Understanding ITIL Processes For Your BAU In Simple Terms

When your house plumbing develops some snag you would see the symptoms. There would be a water leakage or no supply of water to a tap. Especially in case of concealed pipes you may find dampness in your walls. These all are the incidents that indicate that there is something wrong with the plumbing. These incidents typically would reflect an underlying problem for which the root cause is not yet known.

You would call a plumber to identify what is wrong with the plumbing, i.e. to identify the root cause. This is Problem Management. Plumber might give some filler (like m-seal) or you yourself can opt for one which is a temporary workaround. This is Incident Management where your goal is to have an asap resolution. Though it can provide a relief in terms of stopping the leakage, but this does not resolve the problem. Please note that problem is different from incident (which may simply be an indicator of something major to come). Plumber would look into identifying the source of leakage. Now you have the error and identify how it can be rectified, i.e., the resolution. This is known error.

Some part would need replacement, i.e. change, which could be a pipe, tap or combination of multiple parts. Plumber would provide you the details of parts to be replaced. This is RFC. This detail has to be taken to a hardware shop and given to shopkeeper. This is change management. Plumber may give you a time when he would come and replace the fittings. This is forwards schedule of change. Shopkeeper will validate the details and check the fitment of the parts before giving it to you. Shopkeeper may give you multiple options along with information regarding cost, quality, etc. and seek your approval for a particular type or brand. This is CAB approval. All these constitute Change Management.

You will take this to your plumber who would change the fittings, test and ensure that there is no more leakage. This is Release & Deployment Management. In case there is any warranty for the parts, you would ensure that it is properly documented and stored. This is Service Asset And Configuration Management. 

'DIMAICR': A 6 STEP APPROACH TO IMPLEMENT CAPACITY MANAGEMENT IN YOUR ORGANIZATION

STEP 1: Define

• Define Capacity Management process
• Identify team responsible for capacity management
• Train relevant team members
• Establishing capacity requirements to meet service level requirements of new or changed services
• Map future business requirements
• Through periodic consultation with business stakeholders
• Translate business requirements into IT requirements
• Forecast IT requirements
• Forecast component capacity requirements considering current capacity utilization and performance
• For forecasting use techniques like trending, application and/or service sizing, capacity modelling, etc.
• Map technology needs:
• Research for emerging technologies and products
• Consider relevant emerging technologies and products as an alternative mean to efficiently and effectively meet IT capacity requirements considering cost, performance and other significant aspects
• Prepare and maintain an up to date Capacity Plan
• Conduct periodic reviews

STEP 2: Implement

• Implement Capacity Management process
• Deploy a Capacity Manager
• Responsible for process management and publishing periodic reports
• Identify all critical services
• Identify CIs mapping to these critical services
• Mark these CI as critical
• Capacity Plan

STEP 3: Monitor & Analyze:

• Collect capacity and performance data (like utilization, response time reports etc.,)
• Identify capacity/performance issues
• Identify underutilized and over utilized components
• Analyse collected data to identify current or potential capacity and performance issues
• Corrective actions

STEP 4: Improve:

• Propose & implement corrective actions in order to prevent business impact due to poor performance or lack of capacity; Corrective actions could be:
• Performance tuning
• Redeploying under-utilized capacity
• Procuring additional capacity
• Influencing demand
• Access. manage and improve capacity management process
• Cost optimization techniques

STEP 5: Control:

• Perform risk assessment , identify and implement mitigation options
• Maintain a risk register
• Analyze and resolve capacity related incidents and problems
• Analyze impact of changes and implement related recommendations

STEP 6: Report: Periodically report on-

• Corrective actions
• Performance of resources
• Resource utilization
• Capacity projections vs. utilization
• Issues with/due to capacity management
• Process performance