Monitoring and Event Management: ITIL® 4 Practice Guide

Monitoring and event
management
ITIL® 4 Practice Guide
AXELOS.com
11th
January
2020
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Contents
1 About this document 3
2 General information 4
3 Value streams and processes 15
4 Organizations and people 23
5 Information and technology 27
6 Partners and suppliers 30
7 Important reminder 31
8 Acknowledgments 32
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1 About this document

This document provides practical guidance for the monitoring and event management practice. It
is split into five main sections, covering:
● general information about the practice

● the processes and activities of monitoring and event management and their roles in the service
value chain
● the organizations and people involved in monitoring and event management
● the information and technology supporting monitoring and event management
● considerations for partners and suppliers for monitoring and event management
1.1 ITIL® 4 QUALIFICATION SCHEME
Selected content from this document is examinable as a part of the following syllabuses:
● ITIL Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support

● ITIL Specialist: Direct, Plan and Improve
Please refer to the respective syllabus documents for details.
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2 General information
PURPOSE AND DESCRIPTION
The purpose of the monitoring and event management practice is to systematically observe
services and service components, and record and report selected changes of state identified as
events. This practice identifies and prioritizes infrastructure, services, business processes, and
information security events, and establishes the appropriate response to those events, including
responding to conditions that could lead to potential faults or incidents.
Event
Any change of state that has significance for the management of a service or other
configuration item (CI).
Monitoring and event management is used to manage events throughout their lifecycle to
understand and optimize their impact on the organization and its services. Monitoring and event
management includes identification and categorization, or analysis, of events related to all levels
of infrastructure and to service interactions between the organization and its service consumers.
Monitoring and event management ensures appropriate and timely response to those events.
The monitoring part of the practice focuses on services and configuration items (CIs) to detect
conditions of potential significance, track and record the state of servicers and CIs, and provide
this information to relevant parties.
The event management part of the practice focuses on those monitored changes of state defined
by the organization as an event, determining their significance, and identifying and initiating the
correct response to them. Information about events is also recorded, stored and provided to
relevant parties.
Monitoring and event management data and information are an important input to many practices,
including:
● incident management
● problem management
● information security management
● availability management
● performance and capacity management
● change enablement
● risk management
● infrastructure and platform management
● software development and management
● others.
A key point is that monitoring is necessary for event management to take place, but not all
monitoring results in the detection of an event. Thresholds and other criteria determine which
changes of state will be treated as events. Similarly, it is important to note that not all events
have the same significance or require the same response. Criteria will define what category of
event has occurred. Typical categories, in order of increasing significance, are informational,
warning, and exception events.
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TERMS AND CONCEPTS
Monitoring
Repeated observation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity to detect

events and to ensure that the current status is known.
Knowing the current status of services and service components is essential for managing them.
Information about service health and performance enables the organization to respond
appropriately to service-impacting events that have already occurred (reactive monitoring), or to
take proactive actions, based on pattern analysis of past events, to prevent future adverse events
from occurring (proactive monitoring).
Monitoring is accomplished by a variety of different means. CIs may share information about
themselves through polling, that is, in response to request from a monitoring tool to collect
specific targeted data, or through automatic notification to a monitoring tool when certain
conditions are met. Interrogation of service components by monitoring tools represents active
monitoring, whereas collection of notifications sent by CIs to monitoring tools represents passive
monitoring.
Figure 2.1 Types of monitoring

Note: When active monitoring is used to identify trends, it may help to identify trends earlier than
passive monitoring (a monitoring tool requests information before it is sent by the CIs themselves).
However, when active monitoring is used to detect events, it may do so later than passive
monitoring: in active monitoring information is collected according to a schedule, however with
passive monitoring it is shared by the CI immediately after the event. The significance of this note
depends on whether active monitoring is continuous or interval-based. It is important to highlight
that the longer the intervals are between requests from monitoring tools to services and CIs, the
longer the potential delay will be between events and their registration.
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Monitoring leverages the native monitoring features of the service components that are being
observed. For example, data about operating systems (OS) such as disk space, CPU load, swap
usage, etc. is already exposed by OS’s and indicates the usage of underlying physical resources.
Similarly, many web servers, database servers, and other software have built-in monitoring
capabilities and will generate measurement data. All this data is easily sent to a monitoring tool.
In addition to native monitoring features, monitoring also employs designed-for-purpose

monitoring systems. These are custom-built software features for observing web and cloud
applications, infrastructures, networks, platforms, applications, and microservices. For certain
service components, especially applications developed in-house, it may be necessary to add
custom-built instrumentation to the services, i.e. code or interfaces which collect and expose the
measurement data that is important for the organization.
Although monitoring and event management is traditionally focused on technology components of

services, it can also be useful to understand the state of other service management resources and
activities, including processes, people, and suppliers.
Metric
A measurement or calculation that is monitored or reported for management and

improvement.
Metrics are sources of the raw data for the monitoring and event management practice. Metrics
data is collected, aggregated, and analysed by the monitoring systems. Metrics range across
multiple layers, including:
● low-level infrastructure metrics (host-, server-, network- and others)

