IT teams use the IT Service Management (ITSM) process to deliver services to customers, often structured around Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices and influenced by DevOps principles.
By following ITSM best practices, you can overcome ITSM challenges such as inconsistent service, high downtime, unclear objectives, and weak change management. It also helps with standardizing ITSM processes and aligning IT services with your business needs.
Explore best practices with real-life examples and actionable implementation steps to enhance IT service efficiency and reliability.
What is ITSM?
IT Service Management is how IT teams manage the end-to-end delivery of IT services, focusing on business needs and user experience rather than just maintaining systems. It includes processes like incident, problem, change, and configuration management to ensure efficient service delivery.
ITSM operates on the principle that IT should function as a service, optimizing workflows like hardware requests through structured and repeatable processes. Unlike traditional IT teams that focus on infrastructure, ITSM teams optimize services using frameworks like ITIL, tailoring them to their organization’s needs.
Effective ITSM involves strategic decisions on SLAs, software adoption, and automation to enhance workflows and productivity. The best ITSM tools foster collaboration, empower users, and drive digital transformation.
10 ITSM best practices with real-life examples
1. Standardize ITSM processes
Standardized ITSM processes support and manage the service life cycle, from service design to service operation to help efficient IT services delivery.
This best practice also enhances customer satisfaction by providing predictable and reliable service management.
For example, Deutsche Telekom, a global telecommunication company, transitioned its IT service management processes to ServiceNow to meet the growing demand for cost-effective IT services.
The integration enabled the company to standardize service management processes by introducing a self-service concept. It resulted in faster incident response times, a decrease in incidents due to self-service capabilities. Finally, the collaboration enhanced efficiency overall, especially for the IT team.1
2. Adopt a service-centric approach
By adopting a customer-centric approach, your ITSM team ensures that the services provided add value to your business and meet requirements.
A well-executed service management strategy improves the customer experience. It can also help your team to meet your goals through effective service delivery.
3. Promote self-service capabilities
Self-service capabilities allow end-users to resolve routine service requests independently, which frees up IT staff and enhances the efficiency of service desks.
Empowering users with knowledge centered service tools reduces phone calls and web chat traffic. This allows saving valuable time for the infrastructure team.
For example, Databricks, a leading AI and data analytics company, switched to Freshservice for IT service management. By implementing self-service features, ticket resolution times are improved and support tickets are reduced by 23%.
This integration led Databricks to expand its usage across HR, legal, security, and other departments. The platform helped streamline operations, lower IT costs, and support rapid company growth.2
4. Enhance knowledge management
Effective knowledge management involves creating and maintaining a centralized knowledge base that is accessible to both the IT team and end-users.
This practice supports problem management by ensuring that the right information is available to resolve issues quickly. Using ITSM software, your IT teams can capture insights from recurring requests and improve problem resolution. It can lead to improved customer satisfaction and more efficient service operations.
5. Optimize incident management
Clear workflows for categorizing, prioritizing, and resolving incidents help your IT department address incoming requests efficiently. As a result, they reduce service downtime and enhance service operations.
Utilizing an ITSM tool ensures that key performance indicators are met and that the service desk can provide effective support.
For example, TalkTalk, a leading UK communications provider, adopted BMC Helix ITSM to reduce costs and improve vulnerability management. It also streamlined operations across its cloud infrastructure.
The transition was completed in 18 weeks and improved TalkTalk’s ability to identify root causes for 90% of issues, resolve issues proactively, and manage over 250 technical changes weekly.3
6. Implement effective change management
Change management helps manage and control change requests within your IT services. Having a structured process ensures that changes are properly assessed, authorized, and implemented with minimal risk.
ITSM tools support in tracking changes and ensure that the development teams and infrastructure teams work together smoothly. This best practice ensures that you can introduce new services while protecting the existing service portfolio.
7. Focus on Service Level Management (SLM)
Service Level Management (SLM) is the process of defining, negotiating, and monitoring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between IT teams and customers.
SLAs outline the expected service quality, response times, and performance standards, ensuring IT services align with business needs. SLM helps maintain accountability, improve service delivery, and continuously optimize IT performance based on agreed-upon metrics.
8. Adopt automation
Integrating automation into ITSM helps with incident management, service requests, and system monitoring by reducing errors and accelerating service delivery. Automating routine tasks also improves customer satisfaction and helps meet service goals.
Automation also enhances workflows and drives continual service improvement in line with industry best practices.
