ITSM Frameworks

There are a variety of frameworks and authors contributing to the overall ITSM discipline. There are a variety of proprietary approaches available.

Analogous to debates in software engineering between agile and prescriptive methods, there is debate between lightweight versus heavyweight approaches to IT service management.

Lighter weight ITSM approaches include:

1. ITIL Lite - It is an official part of the ITIL framework.

2. FITS  - It was developed for UK schools. It is a simplification of ITIL.

3. CoPr -  It calls for limiting Best Practice to areas where there is a business case for it, and in other areas just doing the minimum necessary.

4. SDLC - It is a Creative Commons ITSM/SDLC Framework Wiki.

5. MOF - It covers the IT service management lifecycle with a practical focus.

In situations where the relationships between the parties do not fall neatly in bilateral client - service provider relationship, the limitations of the standard IT service management approaches become apparent. The traditional approaches tend to assume that the client has a direct contact with the service provider or providers, usually codified in a formal contract between the parties. However, these assumptions break down in some of the more complex multi-cloud scenarios or in the large-scale federated e-Infrastructures in the research domain (such as the European Grid Infrastructure).

There are ongoing initiatives and projects that are addressing these limitations, such as:

6. FitSM - FedSM project

7. DMTF - CADF Working Group

8. CSA - Open Certification Framework

Governance and Audit

Several benchmarks and assessment criteria have emerged that seek to measure the capability of an organization and the maturity of its approach to service management. Primarily, these alternatives provide a focus on compliance and measurement and therefore are more aligned with corporate governance than with IT service management.

ISO/IEC 20000 (and its ancestor BS15000). This standard is not identical in taxonomy to ITIL and includes a number of additional requirements not detailed within ITIL and some differences. Adopting ITIL best practices is therefore a good first step for organizations wishing to achieve ISO 20000 certification for their IT Service Management processes.

COBIT (or the lighter COBIT Quickstart) is comprehensive and widely embraced. It incorporates IT service management within its Control Objectives for Support and Delivery.