Glossary - ITIL Foundation 2011

Sl. Terms Description/Explanation

No
1 What is ITIL? Information technology Infrastructure Library- A set of
best-practice publications for IT service management
2 What is Service A set of specialized organizational capabilities for
Management? providing value to customers in the form of services
3 What is IT Service The implementation and management of quality IT
Management (ITSM)? services that meet the needs of the business
4 Service A means of delivering value to Customers by facilitating
outcomes customers want to achieve without the
ownership of specific costs or risks.
5 4 perspectives of ITSM People, partners, process, products
6 What is a process? A set of coordinated activities combining and
implementing resources and capabilities in order to
produce an outcome and provide value to customers or
stakeholders
7 Characteristics of a process Processes are measurable, delivers specific results,
deliver primary outcomes to customers or stakeholders,
responds to specific events (Triggers)
8 Function A team or group of people and the tools or other
resources they use to carry out one or more processes or
activities. E.g. Service desk
9 Role A set of responsibilities, activities and authorities
assigned to a person or team
10 Service owner A role responsible for managing one or more services
throughout their entire lifecycle. Responsible for
developing strategy for their service
E.g. Owner of Email service
11 Process owner The person who is held accountable for ensuring that a
process is fit for purpose. His responsibilities include
sponsorship, design, continual improvement of the
process and its metrics
12 What is RACI? A model used to help define roles and responsible. RACI
stands for Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and
Informed
13 Capabilities The ability of an organization, processes, people,
management, and Knowledge. They are intangible assets
of an organization.
14 Resources A generic term that includes IT infrastructure, people,

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 money, or anything else that might help to deliver an IT
service. Resources are also considered to be tangible
assets of an organization.
15 Types of service provider Internal (Type1), Shared Services unit (Type II), External
service provider (Type III)
16 Best Practice Proven activities or processes that have been successfully
used by multiple organizations.
E.g. ITIL is an example of best practice
17 Customer Someone who buys goods and services.
18 User A person who uses the IT Service on a day to day basis.
19 Value creation Created by combination of Utility and Warranty
20 What is Utility? Fit for purpose Functionality/Features offered to meet
a particular need (what a service does).
21 What is Warranty? Fit for use How the service is delivered
Warranty refers to Availability, Capacity, continuity and
Security
22 3 Service Packages Core Service package, Supporting Service package,
Service Level package
23 Business case Justification for a significant item of expenditure.
Includes information about costs, benefits, options,
issues, risks and possible problems
24 Risk Risk is defined as uncertainty of outcome, whether
positive opportunity or negative threat
25 5 Lifecycles of ITIL Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition,
Service Operations and Continual Service Improvement
26 Purpose of Service Strategy Design, develop and implement service management as a
strategic asset and assisting growth of the organization.
Define the strategic objectives of the IT organization.
27 Processes of Service Strategy management for IT services, Service Portfolio
Strategy management, Finance management for IT services,
Demand management, Business Relationship
management
28 Purpose of Service Portfolio To ensure that the service provider has the right mix of
management services to balance the investment in IT
To track investments throughout their lifecycle and
ensure that appropriate returns are achieved
29 What does Service portfolio Service pipeline, Service catalogue and Retired services
contain?
30 Service pipeline A document listing all IT services that are under
consideration or development, but are not yet available
to customers
31 Service catalogue A document with information about all live IT services,

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 including those available for deployment
32 Retired services Decommissioned services
33 Service Portfolio Define, Analyze, Approve, Charter
management process
activities
34 Investment categories Run the Business (RTB)
Grow the Business (GTB)
Transform the Business (TTB)
35 What is the purpose of To secure the appropriate level of funding to design,
Financial management for develop and deliver services. It identifies the balance
IT services? between cost and quality of service
36 Benefits of Financial Enhanced decision making, Financial compliance and
management process control, Improved insight and communication of the
value created by IT services etc.
37 3 activities of Finance Budgeting, Accounting and Charging
management
38 Purpose of Demand To understand, anticipate and influence customer
management demands for services and to work with Capacity
management to ensure the Service provider has capacity
to meet its demand
39 Objectives of Demand Identify and analyze patterns of business activity (PBA).
management Define and analyze User profiles and influence the
demand
40 What is PBA? A workload profile of one or more business activities.
Represents changing business demands
41 User profiles A pattern of user demand for IT services. Each user
profile includes one or more PBAs
42 Purpose of Business To establish and maintain relationship between the
Relationship management service provider and customer based on understanding
process the customer and their changing business needs
43 Key activities of BRM Being the voice of the service provider to the customer
process Being the voice of the customer to the service provider
44 Scope of BRM Business outcomes that the customer wants to achieve
How to optimize services for the future
Ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction etc.
45 Purpose of Service Design The main purpose of service design stage of the lifecycle
is the design of new or changed services together with
governing IT practices, processes and policies for
introduction into the live environment
46 What are the aspects of Design Management information systems and tools
Service Design? Design of service solutions
Design of technology architectures