For example, The National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) collaborated with BMC Helix to centralize and automate their IT operations and services. By implementing BMC Helix ITSM, NBK improved issue resolution times, automated asset management, and enhanced employee engagement.
The unified platform reduced manual tasks and service tickets, increased operational efficiency, and provided real-time analytics and predictive capabilities. This integration also resulted in helping NBK optimize costs and improve service availability.4
9. Ensure compliance and security
Compliance and security in ITSM ensure that IT services follow regulations, industry standards, and company policies while keeping systems, data, and users safe from threats.
Effective ITSM practices integrate security and compliance measures into every stage of service management to reduce risks. This ensures legal adherence and helps maintain trust with stakeholders.
10. Support cultural adaptation
Cultural adaptation in ITSM refers to the process of adjusting an organization’s mindset, behaviors, and workflows to successfully integrate IT Service Management practices.
Since ITSM brings major changes, it’s important to help employees understand, accept, and engage with the new framework for smooth adoption and long-term success.
How to implement ITSM best practices?
1. Adopting an ITSM framework like ITIL and DevOps to ensure consistent service delivery across the organization:
- ITIL 4 is a flexible framework designed for managing services in the digital age. By leveraging best practice modules, you can optimize digital technologies and foster value co-creation with consumers. This also helps drive business strategies and embrace digital transformation.
- DevOps is a collaborative approach that unites software development and IT operations to accelerate service delivery. It emphasizes automation, continuous integration, and a culture of teamwork to enable faster, more reliable software releases. Rather than replacing ITSM, DevOps complements it by balancing speed with necessary processes and control.
2. Implementing a service-centric approach to ensure that service delivery adds value to your organization:
- Understand business goals: Engage with business teams to ensure ITSM services align with organizational objectives, such as efficiency, customer engagement, or new capabilities.
- Customer-centric mindset: Focus on the end-user experience by gathering feedback and tailoring IT services to enhance customer satisfaction.
- Align ITSM strategy with business needs: Define service portfolios based on business priorities and structure ITSM processes accordingly.
- Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Track IT service performance and business impact through key performance indicators to maintain alignment with objectives.
- Continuous improvement: Regularly refine ITSM practices using data and customer feedback to support evolving business needs.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with business units to ensure IT services are designed around core priorities.
3. Promoting self-service capabilities to help end-users resolve routine service requests:
- Develop user-friendly self-service portals: Design intuitive and easy-to-navigate self-service portals where users can access help resources. These portals should also allow users to submit service requests and track their progress. Ensure that the portal offers an easy-to-use experience, with clear categories and search functionality to help users find solutions quickly.
- Leverage Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS): Implement knowledge-centered service practices to ensure that the knowledge base evolves as issues are resolved. As IT teams handle new incidents, they should document solutions in the knowledge base to ensure continuous improvement in self-service resources.
- Support personalized user experiences: Tailor the self-service experience to individual users by providing personalized content or service options. Base these customizations on their previous activities or roles within your organization. This would increase the chances that users will find the solutions they need quickly and independently.
4. Strengthening knowledge management with ITSM software:
- Define purpose: Identify the primary goal of the knowledge base, whether it’s to empower users with self-service capabilities or support IT teams in incident management.
- Organize content: Structure the knowledge base by categories that reflect service requests, common issues, and key topics. For example, organize articles based on user roles, types of services, or specific systems (e.g., software troubleshooting, access management, or device support).
- Maintain and update content regularly: Set up a regular schedule for reviewing and updating content.
- Track performance: Metrics such as the reduction in service desk tickets, article views, and issue resolution rates help understand the success of the content.
5. Improving resolution times and reducing dependency with incident management:
- Categorization and prioritization: Define workflows to classify incidents by impact and urgency, ensuring critical issues are addressed first and routed efficiently.
- Real-time analytics: Use ITSM tools to track incidents, resolution times, and trends, identifying bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
- Proactive monitoring and alerts: Deploy tools that detect issues early, triggering automated alerts to minimize downtime.
- Root cause analysis: Investigate critical incidents to prevent recurrence, addressing underlying causes rather than just symptoms.
6. Minimizing disruption with change management:
- Define clear procedures: Standardize steps for submitting, reviewing, approving, implementing, and documenting changes. This helps you ensure consistency and transparency.
- Categorize changes: Classify changes as standard, normal, or emergency, each with tailored approval and implementation processes.
- Impact analysis: Assess potential effects on services, infrastructure, and user experience to minimize disruptions.
