What ITSM?

IT service management (ITSM) is a set of policies and practices for implementing, delivering and managing IT services for end users in a way that meets the stated needs of end users and the stated goals of the business.

 ITSM is typically based on industry best practices and frameworks, such as ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), and ISO/IEC 20000 (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission).

The main goal of ITSM is to ensure that IT services are aligned with the needs of the business and delivered in a consistent, reliable, and secure manner. It involves various activities such as service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continuous service improvement.

ITSM key practices and concepts

ITSM core practices that organizations adopt most often:

• Incident management: In ITSM-speak, an incident is an unplanned outage or interruption in service. Incident management defines the process of responding to an incident with the goal of restoring the service with minimal impact to users and the business.
  
  
• Problem management: This is the process of not just identifying and addressing the root cause of an incident, but also the factors leading to the root cause and determining the best way to eliminate it.
  
  
• Change management: In IT, change is constant. Change management, also known as change enablement, is the establishment of processes and practices that minimize IT service disruptions, compliance issues and other risks that might result from changes made to critical systems.
  
  
• Asset and configuration management: This defines processes for authorizing, monitoring and documenting the configuration of software and hardware assets (physical and virtual servers, operating systems, notebooks, mobile devices) used to deliver services. A key asset and configuration management tool is the configuration management database (CMDB), which serves as a central repository of all IT assets and the relationships between them.
  
  
• Service request management: This is concerned with processes for handling requests for new services from individual users or areas of the business. This could include anything from employee requests for new notebooks to partner requests for portal access or a departmental request for several new "seats" on a software-as-a-service  (SaaS) application. The greater the automation of the ticketing workflow and "self-service" capability in service request management, the greater the potential benefit to the organization.
  
  
• Service catalog: A menu or portal that allows users to help themselves to IT services.
  
  
• Knowledge management: The practice of generating and sharing IT service–related knowledge across the organization and/or the extended enterprise (including customers and partners). A searchable, continually updated self-service knowledge base is usually the core tool of this practice.
  
  
• Service level management: The practice of agreeing upon required or desired levels of service for different groups of users and then meeting those levels, or "compensating" users when the levels aren’t met. Typically, the agreed-upon service levels are documented in a service level agreement (SLA), which essentially functions as a contract between IT and the users or the business.
  
  
• IT Service Desk: In ITSM, the IT Service Desk is a superset of the standard help desk—it serves as the single point of contact (SPOC) for fielding and managing all incidents, problems and requests. It’s also a foundation of ITSM, where all incident reports, problem reports and service requests begin, and where users can track their progress. The Service Desk handles software licensing, service providers and third-party contracts related to ITSM. In many cases, the Service Desk operates and maintains ITSM-related self-service portals and knowledge bases.

ITSM helps organizations to streamline their IT operations, improve customer satisfaction, minimize downtime, reduce costs, and enhance overall IT service quality. It also promotes collaboration among different IT teams, aligns IT with business objectives, and enables organizations to meet regulatory and compliance requirements.