Top 10 ITIL Acronyms to Remember

Implementing ITIL can be a big experience for your organization, but the true test of understanding the framework is the vast sea of acronyms to remember. Three- and four-lettered gibberish can leave your mind reeling and take you back to the anxiety filled days of spelling bees and memorization tests. But, it’s not worth the stress and it’s actually quite simple once you get the basics.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS is the concept of cloud hosted software applications. In this business model, the customer maintains their own computers, networks, databases, and other IT infrastructure, and leases an application from a cloud service provider. These solutions are faster to build and deploy and at a lower cost than developing the same services or applications in-house. SaaS solutions eliminate the need for additional infrastructure, such as database servers, server software licenses, and hardware.

Change Advisory Board (CAB)

A board of representatives from a few important areas within the organization, such as IT, Finance, and Marketing, including technical staff and key decision makers. These members advise the Change Manager on the assessment, prioritization, and scheduling of changes within the IT environment.

Critical Success Factor (CSF)

CSFs are often used to denote an organization’s business strategy. In an IT service management (ITSM) context, there are a number of fairly general critical success factors that must be present for an ITSM implementation project to be successful. Some examples of those are clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the project staff, developing a workforce with the necessary knowledge and skills required to be successful in their roles, and an understanding and management structure for different stakeholder perspectives.

Business Relationship Management (BRM)

BRM is a new ITIL concept and has not fully matured, but is an important aspect of today’s IT operations. BRM is the management of the relations between the business and the IT department. Only when IT understands and closely aligns with the needs and goals of the business can the two operate optimally as one entity.

Capacity Management Information System (CMIS)

Capacity management is the act of planning for the future IT capacity and infrastructure needs of the organization. Capacity management can include things like bandwidth, hardware needs, software needs, and database requirements. Hence, CMIS is a system that helps IT track, predict, and manage the capacity needs of the organization as it heads into the future.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A KPI is the regular assessment of IT processes in terms of quality and performance. Though performance indicators vary among organizations, industries, and IT infrastructures, there are KPIs to signify strategies, design, operations, and more.

Operational Level Agreement (OLA)

An OLA is an internally focused document that identifies the service level expectations between the support teams and the service desk. The OLA defines how departments will work together to meet the service level requirements (SLRs) documented in a service level agreement (SLA).

Service Asset and Configuration Management (SACM)

SACM is the process of maintaining the information associated with configuration items that are necessary in order to deliver a specific IT service. It includes the relationships among those items. SACM should not be confused with other asset management operations, such as tracking the lifecycle of hardware, managing software licenses, asset audits and reporting.

Value of Investment (VOI)

Value of Investment refers to how much value the organization derives from any particular investment. For example, how much value did the company receive for the investment in a particular software package or perhaps a bank of computers? IT has to justify their expenditures by exhibiting a VOI for approved IT investments in new systems, technologies, and personnel.

Service Request Management (SRM)

A SRM is a key component of an ITIL service catalog. It enables service requests to be handled appropriately from submission and routing, typically based on urgency, and then on through service request approval, monitoring, and delivery.