ITIL, elaborated as Information Technology Infrastructure Library, refers to the structure created to standardize the selection, strategizing, delivery, management, and overall lifecycle of information technology services within a business. One must know the essential ITIL glossary to appropriately handle the roles and responsibilities. It covers the critical ITIL terms and its role description related to ITIL and IT service management (ITSM). This article has covered some primary terms that may help you get well-versed in the field. Read on!

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Key ITIL Glossary

Let us explore some standard ITIL terms used in ITIL and ITSM.

  1. 1st Level Support includes registering and classifying incidents received and taking actions required to improve the IT services. 
  2. 2nd Level Support involves a deeper understanding of the organization's products and services and a high level of experience in troubleshooting issues.
  3. 3rd Level Support deals with problems related to configuration, database administration, network, data center, and other infrastructure that programmers, engineers, and other experts must resolve.
  4. 7-Step Improvement Guideline: The primary purpose of the 7-step process is to enhance the processing and reduce the cost of services processing of the organization. These seven steps include identification, determining, processing, collection of process, evaluation, presentation, and incorporating improvements.
  5. Access Management: provides access to authorized users while preventing unauthorized users from using a service.  
  6. Availability Management: Service delivery by the agreed level of availability to meet customer and user needs.
  7. Business Capacity Management: An essential ITIL glossary represents a process-seeking approach to meet business demands. 
  8. Business Continuity Strategy: A part or phase of BCM planning, it summarises preventive, crisis response, and recovery strategies.  
  9. Business Impact and Risk Analysis: Business impact analysis is the expected quantitative loss of an organization in specific situations. Risk analysis identifies all the risk factors capable of improving an organization's processes. 
  10. Business Relationship Management (BRM) refers to the crucial role of managing good relations with one or more customers. 
  11. Change Advisory Board (CAB): A team responsible for incorporating and evaluating changes in the IT environment.
  12. Change Management refers to the systematic set of actions aimed at managing transformation in the organization's goals, technologies, or processes. 
  13. Change Evaluation is an important part of the change management process. It helps check the effectiveness of plans and assess the outcome and impact of implemented changes. 
  14. Configuration Management Database (CMDB): It carries configuration information of software, hardware, and networks. 
  15. Continual Service Improvement (CSI) refers to utilizing previous successes and failures and identifying areas for improvement in IT services. 
  16. Demand Management: It manages customer demands and takes essential steps to fulfill them. 
  17. Design Coordination: It integrates all service design activities, resources, and processes to get a single effective design for new services. 
  18. Emergency Change: It includes modifications in components of business operations impacting the business downtime. These need to be more swiftly implemented to prevent significant problems. 
  19. Event Management involves managing processes in IT infrastructure to ensure constant detection, analysis, and management of Configuration Items and services. 
  20. Financial Management for IT Services: This is finance-based management for optimizing IT service costs, considering quality and risk. 
  21. Incident Management refers to handling the unplanned event or service interruption to restore to original conditions. It is carried out by development and IT Operations. 
  22. Information Security Management: This includes imparting protection against potential threats and vulnerabilities to ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. 
  23. IT Service Continuity Management: It manages the continuous delivery of vital services, including recovery in situations of disastrous events. 
  24. IT Service Management (ITSM): These are the activities such as implementation, management, and optimization performed by an organization to meet user requirements while allowing businesses to achieve their goals. 
  25. Knowledge Management: It is a type of content management that involves creating, storing, using, and sharing knowledge within the organization. 
  26. Major Incident Review takes place after a major incident. It encompasses identifying the cause, evaluating the problem-resolving strategy, and recognizing the possibility of optimizing handling methods in the future. 
  27. Problem Management: It manages the lifecycle of underlying problems to prevent future occurrences.  
  28. Release and Deployment Management: This includes a standard process for regulating the planning, building, testing, and deployment of new software and hardware components in live environments. 
  29. Risk Management involves identifying, assessing, and controlling financial, strategic, legal, and security risks to the organization. 
  30. Service Asset and Configuration Management: It is the process of maintaining Configuration Items and IT assets for efficient completion of IT service. 
  31. Service Catalog Management: This is the process of promptly updating the service catalog of the organization's IT services by external data owners. 
  32. Service Level Agreement (SLA): This is the contract between the service provider and customer that includes the expected deliveries, evaluation metrics, and single point of contact for end-user problems. 
  33. Service Level Management concerns negotiating SLAs and properly delivering promised deliveries between the service provider and customer. 
  34. Service Portfolio Management: It manages the services offered by the provider by defining, analyzing, planning, and controlling them, thus managing the company's service portfolio. 
