Best Practice

About Best Practice

One simple definition of best practice is:
"An industry accepted way of doing something that works."
Aidan Lawes, CEO itSMF

Best Practice is the best identified approach to a situation based upon observation from effective organisations in similar business circumstances.

A Best Practice approach means seeking out ideas and experiences from those who have undertaken similar activities in the past, determining which of these practices are relevant to a situation, testing them to see if they work, before incorporating the proven practices into your own documented processes.

Best Practice is all about not "re-inventing the wheel", but learning from others and implementing what has been shown to work.

Best Practice techniques can be applied in all walks of life. We focus on those relating to the management of IT Services - though in reality, the principles apply anywhere.

Why Adopt Best Practice?

The Best Practice approach is a systematic, professional approach to the management of IT service provision. It is based upon the combined experience of industry experts and can provide IT services with:

• A proven, quality approach to service delivery
• Increased productivity
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Minimised risk
• Reduced costs
• Improved communication between IT and the business and your customers
  

Best Practice also helps your customers by:

• Providing reassurance as to the proven processes
• Confidence to rely on IT services and enabling business objectives
• Clearly defined processes and contacts to handle problems and issues
• Clarification of costs and monitoring service levels - better informed customers
• By adopting Best Practice the organisation achieves a consistent and comprehensive approach to Service Management; ranging from software products, through to consultancy, training and qualifications.
• Best Practice IT Service Management has been designed to be adaptable to any organisation and any mix of IT resources. It provides a blue-print for service development, which IT departments can use to focus on implementing the blue-print rather than re-inventing the wheel. IT resources are focused on service quality to satisfy customer requirements, and help IT departments shift from the image of technology-driven to a focus on delivery of business needs, as needed.
  

Our Role in Best Practice

The itSMF plays a pivotal role in the development of ISO/IEC 20000 and has a continual and significant input into the development of ITIL.

BSi, itSMF and OGC have strong formal relationships with each other, covering both the development and promotion of best practice guidance and standards. Both BSi and OGC have representatives on the itSMF Board and various sub-committees; BSi-DISC and itSF have reciprocal membership arrangements; and itSMF has representatives on a number of BSI Standards committees, including the chairmanship of BRD/6, the committee responsible for the formal certification scheme.

For more information visit:

• ITIL - IT Infrastructure Library
• ITIL Qualifications
• Examiners
• ISO/IEC 20000