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 Design processes
Design measurement methods and metrics
47 Primary output of Service Service Design Package (SDP)
Design
48 Contents of Service Design Business Requirements, Service Applicability, Service
Package (SDP) Contacts, Service Functional Requirements, Service Level
Requirements, Service Program, Service Transition Plan,
Service Operational Plan, Service Acceptance Criteria,
Service Design & Topology, Organizational Readiness
Assessment etc.
49 4 Ps of Service People, Products, Partners, Processes
Management
50 Processes in Service Design Service Catalogue Management
Service Level Management
Supplier Management
Capacity Management
Availability management
IT Service Continuity management
Information Security management
Design co-ordination
51 Purpose of Service To provide and maintain single source of consistent
Catalogue Management information on all operational services, and those being
prepared to run operationally, and to ensure that it is
widely available to those who are authorized to access it
52 2 view structure of Service Business Service Catalogue, Technical Service Catalogue
Catalogue
53 What is Business Service This contains details of all the IT services delivered to the
Catalogue? customer (customer facing services) together with the
relationships to the business units and business
processes that rely on the IT services
54 What is Technical Service This contains details of all the supporting IT services,
Catalogue? together with relationships to the customer facing
services they underpin and the components
55 3 view structure of Service Wholesale Customer view, Retail customer view,
Catalogue supporting services view
56 Purpose of Service Level To ensure that all the current and planned IT services are
management delivered to agreed achievable targets and to correct or
improve the level of service delivered
57 Service level requirements Detailed recording of the customers needs, forming the
(SLR) basis for design criteria for the new or changed service
58 What is service Level An agreement between an IT Service provider and a
agreement (SLA)? customer. The SLA describes the IT service, Service level

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 targets and specifies the responsibilities of the IT service
provider and the customer
59 Operational level Internal agreement with another function of the same
agreement (OLA) organization which supports the IT service provider in
their delivery of their services
60 SLAM chart A service level agreement monitoring (SLAM) chart is
used to help monitor and report achievement against
Service Level targets
61 SLA structures Service-based SLA, Customer-based SLA, Multi-level-
based SLA (Corporate level, Customer level, and Service
level)
62 Service Improvement plan Formal plans to implement improvements to a process or
service.
63 Purpose of Supplier To manage suppliers and to obtain value for money from
management suppliers to provide seamless quality of IT service to the
business and ensure that underpinning contracts and
agreements with suppliers are aligned to business needs
and they meet their contractual commitments
64 Categorization of Suppliers Strategic, Tactical, Operational and Commodity
65 Under Pinning contract (UC) Contract with an external supplier that supports the IT
organization in the delivery of their services
66 What is SCD? Supplier and Contracts database
67 Purpose of Capacity To ensure that cost justifiable IT capacity in all areas of IT
management always exist and is matched to the current and future
agreed needs of the business in a timely manner
68 Sub processes of Capacity Business capacity management, Service capacity
management management, Component capacity management
69 Business capacity Manage capacity to meet future business requirements
management for IT services
70 Service Capacity Management, control and prediction of the end to end
management performance and capacity of the live operational service
usage and work loads
71 Component capacity Management, control and prediction of the performance,
management utilization and capacity of individual IT technology
components
72 Contents of Capacity Capacity performance reports, data, forecasts and
management information Capacity plans
systems (CMIS)
73 What is Application sizing? Determining the hardware or network capacity to
support new or modified applications and the predicted
workload
74 What is modeling? A technique that is used to forecast the behavior of the

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 system, process, CI etc. under certain conditions
75 What is fine tuning? Modifications made for better utilization of current
infrastructures
76 Purpose of Availability To ensure both the current and future availability needs
management of the business are met and the level of service
availability delivered in all services is matched to or
exceeds the current and future business requirements, in
a cost effective and timely manner
77 Availability The ability of an IT Service or component to perform its
required function at a stated instant or over a stated
period of time.
78 Formula to calculate Availability = Agreed Service Time (AST)- Down Time
availability (DT)/Agreed Service Time*100

