For managers to effectively address the issue of information systems failures, they should have a general understanding of what constitutes effective IT management practices and processes. ITIL provides a comprehensive framework of IT "best management" practices developed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)of the United Kingdom. The ITIL framework intentionally emphasizes the critical role of people and processes relative to technology in delivering delivery of high-quality IT services. While a thorough introduction to the ITIL framework lies well beyond the scope of this chapter (OGC presents the framework in 11 book-length publications), the framework provides several principles particularly relevant to our discussion of avoiding system failures. The ITIL framework is built around the core process of IT service delivery and management. ITIL promotes business driven identification of Service Level Requirements (SLRs) to be incorporated into Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLRs are a set of operational requirements for individual IT services. Typically SLRs include a specification of service availability, service response times and acceptable error rates. The operational requirements represent a clear articulation of the organization's IT service needs to the IT service activity. ITIL calls for the specification of service requirements into SLAs. The SLA essentially represents a contract between the organization and its IT service provider specifying the type and quality of IT services to be provided. As a contractual-like document, SLAs should specify user responsibilities as well as those of the IT activity. SLAs should specify service availability, reliability, performance and security in terms and measures that organizational users are capable of understanding. For example:
- Service availability of 99.5% during business hours and 95% availability on nights and weekends -- excluding scheduled outages for required maintenance and upgrades,
- Transaction response times, database queries to complete in less than 5 seconds during peak usage hours and in less than 2 seconds during non-peak hours,
- Telephone hold times for service desk support are not to exceed 2 minutes
- Replies to emailed service request should be within two business hours from time submitted.
The development of SLRs and negotiation of SLAs provides a basis for reaching an understanding among system owners, system users and service providers. For our purposes, the process provides a business driven approach to establishing realistic criteria for judging success or failure in the delivery of IT services. The ITIL documentation goes into great depth describing the numerous IT management processes that can contribute to fulfilling the service delivery obligations specified in an organization's SLRs and SLAs. Later in the chapter, we will be discussing ITIL most closely associated with avoiding and recovering from systems failure.
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