- Mitigation strategies: Identify and plan contingency plans to reduce risks and ensure smooth implementation.
- Plan changes during off-peak hours: Plan changes during off-peak hours and notify stakeholders in advance to minimize impact.
7. Making more informed decisions and delivering consistent quality with SLAs:
- Set measurable metrics: Define SLAs with clear performance metrics like response times, resolution times, and service quality.
- Track performance: Track and monitor SLA compliance in real time to address potential issues proactively.
- Establish escalation procedures: Define clear escalation paths to resolve SLA breaches efficiently.
- Feedback loops: Use SLA data to identify trends and optimize service quality and response times.
8. Minimizing manual effort and ensuring continuous IT services with automation:
- Understand and identify automation opportunities: Start by identifying tasks within incident management, service requests, and system monitoring. These tasks can be repetitive and consume valuable time. They can include password resets, routine maintenance, ticket routing, and alert monitoring.
- Evaluate the impact on service delivery: Prioritize automating tasks that have a direct impact on service delivery and customer satisfaction. This would ensure that automation will bring measurable improvements in speed and accuracy.
- Schedule automated maintenance tasks: Set up automated maintenance routines for tasks such as system updates, backups, and software patches. This reduces the workload on IT staff and ensures that critical updates are applied consistently.
- Enable self-service with automation: Integrate automation into the self-service portal which would allow users to resolve common service requests automatically.
9. Creating a secure and compliant ITSM framework:
- Establish clear security and compliance policies: Define security protocols and compliance standards based on industry regulations. ISO 20000, an international ITSM standard defining best practices for service design, transition, delivery, and improvement, is a good example for that. Communicate policies clearly to employees and enforce adherence.
- Implement access control and data protection measures: Apply role-based access control (RBAC) to limit unauthorized data access. RBAC restricts data access based on users’ roles, ensuring they only have permissions necessary for their responsibilities. Regularly audit access logs and security configurations.
- Provide security awareness training: Educate employees on cybersecurity best practices, such as recognizing phishing attempts and handling sensitive data.
10. Building a culture that embraces ITSM:
- Prepare for a culture shift: Recognize that ITSM implementation will impact daily workflows and employee roles. Communicate the benefits and objectives of ITSM to reduce resistance.
- Provide training and education: Offer basic ITSM training to all employees to ensure a smooth transition. Foster a culture of continuous learning by offering ongoing workshops and refresher courses.
- Encourage employee engagement: Involve employees in the implementation process by gathering feedback and addressing concerns. Promote an open dialogue where employees can share challenges and improvement suggestions.
- Monitor and adjust as needed: Regularly assess employee adaptation and engagement levels. Identify and address areas where resistance or inefficiencies persist.
Top ITSM frameworks: ITIL, DevOps & COBIT
Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 4
As the latest iteration of ITIL, ITIL 45 expands on the core principles of previous versions, offering practical guidance. It supports traditional service management functions like incident management and continuous improvement. It also aligns with emerging technologies such as Cloud, Automation, and AI.
Integrating with DevOps, Lean, and Agile methodologies, ITIL 4 helps professionals:
- Understand IT’s role in business strategy and apply all dimensions of service management in a broader business context.
- Use guiding principles to navigate change, manage workflows, and implement flexible, collaborative working methods.
- Eliminate silos through a systems-thinking approach to value co-creation.
- Build strong stakeholder relationships and enhance communication effectiveness.
- Adapt to evolving environments with dynamic and flexible processes and complex systems.
Centered on five service lifecycle stages, ITIL offers guidelines on processes, challenges, and best practices. These help shape internal discussions and policies to ensure services meet end-user needs.
The five ITIL stages are:
- Service strategy: Lays the foundation by developing capabilities, defining markets, and preparing for deployment.
- Design: Transforms ideas into actionable plans for an improved service management environment.
- Transition: Tests and prepares new services for live implementation.
- Operation: Maintains services and resolves issues post-launch.
- Continual service improvement: Assesses data to refine and enhance all previous stages, restarting the cycle.
DevOps
DevOps accelerates IT service delivery by fostering collaboration between software development and IT operations. It achieves this through agile and lean practices. Agile practices focus on iterative development, flexibility, and continuous feedback to improve efficiency and responsiveness. Lean practices aim to minimize waste, optimize workflows, and maximize value delivery.
