What is ITSM?

Short answer

ITSM - Information Technology Service Management

Slightly longer answer

ITSM is a field of knowledge about IT service management. There are two main initial assumptions adopted by ITSM: first, service is the main form of providing value emanating from IT, second, IT services are best organized as a set of processes with clearly defined goals, objectives, and roles and responsibilities.

even more complete answer under the cut
')

Why does a company need an IT department?

Let's start from afar: with the question of why a commercial organization needs an IT department. For many companies, the IT department is a division whose money goes to the budget, but which at the same time does not bring any profit. However, in modern realities, almost any business needs to use information technologies: conduct electronic correspondence, surf the Internet, automate business processes both within the company and when interacting with partners and customers. Information systems arising for these purposes are very complex and require special knowledge and constant attention for their deployment and operation. Thus, there is a need for specialists who would perform this work.

How to organize the work of the IT department?

It turns out that from a business point of view, an IT department is an inevitable payment for doing business in the modern world. This means that a business naturally naturally has a desire to clearly understand what it is paying for, and not to pay beyond the minimum necessary. At the same time, numerous stories about misunderstanding of business and IT are a good example of the fact that a good way of organizing the work of an IT department is far from obvious.

The historically established “traditional” approach to managing an IT department can be called “resource” or “product”. It consists in the fact that the task of the IT department is the creation and support of various kinds of systems that are considered by the business as resources: If they are put at the disposal of qualified specialists, they can perform some tasks assigned to them. For example, with the resources called “work computer”, “Internet” and “1C.Accounting”, an accountant will be able to prepare and submit to the tax annual report. If the resource cannot be used (for example, because “I-Internet-not-open !!! 11”), you need to instruct a specialist from the IT department to understand the situation and fix the resource.

Thus, with the “traditional” approach, the IT department is engaged in creating and maintaining a set of resources and handling complaints from company employees who use these resources at their discretion (in accordance with the job description). At the same time, typical tasks that can be solved by the IT department should be formulated in technical terms (for example, “install another server on a 4-core Xeon with 16GB of RAM and 2TB disk storage” or “update Windows on all working computers from XP to Windows 7 ").

What else could be the approach to the organization of the IT department?

Nowadays, the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) is quite well-known, meaning the software distribution model, in which the customer does not become the owner of the software, but gains access to the functionality he needs (usually via a web interface and a browser). In this case, the buyer does not bear the burden of problems associated with installation, support and updating. Payment in this model is calculated based on the volume of services consumed by the user. For example, for each person-month of using the system. In addition to the lack of ownership of the software product, this approach has other business benefits. Namely: the transparency of costs and their commensurability with the volume of services received, as well as a clear (enshrined in the contract) understanding of exactly what, in what volume and at what price you can expect from the supplier.

You can try to transfer this approach from software to the work of an IT department and define the concept of “IT as a Service”. If a business is able to formalize the services it wants to receive from the IT department (in other words, if the business is good enough for what this IT department needs at all), then the payment model “for services rendered” is quite possible. This approach allows business owners to better understand what is happening in the IT department, how much it costs for a business, and why it costs so much. In addition, it provides an opportunity to constantly coordinate the activities of the IT department, ensuring that the services provided meet current requirements.

For programmers, the analogy with the principle of encapsulation from OOP can be clear. Since the characteristics of the IT department are beyond the competence of the business, they should not be present in the interactions between business and IT. The interaction must be defined in terms understandable to both sides, and the way in which an order is executed must be hidden inside. Concealment in this case does not mean that you need to keep the details in a strict secret and never share them with someone not from IT, but only that technical details do not participate in the description of IT services. For example, instead of the requirement that “Exchange 2007 stand on two independent clusters, and that the temperature in the server room be no higher than 20 degrees,” require “98% availability of corporate mail every day from 8:00 to 20:00 and 80% availability during other time ".

Actually ITSM (IT Service Management) is a field of knowledge about IT service management activities. There are two main initial assumptions adopted by ITSM: first, service is the main form of providing value emanating from IT, second, IT services are best organized as a set of processes with clearly defined goals, objectives, and roles and responsibilities.

Tezisno

Services are the primary form of providing value to customers.
Services comply with customer requirements.
Products created as a result of project activities or purchased on the market, replenish the pool of IT service resources and are used in the future to provide services.

ITSM (IT Service Management) is an area of ​​knowledge about the management of the activities of the IT department, based on two prerequisites:

• It will be convenient for everyone if the result of the IT department’s work is presented as a set of IT services
• the main form of organization of the IT service is a complex of processes

How does all this relate to practice?

First, it has recently become fashionable to adapt corporate IT management processes to ITSM practices. First of all - in large western companies (retail, banks, insurance), but gradually this fashion comes to the territory of the former USSR. Secondly, the ITSM theme is well developed and reflected in standards and frameworks (ISO / IEC 20000, ITIL, COBIT). That is, there is a general understanding of what processes we are talking about, and a language that allows specialists in the industry to communicate. Thus, if you are going to work in this environment, you will most likely need a general idea of ​​the topic, and the presence of certificates (for example, ITIL v3 Foundation) can help with employment.

I think the standards, frameworks and certificates can be written separately.