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ITIL - Internet Glossary Category: Technical and IT Date & country: 08/05/2017, NL Words: 576

emergency change
(ITIL Service Transition) A change that must be introduced as soon as possible – for example, to resolve a major incident or implement a security patch. The change management process will normally have a specific procedure for handling emergency changes. See also emergency change advisory board.

economies of scale
(ITIL Service Strategy) The reduction in average cost that is possible from increasing the usage of an IT service or asset. See also economies of scope.

economies of scope
(ITIL Service Strategy) The reduction in cost that is allocated to an IT service by using an existing asset for an additional purpose. For example, delivering a new IT service from an existing IT infrastructure. See also economies of scale.

effectiveness
(ITIL Continual Service Improvement) A measure of whether the objectives of a process, service or activity have been achieved. An effective process or activity is one that achieves its agreed objectives. See also performance indicator.

driver
Something that influences strategy, objectives or requirements – for example, new legislation or the actions of competitors.

early life support
(ELS) (ITIL Service Transition) A stage in the service lifecycle that occurs at the end of deployment and before the service is fully accepted into operation. During early life support, the service provider reviews key performance indicators, service levels and monitoring thresholds and may implement improvements to ensure that service targets can be met. The service provider may also provide additional resources for incident and problem management during this time.

downtime
(ITIL Service Design) (ITIL Service Operation) The time when an IT service or other configuration item is not available during its agreed service time. The availability of an IT service is often calculated from agreed service time and downtime.

direct cost
(ITIL Service Strategy) The cost of providing an IT service which can be allocated in full to a specific customer, cost centre, project etc. For example, the cost of providing non-shared servers or software licences. See also indirect cost.

directory service
(ITIL Service Operation) An application that manages information about IT infrastructure available on a network, and corresponding user access rights.

document
Information in readable form. A document may be paper or electronic – for example, a policy statement, service level agreement, incident record or diagram of a computer room layout. See also record.

differential charging
A technique used to support demand management by charging different amounts for the same function of an IT service under different circumstances. For example, reduced charges outside peak times, or increased charges for users who exceed a bandwidth allocation.

development environment
(ITIL Service Design) An environment used to create or modify IT services or applications. Development environments are not typically subjected to the same degree of control as test or live environments. See also development.

diagnosis
(ITIL Service Operation) A stage in the incident and problem lifecycles. The purpose of diagnosis is to identify a workaround for an incident or the root cause of a problem.

diagnostic script
(ITIL Service Operation) A structured set of questions used by service desk staff to ensure they ask the correct questions, and to help them classify, resolve and assign incidents. Diagnostic scripts may also be made available to users to help them diagnose and resolve their own incidents.

development
(ITIL Service Design) The process responsible for creating or modifying an IT service or application ready for subsequent release and deployment.

design coordination
(ITIL Service Operation) A stage in the expanded incident lifecycle. Detection results in the incident becoming known to the service provider.

detection
Detection can be automatic or the result of a user logging an incident.

depreciation
(ITIL Service Design) An activity or process that identifies requirements and then defines a solution that is able to meet these requirements. See also service design.

design
(ITIL Service Design) The process responsible for coordinating all service design activities, processes and resources. Design coordination ensures the consistent and effective design of new or changed IT services, service management information systems, architectures, technology, processes, information and metrics.

deployment
(ITIL Service Strategy) A measure of the reduction in value of an asset over its life. This is based on wearing out, consumption or other reduction in the useful economic value.

Deming Cycle
The direct or indirect reliance of one process or activity on another.

dependency
(ITIL Service Transition) The activity responsible for movement of new or changed hardware, software, documentation, process etc. to the live environment. Deployment is part of the release and deployment management process.

deliverable
Something that must be provided to meet a commitment in a service level agreement or a contract. It is also used in a more informal way to mean a planned output of any process.

demand management
(ITIL Service Design) (ITIL Service Strategy) The process responsible for understanding, anticipating and influencing customer demand for services. Demand management works with capacity management to ensure that the service provider has sufficient capacity to meet the required demand. At a strategic level, demand management can involve analysis of patterns of business activity and user profiles, while at a tactical level, it can involve the use of differential charging to encourage customers to use IT services at less busy times, or require short-term activities to respond to unexpected demand or the failure of a configuration item.

definitive media library
(DML) (ITIL Service Transition) One or more locations in which the definitive and authorized versions of all software configuration items are securely stored. The definitive media library may also contain associated configuration items such as licences and documentation. It is a single logical storage area even if there are multiple locations. The definitive media library is controlled by service asset and configuration management and is recorded in the configuration management system.

