The prevailing motivation for the introduction of ITIL is often a desire to be able to deal with Incidents more professionally. This requires the availability of a central point-of-contact for the user (known in ITIL as the “Service Desk”), where calls are received and the necessary steps for the correction of the error taken.

Step 1: Taking Care of Incidents and Problems

In order to realize this, an ITIL introduction frequently begins with the “Incident Management” process, supported by “Problem Management”, to take care of deeper-running problems. If possible, “Configuration Management” should be included, because reliable data on the IT infrastructure will significantly improve the effectiveness of Incident and Problem Management.

Step 2: Change and Release Management

The enterprise as a whole depends on an up-to-date, reliable and secure IT infrastructure in order to support its business processes.

The effects caused by unauthorized or uncoordinated changes to this infrastructure are often not only undesired, but can also lead to business disruptions.

For this reason it is of particular importance to many businesses, that changes to the IT infrastructure only take place in a coordinated way. The second phase of an ITIL introduction therefore often seeks to establish the “Change Management” and “Release Management” processes.

Step 3: Focus on the Client

In a third step, the conditions are created for agreeing and monitoring service levels. This will mainly require a “Service Level Management” process, but also “Capacity Management”, “Availability Management” and “IT Service Continuity Management” to make sure that the relevant service level targets are actively managed.