An IT Service Management Literature Review: Challenges, Benefits, Opportunities and Implementation Practices

João Serrano,Rúben Pereira,João Faustino,Miguel Da Silva,Daniel Adriano

doi:10.3390/info12030111

Abstract

Information technology (IT) service management is considered a collection of frameworks that support organizations managing services. The implementation of these kinds of frameworks is constantly increasing in the IT service provider domain. The main objective is to define and manage IT services through its life cycle. However, from observing the literature, scarcely any research exists describing the main concepts of ITSM. Many organizations still struggle in several contexts in this domain, mainly during implementation. This research aims to develop a reference study detailing the main concepts related with ITSM. Thus, a systematic literature review is performed. In total, 47 articles were selected from top journals and conferences. The benefits, challenges, opportunities, and practices for ITSM implementation were extracted, critically analysed, and then discussed.

Highlights

Opportunities and ImplementationNowadays, for most companies, information technology (IT) is one of the most important assets in the organizations’ infrastructure
Many IT organizations invest in IT service management (ITSM) frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
literature review (LR), providing a transparent and reproducible protocol so other authors can extend the review or to reach to the same or similar results [40,41]. This methodology is considered as a “systematic, explicit and reproducible method” with the purpose of “identifying, evaluating and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners” [42]. By adhering to this kind of methodology, the LR quality will be improved in several ways [43]

Summary

Introduction

Opportunities and ImplementationNowadays, for most companies, information technology (IT) is one of the most important assets in the organizations’ infrastructure. From early 1980s until now, the utilization and continuous improvement of IT has become an essential support to the business, regardless of the sector that organization belongs to [1]. This dependency on IT has been growing, as has its complexity, forcing organizations to increasingly have an effective management [2]. IT services have a big impact on the competitive advantage [4], being important to have an effective and efficient management. Many IT organizations invest in IT service management (ITSM) frameworks such as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Objectives

Methods

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Conclusion