Beyond automation and continuous delivery, DevOps is about breaking down silos and building a culture of teamwork. However, many mistakenly see it as focused only on development rather than operations.
ITSM and DevOps are often viewed as opposing approaches, but high-performing teams recognize the need for both speed and structure to work effectively.
Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT)
COBIT is a framework for IT governance and management that helps organizations align IT with business goals. It also ensures security, risk management, and compliance. COBIT provides a structured approach to managing IT processes, resources, and controls to optimize performance and value delivery.
The framework is built around five key principles:
- Meeting stakeholder needs: Ensuring IT supports business objectives.
- Covering the enterprise end-to-end: Managing all IT functions, not just technical aspects.
- Applying a single integrated framework: Aligning with other standards like ITIL.
- Enabling a holistic approach: Using governance enablers such as policies, processes, and organizational structures.
- Separating governance from management: Governance sets direction, while management executes.
ITSM practices are evolving: A strategic asset in digital transformation
Traditional ITSM frameworks, such as ITIL, emphasized standardized workflows, structured incident and change management processes, and strict governance to ensure reliability. While these remain foundational, digital transformation has shifted the focus toward agility, customer experience, and cross-functional collaboration.
Today, ITSM best practices are evolving to align with modern enterprise needs, embracing flexibility, automation, and business-driven outcomes. Here are the key trends:
From process-centric to experience-centric ITSM
Modern ITSM extends beyond rigid process enforcement to ensure a frictionless, intuitive user experience. Organizations are embedding principles from Enterprise Service Management (ESM) to manage workflows across departments. This includes self-service portals, AI-driven chatbots, and omnichannel support to empower end-users and reduce IT overhead.
Experience-Level Agreements (XLAs) focus on measuring IT service success based on user satisfaction and business impact, rather than just technical performance metrics. XLAs are becoming more popular, complementing traditional SLAs by measuring IT effectiveness through customer satisfaction and business impact. Instead of focusing only on operational metrics, they provide a broader view of service quality.
ITSM as a catalyst for DevOps and Agile collaboration
Despite traditional ITSM and DevOps approaches often being seen as conflicting, organizations are now realizing that well-implemented ITSM practices can enhance, rather than hinder, DevOps collaboration. For example:
- Change enablement: Modern ITIL 4 emphasizes iterative and fast-paced change management while maintaining governance.
- Incident and problem management: Effective ITSM provides DevOps teams with structured feedback loops and proactive insights for issue resolution. This helps reduce mean time to restore (MTTR).
- Shared automation & tooling: Organizations are now integrating ITSM platforms with DevOps toolchains to bridge IT operations with development workflows. This enables incident handling, automated ticketing, and proactive alerting.
Shifting from reactive to predictive and proactive ITSM
With machine learning, and analytics, ITSM is transitioning from a reactive approach (fixing incidents after they occur) to a predictive and proactive model. Here are some of the key advancements:
- AI-driven ITSM (AIOps): Intelligent automation detects patterns in system performance, predicts outages, and triggers preemptive actions to minimize disruptions.
- Chatbots and virtual agents: AI-powered assistants handle routine service requests, enabling IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
- Predictive maintenance: Data-driven insights help organizations anticipate infrastructure failures, optimize asset lifecycles, and reduce unplanned downtime.
Cloud, automation, and ITSM convergence
With multi-cloud, hybrid IT, and Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) models becoming the norm, ITSM practices are evolving to support cloud-native environments and on-demand IT services:
- Cloud service management: Extending ITSM principles to orchestrate cloud-based infrastructure, SaaS applications, and DevSecOps.
- Hyperautomation: Leveraging RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and workflow orchestration to accelerate service request fulfillment and minimize human intervention.
- Service integration and management (SIAM): Managing multi-vendor IT ecosystems to ensure seamless service delivery across cloud and on-prem environments.
FAQ
Why is ITSM important?
Aligns IT with business goals: ITSM ensures IT efforts support business priorities through measurable success metrics, improving efficiency and decision-making.
Enhances collaboration: It fosters cross-team communication and effective project management, reducing silos and improving workflow.
Encourages knowledge sharing: ITSM promotes documentation of best practices, enabling continuous improvement and preventing recurring issues.
Manages service requests: Automated processes improve efficiency, reducing delays and enhancing response times.
Promotes customer-centricity: Self-service options and improved workflows enhance user experience and satisfaction.
Enables faster incident response: Structured protocols help teams quickly resolve issues and prevent future disruptions, ensuring business continuity.
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