ITIL is a Taxonomy of IT Operations Terms

The world of IT standards and best practices can be very confusing.  There are a host of standards and standards organizations covering everything from document formats to help desk management.  One of the best IT standards was developed in the United Kingdom and is known as ITIL.  But what exactly is ITIL and what is it hoping to accomplish?  Organizations are said to "follow ITIL," or "adhere to ITIL" but no one seems to actually "do ITIL."  What good is ITIL if you can't "do it?"

ITIL is a set of definitions and relationships that provide a framework for organizing IT operations.

In other words, ITIL is a standard taxonomy of terms that describe processes and events common to IT Operations.  So, when companies adhere to ITIL they are agreeing to use the same terms and relationships between terms (taxonomy) that other ITIL compliant organizations use.  This is extremely valuable because it means that ITIL organizations speak the same language, can easily share information, and skilled labor is easier to talk with.

So, ITIL is an example of a very useful and successful taxonomy of IT concepts, terms, processes and relationships.  You still have to do the "heavy lifting" of developing and staffing processes to support IT operations, but ITIL gives you the correct terms to use, a recommended method for organizing the way the processes connect to each other, and making sure that you haven't forgotten something along the way.

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New Star provides sales, process consulting, configuration and training for the ITSM suite of applications BMC Remedy, HP Service Desk from Service-now.