Deming Cycle

Deming Cycle or PDCA was made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming and hence it derives its name.  It consists of following four phases:

• Plan: During this phase objectives and processes (new or improved) are established which are necessary for achieving the desired output. Expected results are also documented.

• Do: New processes are implemented.

• Check: New processes are measured and results are compared against the expected results. This helps in identifying the differences, if any.

• Act: These differences are analysed to identify the cause. Steps to eradicate the differences are performed.

Cycle is repeated till the desired output is achieved.  Once desired output is achieved, process reaches a new maturity level which provides a new baseline for further improvement.

PDCA cycle can be compared with project management as well – Project Planning fitting into ‘Plan’, Project Implementation into ‘Do’, Project Audit – ‘Check’ and Project Control Actions – ‘Act’

3 Layers of Management

Often we refer to ITIL V3 having processes for Strategic, Tactical and Operational layers of management. Let us understand what these layers mean.

Strategic Layer: It is the highest level of organizational management and consists of roles responsible for managing the company. This is the decision making layer of the organization that is responsible for giving direction to the organization by virtue of the strategies they define. It provides the vision and mission, i.e. long term organizational goals. They perform operations to manage the profitability of the company.

Tactical Layer: This layer is responsible for managing the operational layer and showing them the direction to deliver according to the organization’s goals. They convert the organizational goals into short term targets or milestones. They enable the operational layer to understand how they can contribute towards achieving the vision. They monitor the operational layer and provide regular updates and management reports to strategic layer.

Operational Layer: This is the layer that works on the floor and delivers assigned targets or goals in order to meet the organization’s vision. They perform activities to complete the tasks assigned to them by the tactical layer.

Is ITIL For Your Organization?

Often people think “Is ITIL relevant for my organisation?”  The answer is that ITIL is relevant to all organizations that use IT. Today every organization is dependent on IT. Thus, ITIL is applicable to organizations across the following domains:

Airlines	Banking	Consulting
Defence	Education	Finance
Government	Healthcare	Insurance
Legal (LPOs)	Manufacturing	Media
Outsourcers	Publication	Retail
Service Providers	Tourism	Others…

Why An Organization Needs ITIL?

With globalization and increasing dependency of business on IT, the IT environment is getting even more complex day-by-day. Availability of IT services supporting the business is very critical for the survival of organizations. Thus, managing these services gains utmost importance and hence ITSM. Since ITIL is the most widely accepted framework for ITSM, it has to be adopted by IT support teams to ensure that quality and continuously improving & evolving IT services are available to support the changing business needs. It provides a structured approach to service provisioning alongside embedding discipline in the IT organization. This also helps in proactive risk assessment and thus its mitigation.

ITIL helps in developing a service culture in the organization. This ensures that a clear communication channel is established between the business and IT.