Does ITIL still apply to small IT department of two?

[cjmt]

I am the IT Manager/Technician/Do-It-All-in-IT for a branch of a multinational firm.
Recently I took the ITIL Foundation course and passed the exam, and realized that the ITIL approach was something that would put some order and drive our dept. to a more proactive posture (and allow us to start preventing fires instead of fighting one after the other).

We manage a network of around 50 nodes/users, 2 sites, mainframe, windows server, VB/Delphi/RPG/.NET/Java inhouse development, desktop applications, etc.

I0d be curious to know if ITIL (or parts of the framework) is being implemented in smaller shops and to what extent or if only larger IT departments can justify this kind of investment.

Thanks for any feedback. Regards.
Chris.

[Diarmid]

Hi,

there is a book "ITIL: Small Scale Implementation" that covers this subject.

I think the most important thing if you want to behave ITILish in a small organization is not to get bogged down in too much detail and theory; rather focus on the principles. For example, most of the functional roles will be performed by very few people, and so you don't need any complex web of passing authority back and forth.

You should have less need to wrestle with esoterica about, for example, when does an incident become a problem if your incident manager and problem manager are the same person and they are both also your senior technical person; you just have to manage priorities to achieve a balance of incident recovery and long term fix.

Beyond the fact that good (best) practice is always a benefit, the advantages of doing ITIL for the small organization are to provide a consistent documented framework and processes that stop things getting out of hand and provide senior management with evidence of good management.

Also, if from time to time you need to contract a specialist for something you will be presenting them with orderly information and environment in which to help you.
_________________
"Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope."
William Penn 1644-1718

[UKVIKING]

to follow up on diarmid's post

The core thing is to document and follow the processes and procedures for the company.

develop a good cmdb and config mgmt process
-- identify your assets and what level of detail you want for the cmdb
-- control the assets as best you can
develop a good release mgmt process
develop a good change mgmt process

get these 3 processes to depend and work together

same applies to incident and problem - but as they are always clsoely linked. it will be easier for those
_________________
John Hardesty
ITSM Manager's Certificate (Red Badge)

Change Management is POWER & CONTROL. /....evil laughter

[cjmt]

Hi, thank you both for your prompt answer!

I will definately try to get a peek at the book you mentioned, so that I can have some theorical guidance on the specifics of ITIL for small businesses. Have anyone read it already that can give some feedback on a successful implementation?

Indeed, one of my issues is to avoid getting caught in a bureaucratic web of authority passing, because it would all be done by myself and my assistant. Nevertheless, a balance must be met so that each process is well documented and executed accordingly to the defined work flow.

Can anyone share their experience in terms of how big where their ITIL implementation and much time it has taken?

Regards.
Chris.

[TomOzITIL]

I'm surprised that a multinational firm doesn't provide a bit of guidance, at least at an architecture/standards level. Multinationals often have some ISO standards they need to follow too.

But it is not so bad that you have loads of autonomy. (do you?)

I'm not convinced that any ITIL principles should only be followed by you and your assistant. If you write down what is difficult for you at work / keeps you awake at night. What your business users like/dislike. Who controls the IT money in your business. You will probably find that it is unreasonable users, disorganised budgeting, unapproved changes, poor infrastructure redundancy etc that cause you grief.

There are some free self-assessment tools out there. Maybe you're doing more ITIL-ish stuff than you give yourself credit for.

Not sure whether this is good advice (or advice at all), but if it aint broken don't try to fix it.

[Doober]

If there's only two of you, this is the BEST time to start. If you guys are "blazing the trail" then it might as well be close to a proven path, yes?

[cjmt]

Absolutely. Thanks.

[cjmt]

TomOzITIL,
You're right about us already doing ITIL'ish stuff. For the past ten years I've struggled with the growing complexity of Information Systems and the IT infrastrutucture and have been putting in place procedures and methods to deal with every aspect of managing it all. When I first learned about ITIL (just a couple of years long ago), it was an enlightening read for I became aware that some of the best practices had been compiled by real experts. Now, IT managers like myself had some kind of "standardized" guidance on processes that are, in essence, similar in every IT shop. Ultimately, every one of us had been doing some kind of ITIL since the early days of managing IT.

[cjmt]

Received the "ITIL: Small Scale Implementation" book. I will share some thought about it in a few days, after reading it.

Cheers.
Cristiano

[filipecruz]

Hello cjmt. You're from Porto. I'm from Lisbon! Nice to know that itil is spreading across portuguese ground.

About ITIL in small departments, I think that you should look at ITIL and identify the major principles of every process (for example: register all incidents is a major principle. the way you implement it should be free) and implement it at your own desire.

You'll follow the good practices of ITIL but use a personalized implementation. You should begin with incident management (to raise client's satisfaction and perception of the service) and the move on to problem or change (you should conduct an assessment of your needs and implement the processes that you need).

Did this post helped in any way?

regards,

Filipe