Glossary

An umbrella term for a collection of frameworks and techniques that enable teams and individuals to work in a way that is characterized by collaboration, prioritization, iterative and incremental delivery, and timeboxing. There are several specific methodologies (or frameworks), such as Scrum, Lean and Kanban, that are categorized as agile.

IT asset management is about processes and technology solutions for managing IT devices and software throughout their entire life cycle - from acquisition, through use and maintenance, to decommissioning.

Business Continuity Management comprises measures, business processes, guidelines and technology solutions with which organizations ensure that their business operations are not interrupted or only minimally interrupted even in the event of massive incidents and that they quickly return to optimal operations.

Change Management combines measures for planning and implementing change processes in an organization with regard to specific goals. 

Configuration Management Database (CMDB) contains information about the components of the IT environment and their configuration or configuration records as well as their relationships to each other.

An integrated set of practices and tools to implement software changes in the production environment after they have already passed predefined automated tests. 

Enterprise Service Management refers to the application of ITSM principles to other business areas such as HR or Customer Service.

Incident Management is a process for rectifying an unplanned interruption or reduction in the quality of a service.

IT Service Management (ITSM) describes the entirety of measures and processes that serve to efficiently plan, provide and manage IT services so that they support the achievement of business objectives. 

ITIL® - the “Information Technology Infrastructure Library” - offers proven best practices for IT service management. It defines procedures and standards for the planning, provision, support and improvement of IT services in an organization. An ITIL® certificate shows that you have mastered these proven methods. 

IT Operations Management (ITOM) refers to the management and monitoring of daily IT operations in order to provide a stable and efficient IT infrastructure. ITOM comprises processes and technologies that ensure that IT services run smoothly, failures are minimized and the performance of IT systems remains optimized.

Problem Management combines analysis and treatment of the underlying causes of incidents in order to avoid recurrences and minimize the impact on business operations.

Release Management defines process steps in the planning, testing and implementation of new or modified IT services to ensure their quality.

IT Risikomanagement is about monitoring, identifying and assessing the risks of individual assets in an organization's IT infrastructure.

Request Fulfilment is a process for processing and fulfilling service requests - i.e. requests for support and the provision of (IT) services. 

A structured overview of all available IT services, often enriched with descriptions, service level agreements (SLAs) and prices, which is managed in service catalog management.

Contact point for users to receive support and information on IT services.

Agreements between service provider and customer that define the services to be provided and their quality, which are managed in service level management.

ServiceNow® is a provider of a platform for company-wide Enterprise Service Management, which originates from IT Service Management but has been extended to other areas of the company - such as HR Service Management and Customer Service Management - as well as cross-departmental processes and collaborations.

Value streams are a series of activities that together create value for the customer, e.g. the provision of an IT service. In value stream mapping, these are recorded for further analysis.