LEARN. PRACTICE. GROW.Concept and mechanism
A practice includes more than a procedure: it needs people, information, tools, and collaboration. Asset management tracks use, costs, and lifecycle; configuration management maintains useful information about components and relationships. Release makes functionality available for use, while deployment moves components into environments. Monitoring and events observes relevant state changes without automatically turning every alert into an incident. Information security protects information according to needs; relationship management maintains stakeholder dialogue; supplier management addresses third-party relationships and performance. These purposes help select whom and what information to involve.
Guided application
To retire an obsolete server, combine financial inventory, configuration relationships, and supplier commitments. A low-cost asset may support a critical service. Before removing it, confirm actual dependencies and change handling. For an application with a feature flag, document installation and availability as potentially separate decisions. If monitoring records a brief spike without impact, assess trends and rules; do not automatically conclude that an outage occurred or delete evidence merely because service recovered.
Installing code on Tuesday and enabling it on Thursday separates deployment from release. The dependency map and change criteria help prepare both.
Common pitfalls
Confusing cost and criticality; treating inventory as a dependency map; assuming every event requires an urgent change.
Related topics: Restore, investigate, and change · Requests, service levels, and improvement
Select the practice by purpose and combine information when a decision crosses responsibilities.
Reference: PeopleCert: ITSM tool capabilities and service delivery · ITIL 4 Foundation; syllabus v4.2.0 (March 2025)