  35. Service Strategy: It includes determining the type of services to be offered to the customer by a specific provider and developing and implementing strategies for effective delivery. 
  36. Service Transition: The approach handles transformation and change in the service. 
  37. Service Validation and Testing is the new process by ITIL for evaluating and optimizing deployed and new services. 
  38. Supplier Management: It includes thorough management of suppliers to improve the impact on service imparted to customers. 
  39. An Underpinning Contract (UC) is a contract between an IT service provider and a third-party vendor. It comprises services or goods vendors offer to the service provider for efficient product delivery to customers. 
  40. Capacity Management is the practice or strategy of optimally using resources to obtain maximum output based on existing market conditions.    
  41. Change Proposal: It is the formal document comprising suggested changes in service, product, system, or process. 
  42. Client (Contract Partner): An ITIL glossary representing an individual who purchases IT services from the organization.
  43. Compliance Management: The management ensures an organization's compliance with industry and security standards to reduce the risk of regulation violation. 
  44. Definitive Media Library (DML): The secure and logical library stores authorized versions of software package configuration items. 
  45. Demand Forecasting: It predicts customer demands for a product or service the organization offers. 
  46. Disaster Recovery Invocation Guideline: This is the set of guidelines that includes a disaster recovery strategy to ensure the continuity of business operations in situations of disaster or service failure. 
  47. Event Categorization Scheme: It refers to a consistent approach in dealing with mainly categorized events. 
  48. Facilities Management: The management ensures the physical management of IT infrastructure. It includes components like functionality, safety, comfort, and efficiency. 
  49. Financial Planning: Describing the required financial assistance for resources in the project and allocating the resources efficiently.
  50. Incident Categorization: After reviewing them thoroughly, the purpose is to save and prioritize the incidents to deliver a smooth and efficient resolution.
  51. IT Operations Management: The purpose is to track and regulate IT services' services and infrastructure by reviewing daily routine operations and applications and components.
  52. IT Steering Group (ISG): The group determines the procedure and strategy related to IT services. The group involves members from IT and senior business management. They are responsible for reviewing if the strategies are by the standards and setting the priorities of the service development programs.
  53. Key Performance Indicator (KPI): It refers to a metric to actively manage, measure, and report the activity, services, and process.
  54. Maintenance Plan/SOP: An ITIL glossary means a plan developed by availability management for defining frequency and preventive maintenance for the scope. This plan is required for infrastructure components and service-critical applications.
  55. Operational Level Agreement (OLA): This is an ITIL term for an agreement between one part of an organization and an IT service provider. The agreement concerns delivering services or goods and defining the responsibilities of both parties.
  56. Performance Monitoring is responsible for tracking an organization's overall technology environment, including endpoint devices, applications, and IT structures. 
  57. Quality Management: An ITIL glossary that describes practices for checking and managing the quality of IT resources provided and used efficiently within an organization.
  58. Release Management is the main body that handles the implementation of changes in IT infrastructure. They ensure that modification follows the standards and occurs securely and effectively in a verifiable manner.
  59. The Service Desk is the body connecting users and service providers. Here, incidents, service requests, and customer communication are handled.
  60. Service Improvement Plan (SIP): It refers to an official plan that covers implementation guidelines concerning the timeline and procedure of improvements in IT services.
  61. Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS): This refers to the central repository for IT organizations' knowledge, information, and data. Here, information such as initiatives, capabilities, and services concerning infrastructure are also stored.
  62. Strategic Service Assessment: This assessment evaluates service providers' strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to gain valuable insights before creating a service strategy.
  63. Technical Management: The team offers assistance and support of expertise to manage the IT infrastructure. The method is crucial in technical aspects of ITIL processes concerning testing, designing, managing, and modifying the IT services and developing the skills required to operate them.
  64. Availability Plan: The formal plan that contains all the necessary information about initiatives taken or considered to be taken to enhance component availability or services.
  65. A Capacity Plan refers to a plan for handling the necessary resources to deliver IT services. The plan covers distinct business demands, predictions, and cost options to fulfill the desired target.
  66. Change Build Phase: To approve intricate planning regarding change and release and evaluate the project plan's outcome regarding the initials.
  67. Customer satisfaction Surveys refer to planning, processing, and evaluating consistent customer satisfaction surveys. The purpose is to assess the lacking areas that do not fulfill customers' expectations, leading to customers switching to alternative service providers.
  68. Data Security Management: It determines the systematic installation of security within the organization.
  69. Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB): They are part of the change advisory board and are responsible for making decisions regarding emergency changes with higher impacts. 
  70. IT Infrastructure Management is the process of handling the infrastructure of IT organizations, such as networks, hardware, and operating systems, to ensure their smooth running.