Data-to- Information-to- Knowledge-to- Wisdom
(DIKW) (ITIL Service Transition) A way of understanding the relationships between data, information, knowledge and wisdom. DIKW shows how each of these builds on the others.

dashboard
(ITIL Service Operation) A graphical representation of overall IT service performance and availability. Dashboard images may be updated in real time, and can also be included in management reports and web pages. Dashboards can be used to support service level management, event management and incident diagnosis.

customer-facing service
(ITIL Service Design) An IT service that is visible to the customer. These are normally services that support the customer’s business processes and facilitate one or more outcomes desired by the customer. All live customer-facing services, including those available for deployment, are recorded in the service catalogue along with customer-visible information about deliverables, prices, contact points, ordering and request processes. Other information such as relationships to supporting services and other CIs will also be recorded for internal use by the IT service provider.

customer portfolio
(ITIL Service Strategy) A database or structured document used to record all customers of the IT service provider. The customer portfolio is the business relationship manager’s view of the customers who receive services from the IT service provider. See also customer agreement portfolio; service catalogue; service portfolio.

customer asset
Any resource or capability of a customer. See also asset.

customer agreement portfolio
(ITIL Service Strategy) A database or structured document used to manage service contracts or agreements between an IT service provider and its customers. Each IT service delivered to a customer should have a contract or other agreement that is listed in the customer agreement portfolio. See also customer-facing service; service catalogue; service portfolio.

customer
Someone who buys goods or services. The customer of an IT service provider is the person or group who defines and agrees the service level targets. The term is also sometimes used informally to mean user – for example, ‘This is a customer-focused organization.’

CSI register
(ITIL Continual Service Improvement) A database or structured document used to record and manage improvement opportunities throughout their lifecycle.

culture
A set of values that is shared by a group of people, including expectations about how people should behave, their ideas, beliefs and practices. See also vision.

crisis management
Crisis management is the process responsible for managing the wider implications of business continuity. A crisis management team is responsible for strategic issues such as managing media relations and shareholder confidence, and decides when to invoke business continuity plans.

critical success factor
(CSF) Something that must happen if an IT service, process, plan, project or other activity is to succeed. Key performance indicators are used to measure the achievement of each critical success factor. For example, a critical success factor of ‘protect IT services when making changes’ could be measured by key performance indicators such as ‘percentage reduction of unsuccessful changes’, ‘percentage reduction in changes causing incidents’ etc.

course corrections
Changes made to a plan or activity that has already started to ensure that it will meet its objectives. Course corrections are made as a result of monitoring progress.

countermeasure
Can be used to refer to any type of control. The term is most often used when referring to measures that increase resilience, fault tolerance or reliability of an IT service.

cost effectiveness
A measure of the balance between the effectiveness and cost of a service, process or activity. A cost-effective process is one that achieves its objectives at minimum cost. See also key performance indicator; return on investment; value for money.

cost unit
(ITIL Service Strategy) The lowest level of category to which costs are assigned, cost units are usually things that can be easily counted (e.g. staff numbers, software licences) or things easily measured (e.g. CPU usage, electricity consumed). Cost units are included within cost elements. For example, a cost element of ‘expenses’ could include cost units of hotels, transport, meals etc. See also cost type.

cost type
(ITIL Service Strategy) The highest level of category to which costs are assigned in budgeting and accounting – for example, hardware, software, people, accommodation, external and transfer. See also cost element; cost unit.

cost model
(ITIL Service Strategy) A framework used in budgeting and accounting in which all known costs can be recorded, categorized and allocated to specific customers, business units or projects. See also cost type; cost element; cost unit.

cost management
(ITIL Service Strategy) A general term that is used to refer to budgeting and accounting, and is sometimes used as a synonym for financial management.

cost centre
(ITIL Service Strategy) A business unit or project to which costs are assigned. A cost centre does not charge for services provided. An IT service provider can be run as a cost centre or a profit centre.

cost element
(ITIL Service Strategy) The middle level of category to which costs are assigned in budgeting and accounting. The highest-level category is cost type. For example, a cost type of ‘people’ could have cost elements of payroll, staff benefits, expenses, training, overtime etc. Cost elements can be further broken down to give cost units. For example, the cost element ‘expenses’ could include cost units of hotels, transport, meals etc.

cost benefit analysis
An activity that analyses and compares the costs and the benefits involved in one or more alternative courses of action. See also business case; internal rate of return; net present value; return on investment; value on investment.

core service
(ITIL Service Strategy) A service that delivers the basic outcomes desired by one or more customers. A core service provides a specific level of utility and warranty. Customers may be offered a choice of utility and warranty through one or more service options. See also enabling service; enhancing service; IT service; service package.

cost
The amount of money spent on a specific activity, IT service or business unit. Costs consist of real cost (money), notional cost (such as people’s time) and depreciation.

control processes
The ISO/IEC 20000 process group that includes change management and configuration management.

Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
See COBIT.

control perspective
(ITIL Service Strategy) An approach to the management of IT services, processes, functions, assets etc. There can be several different control perspectives on the same IT service, process etc., allowing different individuals or teams to focus on what is important and relevant to their specific role. Examples of control perspective include reactive and proactive management within IT operations, or a lifecycle view for an application project team.

contract
A legally binding agreement between two or more parties.

control
A means of managing a risk, ensuring that a business objective is achieved or that a process is followed. Examples of control include policies, procedures, roles, RAID, door locks etc. A control is sometimes called a countermeasure or safeguard. Control also means to manage the utilization or behaviour of a configuration item, system or IT service.

continuous operation
(ITIL Service Design) An approach or design to eliminate planned downtime of an IT service. Note that individual configuration items may be down even though the IT service is available.

continuous availability
(ITIL Service Design) An approach or design to achieve 100% availability. A continuously available IT service has no planned or unplanned downtime.

continual service improvement
(CSI) (ITIL Continual Service Improvement) A stage in the lifecycle of a service. Continual service improvement ensures that services are aligned with changing business needs by identifying and implementing improvements to IT services that support business processes. The performance of the IT service provider is continually measured and improvements are made to processes, IT services and IT infrastructure in order to increase efficiency, effectiveness and cost effectiveness. Continual service improvement includes the seven-step improvement process. Although this process is associated with continual service improvement, most processes have activities that take place across multiple stages of the service lifecycle. See also Plan-Do-Check-Act.

configuration structure
(ITIL Service Transition) The hierarchy and other relationships between all the configuration items that comprise a configuration.

configuration record
(ITIL Service Transition) A record containing the details of a configuration item. Each configuration record documents the lifecycle of a single configuration item. Configuration records are stored in a configuration management database and maintained as part of a configuration management system.

configuration management
See service asset and configuration management.

configuration item
(CI) (ITIL Service Transition) Any component or other service asset that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service. Information about each configuration item is recorded in a configuration record within the configuration management system and is maintained throughout its lifecycle by service asset and configuration management. Configuration items are under the control of change management. They typically include IT services, hardware, software, buildings, people and formal documentation such as process documentation and service level agreements.

configuration control
(ITIL Service Transition) The activity responsible for ensuring that adding, modifying or removing a configuration item is properly managed – for example, by submitting a request for change or service request.

configuration identification
(ITIL Service Transition) The activity responsible for collecting information about configuration items and their relationships, and loading this information into the configuration management database. Configuration identification is also responsible for labelling the configuration items themselves, so that the corresponding configuration records can be found.

confidentiality
(ITIL Service Design) A security principle that requires that data should only be accessed by authorized people.

configuration
(ITIL Service Transition) A generic term used to describe a group of configuration items that work together to deliver an IT service, or a recognizable part of an IT service. Configuration is also used to describe the parameter settings for one or more configuration items.

configuration baseline
(ITIL Service Transition) The baseline of a configuration that has been formally agreed and is managed through the change management process. A configuration baseline is used as a basis for future builds, releases and changes.

concurrency
A measure of the number of users engaged in the same operation at the same time.

computer telephony integration
(CTI) (ITIL Service Operation) Computer telephony integration is a general term covering any kind of integration between computers and telephone systems. It is most commonly used to refer to systems where an application displays detailed screens relating to incoming or outgoing telephone calls. See also automatic call distribution; interactive voice response.

component failure impact analysis
(CFIA) (ITIL Service Design) A technique that helps to identify the impact of configuration item failure on IT services and the business. A matrix is created with IT services on one axis and CIs on the other. This enables the identification of critical CIs (that could cause the failure of multiple IT services) and fragile IT services (that have multiple single points of failure).

component capacity management
(CCM) (ITIL Continual Service Improvement) (ITIL Service Design) The sub-process of capacity management responsible for understanding the capacity, utilization and performance of configuration items. Data is collected, recorded and analysed for use in the capacity plan. See also business capacity management; service capacity management.

component CI
(ITIL Service Transition) A configuration item that is part of an assembly. For example, a CPU or memory CI may be part of a server CI.

component
A general term that is used to mean one part of something more complex. For example, a computer system may be a component of an IT service; an application may be a component of a release unit. Components that need to be managed should be configuration items.

compliance
Ensuring that a standard or set of guidelines is followed, or that proper, consistent accounting or other practices are being employed.

cold standby
See gradual recovery.

commercial off the shelf
(COTS) (ITIL Service Design) Pre-existing application software or middleware that can be purchased from a third party.

code of practice
A guideline published by a public body or a standards organization, such as ISO or BSI. Many standards consist of a code of practice and a specification. The code of practice describes recommended best practice.

