The success of ITSM lies in putting the customer first. ITSM suggests designing all processes to provide value to customers by facilitating the outcomes they want, without the ownership of specific costs and risks. This quality service is provided through a set of the organization's own resources and capabilities.
The capabilities of an IT service organization generally lie with its people, process, or technology. While people and technology could be found in the market, the organizational processes need to be defined, developed, and often customized within the organization. The processes mature with the organization, and hence need to be given extra focus. Release Management, Incident Management, and so on, are some of the commonly heard ITSM processes.
It's easy to confuse these with functions, which as per ITIL, has a different meaning associated with it. Many of us do not associate different meanings for many similar terms. Here are some examples:
This book will strive to bring out the fine differences between such terms, as and when we formally introduce them. This should make the concepts clear while avoiding any confusion.
So, let us first see the difference between a process and a function.