Page 108 - ITIL® Foundation 3.15

Functions
Function: A team or group of people and the tools they use to carry out activities from one or more Processes. The functions identified in ITIL 2014 are the Service Desk, Operations Management, Technical Management, and Applications Management.
Functions are groups of people and their tools, who actually perform the activities defined within a process. In ITIL 2014, there are 4 defined Functions: Service Desk Function, IT Operations Management Function, Technical Management Function, and Application Management Function.
Each of these defined groups has their own resources and capabilities. They perform specialized activities as defined within the processes that they perform. If functions have defined processes to follow, then this means of organizing individuals can be very powerful in achieving control of delivery. Without
direction, functions will focus inwardly and often flounder for direction. This floundering will often cause delivery of
any product or service the function is responsible for to be ineffective and inefficient. Functions need processes to be effective. Processes direct functions in the actions they are to perform, and also are a control mechanism for the passing of activities from one function to another (an incident ticket is opened by the Service Desk function, then the service desk directs Technical Management to perform investigation and diagnosis of the incident in an attempt to resolve this issue) This passing off of responsibility, or directing activity between functions allows the all of
the functions to work together in order to attain the achievement of the processes defined objective.
Func%ons are:

! Self Contained units with specialized skill9sets ! Perform specific types of work, but across processes ! Have their own specialized tool9sets and knowledge ! Have defined resources available to them ! Have their own capabili%es
! Organized for specializa%on ! May direct the work of other Func%ons by following Process Direc%ons ! Provide Structure and Stability

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