COBIT
(ITIL Continual Service Improvement) Control OBjectives for Information and related Technology (COBIT) provides guidance and best practice for the management of IT processes. COBIT is published by ISACA in conjunction with the IT Governance Institute (ITGI). See www.isaca.org for more information.

closed
(ITIL Service Operation) The final status in the lifecycle of an incident, problem, change etc. When the status is closed, no further action is taken.

closure
(ITIL Service Operation) The act of changing the status of an incident, problem, change etc. to closed.

classification
The act of assigning a category to something. Classification is used to ensure consistent management and reporting. Configuration items, incidents, problems, changes etc. are usually classified.

client
A generic term that means a customer, the business or a business customer. For example, client manager may be used as a synonym for business relationship manager. The term is also used to mean:

chronological analysis
(ITIL Service Operation) A technique used to help identify possible causes of problems. All available data about the problem is collected and sorted by date and time to provide a detailed timeline. This can make it possible to identify which events may have been triggered by others.

ci type
(ITIL Service Transition) A category that is used to classify configuration items. The CI type identifies the required attributes and relationships for a configuration record. Common CI types include hardware, document, user etc.

charter
(ITIL Service Strategy) A document that contains details of a new service, a significant change or other significant project. Charters are typically authorized by service portfolio management or by a project management office. The term charter is also used to describe the act of authorizing the work required to complete the service change or project. See also change proposal; service charter; project portfolio.

charging policy
(ITIL Service Strategy) A policy specifying the objective of the charging process and the way in which charges will be calculated. See also cost.

charging process
(ITIL Service Strategy) The process responsible for deciding how much customers should pay (pricing) and recovering money from them (billing). This process is not described in detail within the core ITIL publications.

change window
(ITIL Service Transition) A regular, agreed time when changes or releases may be implemented with minimal impact on services. Change windows are usually documented in service level agreements.

chargeable item
(ITIL Service Strategy) A deliverable of an IT service that is used in calculating charges to customers (for example, number of transactions, number of desktop PCs).

charging
(ITIL Service Strategy) Requiring payment for IT services. Charging for IT services is optional, and many organizations choose to treat their IT service provider as a cost centre. See also charging process; charging policy.

change request
See request for change.

change schedule
(ITIL Service Transition) A document that lists all authorized changes and their planned implementation dates, as well as the estimated dates of longer-term changes. A change schedule is sometimes called a forward schedule of change, even though it also contains information about changes that have already been implemented.

change record
(ITIL Service Transition) A record containing the details of a change. Each change record documents the lifecycle of a single change. A change record is created for every request for change that is received, even those that are subsequently rejected. Change records should reference the configuration items that are affected by the change. Change records may be stored in the configuration management system, or elsewhere in the service knowledge management system.

change proposal
(ITIL Service Strategy) (ITIL Service Transition) A document that includes a high level description of a potential service introduction or significant change, along with a corresponding business case and an expected implementation schedule. Change proposals are normally created by the service portfolio management process and are passed to change management for authorization. Change management will review the potential impact on other services, on shared resources, and on the overall change schedule. Once the change proposal has been authorized, service portfolio management will charter the service.

change model
Change models may be very complex with many steps that require authorization (e.g. major software release) or may be very simple with no requirement for authorization (e.g. password reset). See also change advisory board; standard change.

change evaluation
(ITIL Service Transition) Information about all changes made to a configuration item during its life. Change history consists of all those change records that apply to the CI.

change history
(ITIL Service Transition) The process responsible for controlling the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to be made with minimum disruption to IT services.

change management
(ITIL Service Transition) A repeatable way of dealing with a particular category of change. A change model defines specific agreed steps that will be followed for a change of this category.

change advisory board
(CAB) (ITIL Service Transition) The process responsible for formal assessment of a new or changed IT service to ensure that risks have been managed and to help determine whether to authorize the change.

change
(ITIL Service Transition) A group of people that support the assessment, prioritization, authorization and scheduling of changes. A change advisory board is usually made up of representatives from: all areas within the IT service provider; the business; and third parties such as suppliers.

category
Issuing a certificate to confirm compliance to a standard. Certification includes a formal audit by an independent and accredited body. The term is also used to mean awarding a certificate to provide evidence that a person has achieved a qualification.

certification
(ITIL Service Transition) The addition, modification or removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services. The scope should include changes to all architectures, processes, tools, metrics and documentation, as well as changes to IT services and other configuration items.