense & profit that can be achieved as an outcome of any change. It may sometimes also include risks (both positive & negative) & other factors that may affect the change, and in turn, reduce or maximize the profit. 

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Resources:

In ITIL, Resource means any required elements which are used to carry out any specified work or activities.  Resources can include People, Infrastructure, Applications, Financial Capital, and Information.

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Capability/Capacity:

It is the level of strength of IT services and the IT infrastructure. It measures the efficiency of the service provider, that how it can deliver the agreed service level targets in a cost-effective and timely manner. When measuring capability, we need to take consideration of all resources which are required to deliver the IT service, and plans for short, medium and long-term business requirements.

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Process:

A structured set of activities designed to accomplish a specific objective. A process takes one or more defined inputs and turns them into defined outputs.

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Function:

In ITIL function means a team or a group of resources (people, tools & other resources), who used to carry out one or more processes or activities.

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ITIL Role:

A set of responsibilities, activities, and authorities granted to a person.

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Process Owner:

A role responsible for ensuring the validity of a process according to its original purpose. The Process Owner’s responsibilities include managing the process design, stability, and do continual improvement of the process and its metrics.

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Process Manager:

For better management, in larger organizations, there may have separate Process Owner and Process Manager. Here the Process Manager’s responsibility is to operationally manage a process.

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Service:

A definition according to ITIL®: "A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. The term ‘service’ is sometimes used as a synonym for core service, IT service or service package.”

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Service Owner:

The Service Owner is a person who is responsible for delivering a particular service as per the Service Level Agreement (SLA). He often has to lead a team of technical specialists or an internal support unit for achieving the SLA targets. Also, he acts as the counterpart of the Service Level Manager when negotiating Operational Level Agreements (OLAs).

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IT Service Management (ITSM):

ITSM is the management practice to provide IT Services in a focused, client-friendly and cost-optimized manner. The main component of ITSM is Service Level Management (SLM), which is the framework to negotiate Service Level Agreements with the customers and to design services according to the agreed service level targets. This ITIL process is also responsible for ensuring that all Operational Level Agreements and Underpinning Contracts are appropriate, and to monitor and report on service levels.

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CI (Configuration Item):

CIs (Configuration Items) are mainly hardware or software items and are categorized by their attributes (recorded in the CI’s Configuration Record/Database) and their relationships to other CIs.

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CMDB:

Configuration Management Database is the core record repository to track & maintain every attribute of all the CI’s. Also, it tracks the inter-relationship between all the CI’s. It is the core requirement for implementing a proper change management.

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Change:

Change is the addition, modification or removal of anything that may have an effect on IT services. The scope of change includes changes to any processes, process flow, tools, metrics and documentation, as well as changes to IT services and other CI’s.

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CAB (Change Advisory Board):

A group of people (Stake Holders), who advises the “Change Manager” in the process of assessment, prioritization and scheduling of changes. This board is usually made up of representatives from all areas within the IT organization, the business, and third parties such as suppliers. And may also contain customer representative in some cases.

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Risk: 

Risk is an uncertain event that, if it occurs, will have either a positive or a negative effect on the IT Services.  Yes!!!! You heard right… the event may have either positive or negative effect.