{"id":4476,"date":"2014-10-14T20:41:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-14T20:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/multiacademstg.wpengine.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/10\/14\/vital-business-function-according-itil-principles\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T13:52:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:52:44","slug":"vital-business-function-according-itil-principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/blog\/2014\/10\/14\/vital-business-function-according-itil-principles\/","title":{"rendered":"Vital Business Function according to ITIL principles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I\u2019ve become engaged in conversation regarding <strong>Vital Business Function<\/strong> (VBF), at first it looks like everyone knows what it is. As conversation progresses, several variations, or very different definitions appear, after which a \u201cGoogle race\u201d starts in order to find out which one is the closest to the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/what-is-itil\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ITIL<\/a> definition, and that person usually wins the argument.<\/p>\n<p>While ITIL defines VBF as a Function of a Business Process that is critical to the success of the Business, it actually tells you very little about what constitutes \u201ccritical,\u201d and this is the point where all arguments begin. Such discussions are generally benign when performed with your peers, but they may be very serious and have grave consequences if they occur between a business and its IT service provider.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Clash of the Titans<\/h2>\n<p>IT is a master of technical competence, and as such they tend to compare service requests with existing features of hardware, software, or whatever the current topic is. Even a slight match between the stated <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=relationship-and-agreement-processes&amp;doc=service-level-requirements\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">requirements<\/a> and existing features is often seen as \u201cperfect fit\u201d and may never be questioned again.<\/p>\n<p>Businesses usually have a hard time explaining and unambiguously stating their requirements. It gets even worse when they attempt to use \u201cIT language\u201d to do so. Due to greater competence within subject matter, IT will \u201cguide\u201d the requirements to achieve that \u201cperfect fit,\u201d and will be able to justify the changes with \u201cthat is how stuff <em>actually<\/em> works; therefore, it must be what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such an arrangement during the service design process has a high chance of ending up operationally costly, or unable to deliver the expected <strong>utility<\/strong> or <strong>warranty<\/strong> (or both). You can bet that poorly communicated service requirements will surface at some point during the Service Lifecycle, and then it usually costs too much to change, or may be even impossible to change without redesigning the whole service.<br \/>\n<div id=\"middle-banner\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><script>loadMiddleBanner();<\/script><br \/>\n<div id=\"side-banner-trigger\" class=\"banner-shortcode\"><\/div><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">It\u2019s not just a theory<\/h2>\n<p>Let\u2019s take an example of ATM (<strong>a<\/strong>utomated <strong>t<\/strong>eller <strong>m<\/strong>achine, cash machine, cashpoint, cashline, bankautomat) service, which is one of the important services for any bank. It allows you to withdraw money from your account, check your balance, deposit money, and nowadays you can purchase additional services such as prepaid cell\/mobile credit, movie tickets, lottery tickets, train tickets, gift certificates, make a donation to charity or even buy gold. Out of all of those services, only withdrawing money from your account can be considered a <strong>vital business function<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>When communicating the requirements, a business may state that ATM is the vital business function. Without looking deeper into the layers of the ATM service, the service provider may deliver an ATM that prevents you from withdrawing your money if the ATM is unable to print a receipt \u2013 even if you have enough money in your account, and there is enough money in the machine. This scenario happened to me, as a bank customer, and I found it very inconvenient and unacceptable. I don\u2019t care if all the other services the ATM provides are working if I can\u2019t withdraw my money.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Back to ITIL<\/h2>\n<p>Within ITIL, Vital Business Functions are used in <strong>Capacity<\/strong>, <strong>Availability<\/strong> and <strong>Continuity<\/strong> management.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Capacity Management<\/strong> uses VBF in the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=supply-demand-processes&amp;doc=capacity-plan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Capacity Plan<\/a> to ensure adequate service capacity and performance.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Availability Management<\/strong> uses VBF in the <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/?rel=service-assurance-processes&amp;doc=availability-plan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Availability Plan<\/a> to design services and maintenance procedures that meet required availability targets.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Continuity Management<\/strong> uses VBF in order to perform risk assessment, disaster avoidance, and recovery planning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>VBF is a living document, and should contain the story that describes the importance of services listed. It should also contain a technical section that identifies underpinning IT services using CMDB (<strong>Change Management Data Base<\/strong>), and related CIs (<strong>Configuration Items<\/strong>), and of course all other resources essential to VBD such as people, other processes, products, or dependencies.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px;\">Determining Vital Business Functions<\/h2>\n<p>True VBFs can only be identified with lots of conversation with the customer, by understanding their business and their users.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Communicate with the Customer to understand what is really important to them.<\/li>\n<li>Communicate with the users to understand how they use, or plan to use the service.<\/li>\n<li>Translate technical activities into business activities (vice versa isn\u2019t recommended).<\/li>\n<li>List all agreed and important aspects of business on which IT should focus, using clear and unambiguous vocabulary.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Start with critical business services \u2013 services the business depends on, and can\u2019t continue without. This may include services whose unavailability will generate great loss (monetary, legal, environmental, etc.) to the company or the organization. Look for business functions that must operate continuously.<\/p>\n<p>Converse with the customer in order to learn what\u2019s important to them. Never let your personal opinion or criticism cloud your understanding; technical competence over the subject matter doesn\u2019t make you superior.<\/p>\n<h2>Overcoming listening barriers<\/h2>\n<p>Any complex system should be broken into smaller parts and dependencies first, and the customer may not always be able to elaborate on the inner workings of the business system, especially if it\u2019s tied into an existing IT product or solution. For example, many companies today use internet and web services as part of their daily business operations; the Customer may declare Internet to be a VBF, but there is a great difference between designing and operating high-speed, always available, robust and redundant internet access, and accessing currency exchange rate \u2013 if that is only internet-based service the business depends on.<\/p>\n<p>A key success factor for determining VBFs is active listening, even for the things that may not have been told. Transforming that conversation into a structured document may even require having a bit of poet in you; as poets don\u2019t write down their thoughts \u2013 but rather voice those things that common people hear as background noise. So, I guess in order to settle the arguments from the beginning of the article: <em>the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n<p><em>To implement ISO 20000 easily and efficiently, use our<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/iso-20000-documentation-toolkit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ISO 20000 Documentation Toolkit<\/a> <em>that provides step-by-step guidance for full ISO 20000 compliance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whenever I\u2019ve become engaged in conversation regarding Vital Business Function (VBF), at first it looks like everyone knows what it is. As conversation progresses, several variations, or very different definitions appear, after which a \u201cGoogle race\u201d starts in order to find out which one is the closest to the ITIL definition, and that person usually &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":17230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[381,356,344,204,372,444,347,445],"class_list":["post-4476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-business","tag-function","tag-itil","tag-service","tag-service-management","tag-service-provider","tag-service-strategy","tag-vital-business-function"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18425,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4476\/revisions\/18425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.advisera.com\/20000academy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}