ITIL intermediate CSI is a comprehensive certification course that provides training in all aspects of IT service management. The course material includes the following subjects: planning for services, design, and transition to operations, operation of services, availability management, capacity management, and performance management.
ITIL intermediate CSI certification is the key to success in IT service management. It is a much-needed qualification for people who want to excel in this field, and it has been designed with their needs in mind. If you are an IT professional or work in IT administration, this training will help you tremendously.
ITIL service lifecycle
The ITIL service lifecycle is a systematic framework that provides the best practices for managing IT services. It was designed to help organizations manage their IT infrastructure, improve service delivery and provide better customer satisfaction. It is divided into five phases:
- Service Strategy: Service strategy is an essential part of any business. Service strategy involves everything from how your customer service operates to how employees are trained on new policies. Some things that you need to consider when developing your service strategy are the needs of the customer, company goals and objectives, what your competitors are doing, and how you will measure success.
- Service Design: Service design is a process that identifies and meets customers' needs. It looks at what customers need from their service providers, how they want to interact with them, and then designs a service around these factors.
- Service Transition: Service transition is transitioning a customer from one service provider to another. The three stages in this process are:
- Pre-transition planning.
- Transition execution.
- Post-transition analysis.
- Service Operation: Service operation is the process of managing service delivery, including service design and development, requisitioning resources, allocating resources to tasks, monitoring task status. Service Operation Management aims to provide customer satisfaction that will keep the customers coming back for more.
- Continual Improvement: Continual improvement is the focus of many organizations and businesses today. Companies that implement continual improvement into their business structure can increase efficiency, reduce waste, and maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace.
The CSI processes
This process aims to reduce the cost of providing services and identify opportunities to improve services to increase profitability. It determines what needs to be measured, analyzed, reported, and consistently reviewed service achievements. The CSI processes have the following benefits:
- Business Value: Taking the help of these CSI processes, the present and future business outcome requirements can be met by monitoring and analyzing the service delivery. It also assesses the current situation against the business requirements.
- Policies: A formal change management process is used by all improvement initiatives. All the functional groups within an organization are responsible for CSI activities. Everyone in a group is responsible for supporting CSI activities. IT services must be tested against competitors to add actual business value to the client and remain competitive in its service delivery. The services must be evaluated as per the latest technological advancement to deliver the most efficient services to customers.
- Policy Example of Monitoring Services: The business must agree on things that must be monitored and collect data on each service it provides. The data collected should be aligned with service level agreement, operational level agreement, and contracts. This policy aims to provide inputs in CSI activities to identify gaps and find opportunities for improvement.
Continual Service Improvement Techniques
- Kanban: Kanban is a new approach to workflow management that has become popular in software development, manufacturing, and other fields. Kanban uses graphic cards on a board to represent work items. The Kanban system defines the steps needed for performing any task or process. It also provides an improved way of looking at how much work is being done at any given time.
- The Five Whys: The 5 Whys is a powerful problem-solving technique that can help you identify the root cause of any issue. It's also an effective method for getting to the heart of what your customers want and need.
- Value Stream Mapping: Value stream mapping is a process designed to help businesses operations flow more smoothly. It involves mapping out the steps involved in producing or delivering a product or service and then identifying opportunities for improvement. Value stream maps are helpful because they make it possible for people who don't know each other well to collaborate on improving processes that might be causing bottlenecks in an organization's workflow.
Seven Step Improvement Process
- Identify a Strategy for Improvement: It means constantly looking for new ways to serve customers better and make their lives easier. This can be done by analyzing your current processes, identifying areas for improvement, and then implementing changes accordingly. The outcomes of this activity are:
- Vision Statement.
- Mission Statement.
- Well Defined Goal.
- Define What to Measure: Every organization may find that there may be limitations on what can be measured. Anything that cannot be measured should not appear in the Service Level Agreement. CSI identifies new SLA's, IT capabilities and conducts a gap analysis to identify opportunities for improvement. The role of CSI is to as questions like 'Where are we now? And how can we get there?
- Gather the Data: To answer the questions in the second step, we need to gather data. Gathering data requires monitoring which can be done using applications, software, and monitoring tools. Some data can also be gathered manually, which follows the SMART principle. (Specific- Measurable- Achievable- Relevant- Timely).
- Process the Data: The data needs to be processed in alignment with Critical success factors and key performance indicators specified. The purpose of the step is to process data from multiple sources and rationalize it to identify any gaps.
- Analysis of the Data: If your organization's service desk has been facing less number of call volumes over the past few months, you need to figure out if it is a good or bad trend. With proper data analysis, you can tap the root cause of the customer problems and design your services accordingly. Data analysis will transform the information into knowledge that will benefit the organization.
- Present the Information: The sixth step is to display or present the knowledge using tools, reports, etc. Consider the target audience to make sure your information reaches the right customers.
- Implement Corrections: Use the knowledge gained to improve and optimize your services. Train your team to make them understand the purpose of these improvement measures.