ITIL Best Practices
Written By : Bakkah
28 Aug 2025
ITIL 4 is the modern standard for effective IT service management, built on 34 flexible practices across general, service, and technical domains. It helps organizations improve performance, manage risks, ensure continuity, and deliver value through a blend of people, processes, and technology.
General Management Practices include functions like continual improvement, risk management, strategy management, and workforce planning, all aimed at aligning business goals with effective service delivery.
Service Management Practices focus on daily operations, covering areas such as incident and problem management, capacity planning, service design, and change enablement.
Technical Management Practices address the underlying technology, such as deployment, infrastructure, and software development.
What Are ITIL Practices?
In ITIL 4, a "practice" is a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. Think of them as the tools and capabilities you need to deliver value, combining people, processes, and technology.
1. The Shift from Processes to Practices
In the past, ITIL focused heavily on "processes," which were rigid sets of steps. ITIL 4 evolved this concept into "practices" to be more holistic and flexible, which is a perfect fit for today's agile and fast-paced tech environments. This change makes the ITIL practices more relevant and adaptable than ever.
2. The Three Categories of ITIL Practices
To make them easier to understand, the 34 ITIL practices are grouped into three main categories. This structure helps organizations focus on different aspects of service management, from overarching business strategy to the technical details. The three categories are:
- General Management Practices
- Service Management Practices
- Technical Management Practices
General Management Practices
These ITIL practices have been adapted from general business management domains for service management. They provide a universal framework for how the organization operates and improves, touching every aspect of the business.
1. Architecture Management
This practice provides a shared understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization. It shows how these parts, from technology to business processes, interrelate to achieve objectives.
2. Continual Improvement
This practice is all about getting better, step-by-step, all the time. Its purpose is to align the organization’s services with changing business needs through the ongoing improvement of products, services, and practices.
3. Information Security Management
In a world of constant cyber threats, this practice is non-negotiable. Its goal is to protect the organization by understanding and managing risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.
4. Knowledge Management
This practice ensures that valuable information and knowledge are shared effectively throughout the organization. It’s about making sure people have the right information at the right time to make smart decisions.
5. Measurement and Reporting
You can't improve what you don't measure. This practice supports good decision-making by collecting data and presenting it clearly, helping everyone understand performance and identify areas for improvement.
6. Organizational Change Management
This practice manages the "people side" of change. It ensures that any organizational transformation is implemented smoothly and successfully, helping employees embrace new ways of working.
7. Portfolio Management
This practice helps an organization manage its complete set of projects, programs, products, and services. It ensures the organization invests in the right initiatives to achieve its strategic goals.
8. Project Management
This is the practice of planning, delegating, monitoring, and controlling all aspects of a project. It ensures that projects are completed on time, within budget, and deliver their intended value.
9. Relationship Management
No organization is an island. This practice focuses on establishing and nurturing the links between the organization and its stakeholders, such as customers, users, and partners, to create true value.
10. Risk Management
This practice is about identifying, assessing, and controlling risks. Its goal is to ensure the organization understands potential problems before they occur and handles them effectively.
11. Service Financial Management
This practice manages the budgeting, accounting, and charging requirements for IT services. It helps an organization understand the cost of its services and ensure they are financially sustainable.
12. Strategy Management
This practice involves setting the organization's goals and creating the plan to achieve them. It defines the organization's direction and helps align all its activities toward a common purpose.
13. Supplier Management
This practice ensures your suppliers and their performance are managed properly. By doing so, you support the seamless provision of high-quality products and services to your own customers.
14. Workforce and Talent Management
This practice is about making sure the organization has the right people in the right roles. It covers all activities to recruit, retain, develop, and support the workforce needed to achieve business objectives.
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Mastering these foundational ITIL practices is the first step toward a rewarding career, and our course is the perfect way to get there.
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1. Mastering the Fundamentals
This module sets the stage for everything else. You will be introduced to ITIL 4, learn its core structure and components, and grasp the key concepts of service management that define how modern IT operates.
2. The Four Dimensions of Service Management
This is how ITIL ensures a holistic approach. You will explore the four critical dimensions—Organizations and People, Information and Technology, Partners and Suppliers, and Value Streams and Processes—that must be considered to deliver value effectively.
3. The ITIL Service Value System (SVS)
Discover the "engine" of value creation in ITIL. This module covers all the components of the SVS, including the ITIL Guiding Principles themselves, the Service Value Chain, and the model of Continual Improvement that drives your organization forward.
4. Key ITIL Management Practices
This module gives you the practical tools needed to manage IT services. You'll get an overview of the General, Service, and Technical Management Practices that turn ITIL theory into real-world action.
