Demystifying Cobit and ITIL

Our senior IT executives are being held accountable to better manage the quality and reliability of IT in business and respond to a growing number of regulatory and contractual requirements. Every enterprise needs to tailor the use of standards and practices to suit its individual requirements. Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can both play a useful role in IT governance.

Very simply COBIT helps our senior management teams to define what should be done and ITIL provides the framework for how to manage our services.

When we think about COBIT and IT governance at the most fundamental level, there are four questions that every leader asks him or herself when it comes to IT initiatives:

Is my IT organization doing the right things?
Are we doing them the right way?
Are we getting them done well?
Are we getting value from our IT department?

COBIT helps answer these questions by defining IT activities in a generic process model within four domains along with a set of information criteria. The four domains are: Plan and Organize, Acquire and Implement, Deliver and Support, and Monitor and Evaluate. The COBIT framework provides a reference process model and common language for everyone in an enterprise to view and manage IT activities.

ITIL speaks more to an operational level of service management and the framework answers these questions:

What are my IT services?
What are best practices for managing my services?
Are we following best practices for our processes?
How do we monitor and measure our services?

These questions are answered by following the guidance given by the ITIL framework. The ITIL framework has 5 lifecycle stages, Strategy, Design, Transition, Operations and Continual Service Improvement.

By an organization knowing what it should be doing and combining that with best practice on how to accomplish these tasks, top management, business management, auditors, compliance officers and IT managers can work together to make sure IT best practices lead to regulatory compliance with cost-effective and well-controlled IT delivery.

Comments

Four Service Characteristics

Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.” Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group. As a service provider, we can’t stop there! We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer. Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include: Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods. Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you. You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you. ...

What is the difference between Process Owner, Process Manager and Process Practitioner?

This article was originally published in 2015. With the Introduction of ITIL 4, some of this best practice has changed. See ITIL 4 and the Evolving Role of Roles . Updated Definitions in ITIL 4: Process Owner: In ITIL 4, the concept of 'processes' has expanded into broader 'practices.' Consequently, the Process Owner is now often referred to as the 'Practice Owner.' This individual is accountable for the overall design, performance, integration, and improvement of a specific practice within the organization. They ensure that the practice achieves its intended outcomes and aligns with the organization's objectives. Process Manager: Now commonly known as the 'Practice Manager' in ITIL 4, this role is responsible for the day-to-day management of the practice. The Practice Manager ensures that activities are carried out as intended, manages resources assigned to the practice, and oversees the practitioners performing the work. Process Practit...

Search