ITIL 2011: How Many Processes?
- Date: 11 January, 2012
As long as I've been involved in service management, one of the perennial debates that's really never been resolved focuses around how many discrete processes ITIL describes.
It's really a fruitless debate, but it's a debate that continually raises its ugly head. As recently as Fusion 2011 I witnessed an attendee ask one of the ITIL authors, "In ITIL 2011, is there a definitive list of all of the processes?"
No such single list exists in the ITIL core books. However, section 4 of each of the ITIL 2011 core books shows the processes described within that specific book. When we deliver accredited ITIL training, if it is describe in section 4 of any of the ITIL core books, then it is considered a "process".
The following lists, grouped by lifecycle stage, are the processes described in ITIL 2011:
Service Strategy
- Strategy management for IT services
- Demand management
- Service portfolio management
- Business relationship management
- Financial management for IT services
Service Design
- Design coordination
- Service catalogue management
- Service level management
- Supplier management
- Availability management
- Capacity management
- IT service continuity management
- Information security management
Service Transition
- Transition planning and support
- Service asset and configuration management
- Change management
- Change evaluation
- Release and deployment management
- Service validation and testing
- Knowledge management
Service Operation
- Event management
- Incident management
- Problem management
- Request fulfillment
- Access management
Continual Service Improvement
- The seven-step improvement process
The total count is 26 processes described by ITIL 2011.