79 Reliability A measure of how long a component or IT service can

perform its agreed operation without interruption
80 Maintainability A measure of how quickly and effectively a component or
IT service can be restored to normal working of a failure
81 Serviceability The ability of a third party supplier to meet the terms of
its contract
82 Vital Business Functions The business critical elements of the business process
(VBFs) supported by an IT service
83 What is MTRS? Meantime to restore service - The average time taken to
restore a service Down time
84 What is MTBF? Meantime between failures is the average time that an
IT service or CI can perform its agreed function without
interruption Uptime
85 What is MTTR? Mean time to repair The average time taken to repair
an IT service or CI after a failure
86 Purpose of IT service To support overall business continuity management
continuity management (BCM) process by ensuring that the required IT technical
process? and service facilities can be resumed within the required
and agreed business timescales
87 Business Impact Analysis Quantifies the impact to the business that loss of IT
(BIA) service would have and identifies the most important
services to the organization
88 Activities of IT service Initiation, Requirements and Strategy, Implementation,
continuity management Ongoing operations
89 What is Business Continuity Strategies and actions to take place to continue business
management (BCM)? processes in case of a disaster
90 Purpose of IT Security To align IT security with business security and ensure that
Management information security is effectively managed in all service

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 and IT service management activities
91 Confidentiality Protecting information against unauthorized access and
use
92 Integrity Accuracy, completeness and timelines of services, data
information, systems and physical locations
93 Availability The information should be accessible at any agreed time
94 Purpose of Design To ensure that the objectives of the service design stages
coordination are met by providing and maintaining a single point of
coordination and control for all activities and processes
within this stage of the service life cycle
95 Scope of Design All design activities and all new or changed service
coordination solutions that are being designed for transition into the
live environment or retirement
96 Purpose of Service To ensure that new, modified or retired services meet
transition lifecycle phase the expectations of the business as documented in
Service strategy and Service design
97 Purpose of Transition, The purpose of the Transition, planning and support
planning & support process process is to provide overall planning for service
transitions and to coordinate the resources that they
require
98 Processes of Service Transition Planning and Support
Transition Change Management
Service Asset and Configuration management
Release and Deployment management
Knowledge management
99 Purpose of Change The purpose of change management process is to control
management the lifecycle of all changes, enabling beneficial changes to
be made with minimum disruption to IT services
100 Change types Normal changes, Standard changes, Emergency changes
101 Normal change A change that is not an emergency or standard change
which follows the defined steps of the change
management process
102 Standard change A pre-authorized change that is low in risk, relatively
common and follows a procedure or work instruction.
E.g. Password reset
103 Emergency change A change that must be introduced as soon as possible
(e.g. to resolve a major incident or implement a security
patch). the change management process will normally
have a specific procedure for handling emergency
changes
104 Remediation Recovery of a known state after a failed change or
release

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106 Change proposal A document that includes a high level description of a
potential service introduction or significant change
107 Change Advisory board A group of people that support the assessment,
(CAB) prioritization, authorization and scheduling of changes.
Usually made up of representatives from all areas within
the IT service provider, business and suppliers
108 7 Rs of Change Who Raised the change? What is the Reason for the
management change? What is the Return required from the change?
What are the Risks involved in the change? What
Resources are required to deliver the change? Who is
Responsible for the build, test and implementation of the
change? What is the Relationship between the change
and other changes?
109 Purpose of Service Asset The purpose of SACM is to ensure that the assets
and configuration required to deliver services are properly controlled and
management that accurate and reliable information about these assets
is available when and where it is needed
110 What is a Configuration Any component or other service asset that needs to be
item (CI)? managed in order to deliver an IT service which are under
the control of Change management
E.g. Hardware, Software, people, Formal documentation
etc.
111 Configuration baseline The baseline of a configuration that has been formally
agreed and is managed through the change management
process which is used as a basis for future builds, releases
and changes
112 Configuration management A database used to store configuration records
database (CMDB) throughout their lifecycle and stores attributes of CIs and
their relationships
113 Configuration management A set of tools, data and information that is used to
system (CMS) support service asset and configuration management.
114 Definitive media library A secured library in which the definitive authorized
versions of all media CIs are stored and protected. It
stores master copies of versions that have passed quality
assurance tools
115 Definitive Spares Physical storage of all spare IT components and
assemblies maintained at the same level as those within
the live environment. These can then be used when
needed for additional systems or in the recovery from
incidents. Details are recorded in the CMDB, controlled
by Release Management
116 Purpose of Release and To plan, schedule and control the build, test and