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Essential Service Management Practices
These are the core ITIL practices developed in service management and ITSM industries. They are the engine room of your day-to-day IT operations, ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.
1. Availability Management
This practice ensures that services deliver the agreed-upon levels of availability to meet customer and user needs. It's all about making sure your services are up and running when they're supposed to be.
2. Business Analysis
This practice identifies business needs and determines solutions to business problems. It helps bridge the gap between the business side and the IT side, ensuring that IT services truly support business goals.
3. Capacity and Performance Management
This practice ensures that services achieve the agreed-upon performance levels, meeting current and future demand in a cost-effective way. It prevents slowdowns and ensures the service can handle the workload.
4. Change Enablement
Change is inevitable, but chaos isn't. The purpose of Change Enablement is to maximize the number of successful service changes while minimizing risks. Its modern focus is more agile, enabling rapid and beneficial changes without bureaucracy.
5. Incident Management
When things go wrong, every second counts. This practice is all about minimizing the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. A solid Incident Management practice is key to maintaining business continuity.
6. IT Asset Management
This practice involves planning and managing the full lifecycle of all IT assets—from purchase to disposal. Proper IT Asset Management helps control costs, manage risks, and make better decisions about technology use and purchases.
7. Monitoring and Event Management
This practice systematically observes services and their components, and records and reports selected changes of state identified as "events." It’s the eyes and ears of your IT operations, spotting potential issues before they impact users.
8. Problem Management
This practice reduces the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents, known as "problems." While Incident Management fixes things fast, Problem Management prevents them from breaking again.
9. Release Management
The goal of this practice is to make new and changed services and features available for use. It coordinates a schedule for releases, ensuring that changes are deployed smoothly into the live environment.
10. Service Catalogue Management
This practice provides a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings. Think of it as a menu that users and customers can browse to understand what services are available to them.
11. Service Configuration Management
This practice ensures that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services and the supporting components is available when and where it is needed. It maps out all the pieces of the IT puzzle and how they connect.
12. Service Continuity Management
This practice ensures that the service provider can always deliver the minimum agreed-upon service levels in the event of a disaster. It’s about having a solid plan B to keep the business running no matter what happens.
13. Service Design
This practice focuses on designing products and services that are fit for purpose, fit for use, and that can be delivered by the organization and its ecosystem. It’s the architectural blueprint for creating value.
14. Service Desk
The Service Desk is the friendly face of IT. It acts as the single point of contact between the service provider and all its users. A great Service Desk is crucial for a positive user experience and for capturing demand for incident resolution and service requests.
15. Service Level Management
This practice sets clear, business-based targets for service performance, known as Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It ensures that the delivery of IT services is properly assessed, monitored, and managed against these agreed-upon targets.
16. Service Request Management
This practice handles all pre-defined, user-initiated requests in an effective and friendly manner. Think of password resets or requests for new software—Service Request Management ensures these are handled smoothly without disrupting other IT work.
17. Service Validation and Testing
This practice ensures that new or changed products and services meet defined requirements and specifications. It’s the quality control step that confirms a service works as expected before it goes live to customers.
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Technical Management Practices
These ITIL practices have been adapted from technology domains for service management. They focus on managing the actual technology and infrastructure required to deliver and support IT services.
1. Deployment Management
This practice moves new or changed hardware, software, documentation, or any other component to live environments. It works closely with Change Enablement to ensure that what's built is delivered to users effectively.
2. Infrastructure and Platform Management
This practice oversees the infrastructure and platforms used by the organization, including servers, networks, and cloud services. It ensures the technology landscape is reliable, efficient, and supports the organization's objectives.
3. Software Development and Management
This practice ensures that applications meet stakeholder needs for functionality, reliability, and maintainability. It supports the required quality of software products and services by managing their development from planning through to maintenance.
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Bakkah's ITIL Courses:
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Conclusion
ITIL, or the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a globally recognized framework that guides organizations in delivering efficient, reliable IT services. ITIL 4 has evolved from rigid processes to flexible practices, making it more relevant for today’s fast-moving technology landscape.
The 34 ITIL practices are grouped into three categories: General Management, Service Management, and Technical Management.
General Management Practices include functions like continual improvement, risk management, strategy management, and workforce planning, all aimed at aligning business goals with effective service delivery.
Service Management Practices focus on daily operations, covering areas such as incident and problem management, capacity planning, service design, and change enablement. These ensure smooth service performance, customer satisfaction, and adaptability to evolving needs.
Technical Management Practices address the underlying technology, such as deployment, infrastructure, and software development. These ensure that IT systems are stable, efficient, and capable of supporting business objectives.
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