ITIL and real life

For the past 1 year i have been delivering ITIL classes across globe. I find striking similarity between ITIL practices and every other aspect of interactions in day to day life. One reason could be that, ITIL is just a set of logical deduction of running IT in an organization, however it's just the means and not the end in itself. If you expand the scope of ITIL concepts little outside IT, the analogical model reveals more astonishing perspective in the flow. So i'm planning to share few similarities between ITIL and "things" outside ITIL in the coming posts.

SACM - Service Asset and Configuration Management.

I always used to tell this to my Students that, the ITIL in any organization starts with the basic understanding of a working SACM/CMS (Configuration Management System). After reading the ITIL concepts again and again, i can say that SACM will be the starting point of implementing ITIL in an organization, atleast the "Planning" part of SACM.

What is SACM? Organization uses "things" to deliver products or services, these "things" have tangible value to it and called as ASSETS. Any Asset, that you want to control, monitor, configure, edit, add, remove will become a CI (Configuration Item). A piece of land, purchased by an organization is an ASSET, and if you need to monitor that land and if it undergoes a change (building has been built for office/car parking, rented out, leased,etc.,) then it's considered as a CI. To make it even more simpler, the desktop purchased by a company is an ASSET, and if the desktop is used by "USER" (employee/employer/supplier) and company needs to monitor the desktop, then it becomes a CI.

All the organization needs this ASSETS/CI to build their products and services. That's why, SACM is the first and foremost thing in implementing ITIL (atleast the "PLAN" stage). In a way, SACM is the backbone of ITIL.

Now the striking analogy with real life came in the form of Indian Auditors Association. I was going through the Auditing parameters and guess what ? the first and foremost audit parameters includes an "ASSET REGISTRY" to be maintained and should be audited atleast annually !!!!

ITIL is just logical deductions !!!!!!!!!