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 Deployment management deployment of releases and to deliver new functionality
required by the business while protecting the integrity of
existing services
117 What is a release unit? CIs that are normally released together
118 Release One or more changes to an IT service that are built,
tested and deployed together
119 Release package A set of CIs that will be built, tested and deployed
together as a single release
120 Release types Major release, Minor release, Emergency release
121 Major release Containing large proportions of new functionalities.
122 Minor release Contains small enhancements and fixes
123 Emergency release Normally lined to an emergency change
124 Release and deployment Big bang versus phased approach, Push versus Pull
approaches approach, Automated versus Manual deployment
125 Purpose of knowledge The purpose of the knowledge management is to share
management perspectives, ideas, experience and information and to
ensure that these are available in the right place, right
time to enable informed decisions and to improve
efficiency by reducing the need to rediscover knowledge
126 What is DIKW? Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom
127 What is SKMS? Service knowledge management system which is a set of
tools and databases that is used to manage knowledge,
information and data
128 Purpose of Service To coordinate and carryout the activities and processes
Operations lifecycle required to deliver and manage services at agreed levels
to business users and customers and responsible for the
ongoing management of technology that is used to
deliver and support services
129 Processes in Service Event management
Operations lifecycle Incident management
Problem management
Request fulfillment
Access management
130 Functions in Service Service Desk
operations lifecycle Technical management
Applications management
IT operations management
131 Purpose of Event The purpose of event management is to manage events
management throughout their lifecycle. The activities are to detect
events, make sense of them and determine appropriate
control action is coordinated by the event management
process

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132 Event A change of state that has significance for the
management of a Configuration Item (including IT
Services). This can be detected by technical staff or can
be automated alerts or notifications created by CI
monitoring tools
133 Alert A warning that a threshold has been reached or
something has been changed (an event has occurred).
134 Trigger An indication that some action or response to an event
may be needed
135 Types of events Informational, Warning and Exceptional
136 Purpose of Incident To restore normal services operation as quickly as
management possible and thereby minimize the adverse impact on the
business operations, thus ensuring that the best possible
levels of service quality and availability are maintained.
137 What is an incident? An unplanned interruption to an IT service or reduction in
the quality of an IT service. Failure of a CI that has not yet
affected service is also an incident
138 What is an impact? A measure of the effect of an incident, problem or
change in business processes
139 Urgency A measure of how long it will be until an incident,
problem or change has a significant impact on the
business
140 Priority The relative importance of an incident, problem or
change. Priority is based on impact and urgency
141 Incident model Predefined steps for handling a particular type of incident
that has been seen before
142 2 types of escalations Functional and Hierarchical
143 Major incident The highest category of impact for an incident
144 Purpose of Problem Problem management seeks to identify the root cause of
management incidents or to minimize the adverse impacts of incidents
and problems that are caused by the underlying errors
Eliminate recurring incidents and to minimize the impact
of the incidents that cannot be prevented
145 Problem Underlying cause of one or more incidents
146 Reactive Problem Resolution of underlying root cause
management
147 Proactive problem Prevention of future problems by analyzing incident
management records and using data collected by other IT service
management processes and external sources to identify
trends or significant problems. Generally it is undertaken
as part of Continual service improvement
148 What is KEDB? Known Error Database

