What are the best tools for implementing ITIL?

Question

If you have implemented ITIL into your company's IT Service Management processes, what tools have you found to provide the smoothest transition, to manage the processes best and to provide the best management information?

Answer 1

Remember that ITIL is a methodology, not something you just do. You'll also find it very vague in key areas, particularly the magical CMDB, which is essential to everything -- yet doesn't exist anywhere. The biggest problem with ITIL is that it is the IT equivalent of CMMI or the fad programming methodologies that come and go.

Our organization tried to "implement ITIL" across the board, and it was a dismal failure. The second iteration of ITIL here is focusing on incident and problem management, and narrowing that scope is working much better. We also transitioned to a new help desk and ticketing system at the same time which helped the ITIL stuff along.

As far as tools go, they have nothing to do with ITIL. You could implement ITIL Incident management with Remedy, ServiceCenter, Request Tracker, or any ticketing system and then do problem management with FogBugz or Bugzilla or with your ticketing tool. It all depends on your process, your budget and how people in your organization work.

Answer 2

In practice, I have found that ITIL has three pieces:

1. A CMDB (or some database with all of your assets in it).
2. Tools that interoperate (NMS systems that can sync with your CMDB and each other).
3. Documented process for handling incidents and problems.

The problem is that most people are starting at such a huge deficit in terms of their existing tools and processes that just getting a CMDB in place that is accurate is a monumental chore, and there's little value in it when you can't take advantage of it.

There is no such thing as an "ITIL-compliant" product, despite vendor claims. But tools that work with different CMDBs or at least have open APIs will help you improve your ITSM capabilities.

Answer 3

We use BMC Remedy Action Request system which comes with ITIL modules for incident management, problem management, change control etc. However, it's a bear of a product to configure and we've used up some serious consultancy fees trying to get it to do what we want. The interface is also...interesting (in a bad way). I'd be interested to hear what others use too.