By definition, ITIL is a set of best practices (refer to glossary and section 1.2.3 of any of the books)  It is also considered a "source" of good practice.   While this may be confusing, it is important to understand the distinction. There are many sources of good practice but not all of those sources are  validated as "best" practice.   While the term is loosely used, best practices should be repeatedly proven to demonstrate tangible value in actual organizations.  In fact, today's documented best practice could be tomorrow's good or common practice.  That's how service management evolves, improves and becomes institutionalized. Building a service management program can also involve other sources of good practice (i.e., other frameworks, standards, and proprietary knowledge). ITIL makes it clear that it's best-practice guidelines  are not intended to be prescriptive.  Each organization is unique and must 'adapt and adop...

Several key individuals played a significant part in the creation of the movement to develop the ideas and usage of quality in the production of goods and services. Joseph Juran was one of these main contributors. His main efforts came in the form of the Quality Trilogy and the Quality Roadmap. Each of these approaches helped to set the foundational concepts and practices of achieving quality for customers. Juran began with a basic definition of quality: “Quality is conformance or fulfillment of customer requirements” The Quality Trilogy states that there exist three basic stages or aspects of achieving quality: Quality Planning: quality does not happen by accident Quality Control: checks and balances, structure and governance ensure quality Quality Improvement: we must always seek a better way to do things Once we have our basic aspects laid out we can then create a “roadmap” or plan for attaining quality. For the delivery of goods and services we could try to create this r...

The Professor has kindly lent me his blog to share the latest ITIL Library update - Jayne It was recently announced that the 2011 Edition of the ITIL Core Library will publish on July 29, 2011. Notice that I did not refer to the new release with a new version number - and with good reason. All future revisions to the ITIL publications will be referenced by the year that it was published. ITIL will finally just be ITIL. If you regard the 2011 ITIL update as the equivalent to the revision of a college textbook, you'll understand why this is not a big deal. Academic textbooks are revised on a regular schedule without much fanfare or impact on prior or future students. Past attendees do not retake their final exams or replace their textbook. Just a normal course of continual improvement. Do you base your decision on whether to take a college course on the edition of the textbook being used?  Not really.  What's important is the relevancy of the topic. ...