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149 What is Work around? A set of predefined steps to take as a means of reducing
or eliminating the impact of an incident or problem (e.g.
restarting a failed Configuration Item). Workarounds for
problems are documented in the Known Error records in
the KEDB
150 Purpose of Request The purpose of request fulfillment is to manage all
fulfillment service requests raised by the users throughout the
lifecycle
151 Service Request A formal request from a user for something to be
provided. E.g. Request for information, advice, password
reset etc.
152 Request model Specific procedures for handling certain types of requests
153 Purpose of Access To grant access to other authorized users, the right to use
management a service while preventing access to non-authorized users
by enforcing the policies defined by Information Security
and Availability management
154 Activities of Access Verification, providing rights, monitoring identity status,
management logging and tracking access, removing or restricting rights
155 What is Access? Access refers to the level and extent of services
functionality or data that a user is entitled to use
156 Identity The information about the user that distinguishes them
as an individual and which verifies their status within the
organisation
157 Rights Also called privileges, refer to the actual settings where
by a user is provided access to a service or group of
services.
158 Purpose of Service Desk Improved customer service, perception of IT and
satisfaction with IT services
Increase accessibility to IT services through a single point
of contact, communication and information
Better quality and faster turnaround of customer or user
IT requests
159 Service Desk Organizational Local Service Desk, Centralized Service Desk, Virtual
structures Service Desk, Follow the sun and Specialized
160 What is Self help? Refers to any means where the user may assist
themselves to seek support (e.g. FAQs, Intranet
forms/requests, Web-based support, Back-end process-
handling software)
161 Purpose of Technical To help plan, implement and maintain a stable technical
management infrastructure to support the organizations business
processes and to provide detailed hands on skills and
resource to support the IT infrastructure

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162 Role of Technical Custodian of technical knowledge and expertise related
management to managing IT Infrastructure. Provides detailed technical
skills and resources needed to support the ongoing
operation of the IT Infrastructure. Plays an important role
in providing the actual resources to support the IT Service
Management lifecycle. Ensures resources are effectively
trained and deployed to design, build, transition, operate
and improve the technology to deliver and support IT
Services.
163 Purpose of Application Application management is responsible for managing
management applications throughout their lifecycle
164 Activities of Application Application Management
management Application development
Identify skills required to support the applications
Deciding whether to build or buy.
165 Purpose of IT operations The focus is on building, repeatable, consistent actions
management which if repeated frequently at the right qualitative level
will ensure the success of operations
The actual value of the services being delivered by the
organisation is delivered and measured
166 Sub functions of IT IT operations control and Facilities management
operations management
167 Role of IT operations Oversees the execution and monitoring of the
control operational activities and events in the IT infrastructure.
Includes console management, job scheduling, Backup
and restore, Print and output management and
maintenance activities
168 Role of Facilities The management of physical IT environment, typically a
management datacenter or computer rooms and recovery sites
together with all the power and cooling equipment
169 What is CSI? Continual Service Improvement
170 Purpose of CSI To align IT services with changing business needs by
identifying and implementing improvements to IT
services and processes that support the business.
Improve effectiveness, efficiency and economics of all
processes associated with delivering services
171 Goal of Service To coordinate the design of metrics, data collection and
measurement and reporting activities from the other processes and
reporting functions
172 What is service The ability to predict and report service performance
measurement? against targets of an end to end service
173 Reasons to monitor and To validate

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 measure To justify
To intervene
To direct
174 CSI Register Contains important information for the overall service
provider
175 Improvement Favorable outcome showing a measurable increase in a
desirable metric or a decrease in undesirable metric
176 Benefit Gain achieved from improvement
177 Return on Investment (ROI) Quantifiable monetary benefit achieved by expending a
certain amount of money, usually expressed as a
percentage
178 Value on Investment (VOI) Non-monetary benefit such as branding, achieved by
expending a certain amount of money
179 Baseline Benchmark used as a reference point for later
comparison
180 Types of Metrics Technology metrics
Process metrics
Service metrics
181 Technology metrics Often associated with component and application-based
metrics such as performance, availability etc
182 Process metrics Captured in the form of Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) and activity metrics for the service management
processes. They help to determine the overall health of a
process
183 Service metrics The results of the end-to-end service. Component
metrics are used to calculate the service metrics
184 What is PDCA? Plan, Do, Check, Act Deming cycle
185 Plan Establish the objectives and processes necessary to
deliver results in accordance with customer requirements
and the organizations policies
186 Do Implement the processes
187 Check Monitor and measure processes and product against
policies, objectives and requirement for the product and
report the results
188 Act Take actions to continually improve process performance
189 4 types of Key performance Quality, Performance, Value, and Compliance.
Indicators
190 Purpose of Seven step To define and manage the steps needed to identify,
improvement process define, gather, process, analyze, present and implement
improvements
191 Seven step improvement Step
process- stages 1. Identify the strategy for improvement

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 2. Define what you will measure
3. Gather the data
4. Process the data
5. Analyze the information and data
6. Present and use the information
7. Implement improvement

192 Continual service What is the vision?

improvement model
Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?
Did we get there?
How do we keep the momentum going?

ITIL is the registered trademark of the Cabinet Office.

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