This blog is part of a series of general comments and clarifications on some key ITIL exam concepts, terms and definitions that might not be so clear by definition.

This week’s topic is about the use of process models in ITIL and how to maximize their effectiveness. The ITIL exam often has questions about a specific process area and use of a process model. It’s not a matter of memorizing or studying all of the ITIL process models. Rather, understand the basic idea of a process model and know that all ITIL processes will make use its process models to help drive efficiency and effectiveness.

ITIL publications describe a process model as a way of predefining the steps that should be taken to handle a process in an agreed way. This will ensure that “what is managed by the process” is handled with optimal efficiency and effectiveness in a predefined path and to predefined timescales.

The ITIL publications illustrate generic process models for ALL of its processes. The concept being that all processes benefit from the use of its specific “process model”, such as the Incident Model and the Request model. However, the adoption of ITIL process models does not end there. These generic process models work in most cases, but there are always exceptions to the rule. Where exceptions have been thought of in advance, or learned from practice, it’s most effective to create a specific process model for that situation. As a result, an organization adopting and optimizing ITIL will have a range of process models for each process. For example, in addition to the generic change model there can be range of different change models matched to different types of changes.

This bring us to the next point; that categorization plays such an important role in ITIL and creating process models. The way in which an organization categorizes Changes, Incidents, Problems, etc will help to define efficiencies for items in those categories.

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