ITIL principles: who is responsible for what?

[eabdul]

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out what each unit of an IT department should be responsible for of the ITIL principles?. can't really find any thing about this on the ITIL books though.

for now, I would really appreciate it if somebody can highlight what principle of those should be covered by a help desk unit.

Service desk is obvious, but how about other principles? what is confusing is that a principle would sometimes appear to be two or three unit within the IT department and therefore, i feel the need to understand this part before implementing the ITIL principles.


thanks in advance everyone!

[Diarmid]

If you really do mean who should be responsible for managing/policing the ITIL principles, then it ought to be your quality management/audit function.

If you do not have an explicit QM/audit function then it rests in the appropriate level of senior management (such as IT services manager, or perhaps above that). The principles have to be applied across the board and cannot readily be governed from lower levels such as the service desk.

If, on the other hand, you mean who should be responsible for each aspect of ITIL-guided service management, then the only answer is whoever you make responsible for it.

Attempting to map the ITIL functions to organizational units is unlikely to be a good idea. Equally, attempting to design your organizational structure around the ITIL functions is rarely a good idea.

Service desk may well be obvious if you mean that the service desk manager should be responsible for the service desk, but if s/he is also responsible for incident management (not an unreasonable idea) then you must recognize that that will afford him/her some authority or call on resources that may be outwith her/his command scope, such as second level support technicians.
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[eabdul]

thanks for the detailed reply, I really found it helpful and clear.

thank you once again!