For over a decade, ITIL has been the leading ITSM framework adopted by enterprises across the globe. So, what is driving a rapidly increasing interest in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) as a service management alternative? In its own words, Google refers to SRE as its approach to service management: “The SRE team is responsible for the availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response and capacity planning.” In traditional ITSM terms, the role of the SRE is responsible for service level, change, availability, event, incident, problem, capacity, performance, infrastructure and platform management. While the operational practice areas may be similar, there are significant differences in how the practices are approached. ITIL4 Framework Compared to SRE Released in 2019, the newest update to ITIL4 remains a complex governance model with four dimensions, seven guiding principles, a Service Value System and 34 processes (now renamed as p...

I was recently asked about Standard Operations and Maintenance activities relative to the Change Enablement practice and SLAs. Here are a few thoughts. Standard Operations and Maintenance is really something that is defined in a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in consultation and negotiation with the customer. It is not a determination made solely by IT or Operations. The customer or receiver of service helps to establish whether an “outage” has occurred. Because we want to adhere to the terms and conditions set forth in the SLA, strong controls should be in place. It is not a question of whether the Change Enablement practice will be used, but rather the degree of Change Enablement that will be applied. A solid approach is to establish a clear definition of what constitutes a change in the organization. ITIL defines a change as “the addition, modification, or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on services.” This is a broad definition and covers just ...

This blog was written by Kevin Behr, co-author of Visible Ops You can visit Kevin's blog at: http://blog.kevinbehr.com/ “I wish we had dedicated project resources. I am so busy with operations that I just don’t have time for projects.” “Why does every IT issue get escalated to my top network and security people?” “I don’t care if you have enough time. I need this stuff done now.” “It takes me more time to fill out a change request than to make the actual change.” “We spend over 70% of our time doing operations which only leaves me 10-15% to work on projects after I read my email.” Sound Familiar? I love the provocative statement that Goldratt made (I paraphrase): “Technology CAN (not does) provide value IF and only IF it diminishes a business constraint.” Before you go off emailing me that technology has many other values please reflect deeply on this statement. Please reflect deeply on what business value IT provides. I love the notion of continuity that the “diminishes” brings to...