Introduction:
The digital era demands strategic alignment, efficient service delivery, and a solid technical foundation for every IT service. ITIL 4 recognizes this need and introduces three Technical Management Practices to ensure the technological underpinnings of IT services are robust, agile, and capable of supporting current and future business needs. This article explores these practices, providing a closer look at their definitions and practical applications through real-world examples.
Exploring ITIL 4’s Technical Management Practices
- Deployment Management
Deployment Management aims to deliver changes to environments in “the BETTER, FASTER, and CHEAPER” way.
Example: A global e-commerce platform introduces a new payment processing feature. The deployment management team uses automated deployment pipelines to ensure a seamless transition. These pipelines facilitate the gradual release of the feature across different regions and enable quick rollback if issues arise. Thus, they minimize customer impact and ensure a smooth global rollout.
2. Infrastructure and Platform Management
Focuses on overseeing the infrastructure and platforms that support IT and IT services, including both physical and virtual components.
Example: An IT services company manages a complex data center infrastructure that hosts cloud services for various clients. Adopting an infrastructure management platform gives the company real-time visibility into its data centers’ health, performance, and capacity. This allows for predictive maintenance, automated scaling based on demand, and improved service reliability for all hosted services.
3. Software Development and Management
Ensures that applications and software are designed, developed, tested, released, and maintained to meet business objectives and service level requirements.
Example: A financial institution develops a mobile banking app to give customers secure and convenient access to their accounts. The bank applies software development and management practices by adopting agile methodologies, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) practices, and DevOps collaboration. This approach allows the bank to rapidly iterate on customer feedback, release new features on time, and maintain high security and performance standards, enhancing customer satisfaction and engagement.
Conclusion: ITIL 4’s Technical Management Practices provide essential guidance for managing the technological backbone of IT services. Through Deployment Management, Infrastructure and Platform Management, and Software Development and Management, organizations can ensure their technical capabilities are aligned with and effectively support their service management goals. By implementing these practices, IT teams can enhance their IT services’ stability, reliability, and agility, laying a solid foundation for business success in the digital age.