  71. Lifecycle Management: This refers to evaluating the overall lifecycle of an organization's IT services from the start to the end. It helps analyze the operations, deliveries of services, processes, and overall aspects to ensure lifecycle management is by the business goals, standards for better production, efficient outcomes, and optimization.
  72. Problem Analysis: It is an ITIL glossary that refers to finding the primary cause of incidents that impact IT services so that it can be resolved first. 
  73. Release Package: This ITIL glossary is known as release, which refers to approved modifications or changes within IT components or services. 
  74. Service Delivery is an ITIL glossary that determines how an organization delivers its IT services to its customers.
  75. Service Report: It involves creating and providing reports covering all the information on trends and achievements concerning service levels.
  76. System Development Life Cycle (SDLC): This is an ITIL glossary that determines the organization's standards concerning application development and maintenance. The standard is divided into ten phases, based on which products are developed and modified.
  77. Transition Planning and Support: It is also called ITIL project management, which is responsible for planning and coordinating the resources to facilitate a massive release within a specific timeline, quality standards, and cost.
  78. Asset Management: It refers to the planning and handling of the overall lifecycle of all IT assets.
  79. Budget Allocation: The budget is allocated by the change implemented. The budget allocation is issued on budget request by service management and performed by the financial manager. 
  80. Change Deployment Phase: This refers to implementing authorized changes in the live environment of the IT services. It ensures the process maintains integrity and releases the correct components aligned with the standards.
  81. Customer Portfolio: It helps record the customer details of IT service providers. It helps to analyze the list of customers utilizing the service of the IT service provider.
  82. Enterprise Architecture (EA) covers several domains, such as information, applications, business, and technology. It describes a business's major or primary components and their interrelationships. 
  83. Incident Resolution: It refers to identifying incidents involving issues to rectify for better performance.
  84. IT Service Catalog refers to an organized repository of an IT active services end of an organization where users can request and use services efficiently.
  85. Operations Management: The purpose of IT management is to track and control IT services and infrastructure. Here, daily routine operations actions are monitored.
  86. Problem Escalation: It refers to the process of transferring responsibilities or ownership to higher expertise or authorities to deal with issues. It is done when the ongoing team cannot resolve within time and agreed quality standards.
  87. Release Record: A release record documents all information on releases from the prior planning stages to closure.
  88. Service Analysis is an ITIL glossary that determines the assessment of services based on their performance, deliveries, and quality and whether they are aligned with the organization's IT services standards organization's IT service standards.
  89. Service Level Requirements (SLR): This refers to the document that holds information about service requirements by the client, determining targets in detail, responsibilities of each member, and necessities concerning distinct categories of the customers. 
  90. Testing and Validation: The purpose of testing and validation is to examine whether the deployed releases are aligned with the service outcomes to reach the customers' expectations. The process is crucial to identify IT operations capable of supporting the new services.
  91. Application Management: Application management is the process of managing applications throughout their lifecycle. It is crucial in ITIL in terms of testing, designing, operating, and modifying to enhance IT services and develop skills to operate IT organizations' applications.
  92. Business Relationship Manager: The post was introduced in ITIL in 2011 to fulfill responsibilities such as maintaining good customer relations to ensure the service provider fulfills customers' needs. In addition, they identify whether the appropriate service catalog meets customers' expectations. 
  93. Change Classification refers to a pre-authorized modification that reflects low risk and is expected. In addition, it must be by the work instructions and procedures.
  94. Configuration Audit: This refers to configuration management monitoring that analyzes software through inspection, testing, demonstration, and analysis outcomes to ensure it meets the requirements based on baseline documentation.
  95. Event Filtering and Correlation: The event monitoring system uses the rule to examine whether events are significant, based on which they decide the appropriate response.
  96. Incident Escalation Rules: This refers to the rule determining the scaling of triggers and escalating incidents responsible for escalation. Here, triggers rely on resolution times and the severity of the incidents.
  97. IT Budgeting is the annual financial planning process through which forecasts can be made for financial resources and expenditures in distinct organizational units of IT sectors and their service management processes.
  98. Problem Prioritization: This method ensures that resources are allocated fairly. The team focuses on the major problems that primarily affect the process so that improvement can be more efficient.

Conclusion

Numerous ITIL terms must be at your fingertips when preparing for an interview for top-tech companies. Organizations seek candidates with high-level IT knowledge, a strong base, and advanced skills. Reviewing ITIL glossaries, work processes, service management case studies, and updated technologies in the field can help candidates steal the spotlight in the competitive job landscape. 

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