● application metrics (response time, error rate, resource usage…)
● service level metrics, including infrastructure-, connectivity-, application-based and service
action-based, where applicable
● third-party service performance metrics (based on agreed service levels)
● operations, process, and value stream performance metrics.
Threshold
The value of a metric that triggers a pre-defined response.
Responses to a threshold vary and may include:
● creating an alert or other notification

● creating an incident
● change of a status of a previously recorded alert or notification
● initiating a reactive action towards the respective component or service.
Thresholds are a way of initially filtering the vast amount of monitoring data which can be
collected through the monitoring tools. Threshold values should be defined with a degree of care
to prevent too many responses being generated and overwhelming the resources’, human and
machine, ability to respond to them. Other rules for processing the measurement data are usually
combined with thresholds, such as event correlation rules and engines. These can be prescribed
by component vendors, defined by the organization, or supported by machine learning.
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Some examples of thresholds in monitoring and event management examples could be:
• More than X disk errors in an hour
• CPU utilization reaches or exceeds N% three times with less than Z seconds between any
two consecutive events.
Alert
A notification that a threshold has been reached, something has changed, or a failure has
occurred.
Alerts are created and controlled by monitoring tools and are managed by the monitoring and
event management practice. Alerting is a very important aspect of a monitoring system. The
alerting system must have several characteristics, including being:
● highly reliable
● flexible, so that it can notify operators through multiple media
● capable of generating detailed and actionable notification messages.
“Over-alerting” is a potential danger for monitoring and event management. A situation arises
where more alerts are generated than the enterprise can deal with and where truly significant
alerts become lost in the ‘alert noise’. Aggregation, correlation, and filtering of alerts, nowadays
enabled by artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) and machine learning (ML), provide the
remedy for this potential danger.
Changes of state for services and service components occur continuously in the IT environment. As
mentioned in this practice, they are typically recognized through notifications created by an IT
service, CI, or monitoring tool. To properly handle and respond to the stream of data, it is
necessary to filter and categorize the incoming information.
Typical processing of change-of-state data places events into one of three event groups based on
their impact and defines three respective responses: informational, warning, or exception.
● Informational events do not require action at the time they are identified. Informational events
provide the status of a device or service or confirm the state of a task. Examples of
informational events include: a user login, an operation completed, and so forth. Informational
events signify that regular operation is occurring and are stored in log files for a set period. The
organization may choose to analyse the informational events at a later date and may uncover
proactive steps that can be beneficial to the service. Informational events can also be published
on status dashboards for service provider’s or service consumer’s audience.
● Warning events allow action to be taken before any negative impact is experienced. Warning
events signify that an unusual, but not exceptional, operation is occurring. A warning event
notifies the appropriate team or tool to take necessary actions to prevent an exception from
occurring. Examples of warnings include: scheduled backups are not running, or resource
utilization is within 10% of the agreed exception threshold.
● Exception events indicate that a critical threshold for a service or component metric has been
reached. This identified breach of an established norm for the service or component
performance may not yet be having an impact on business operations. However, the exception
event may also indicate that a service or component is experiencing a failure, performance

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degradations, or loss of functionality. All of which impact business operations. In either case,
exception events require action, as they signify that an exception to regular operation is
occurring. Examples of exception events are: a PC scan reveals the installation of unauthorized
software, a server is down, a backup has failed, etc. This is how detection of incidents is
enabled by the monitoring and event management practice.
Event categorization focuses attention on the events that are truly significant for the management
and delivery of services. It ensures that operational events are tracked, assessed, and managed
appropriately.
Monitoring and event management enables the detection of incidents, distinguishing them from
information events and warnings. Detected incidents are handled by the incident management
practice. Monitoring and event management also enables problem identification by providing
information about trends and events affecting services and service components. In addition,
monitoring and event management enables error control for known errors by monitoring and
reporting on services and service components. Identified problems and error control for known
errors are handled by the problem management practice.
SCOPE
The scope of the monitoring and event management practice covers all aspect of organization’s
service management that needs to be controlled and can be automated. This includes:
● identifying and optimizing the scope of monitoring

● implementing and maintaining continuous monitoring
● establishing and maintaining event identification, categorization and processing rules
● implementing processes and automation tools to operationalize the defined event management
rules
● ongoing processing of events according to the agreed and implemented rules and processes
● providing information about the current and historical state of the monitored services and
resources to relevant stakeholders in an agreed form.
There are several activities and areas of responsibility that are not included in the monitoring and
event management practice, although they are still closely related to monitoring and event
management. They are listed in Table 2.1, along with references to the practices in which they
can be found. It is important to remember that ITIL practices are merely collections of tools to use
in the context of value streams and should be combined as necessary depending on the situation.
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Table 2.1 Monitoring and event management-related activities described in other practice guides
Activity Practice Guide
Management of incidents Incident management
Investigation of causes of events and trends Problem management
Management of changes in response to events Change enablement
Communications with users Service desk
Support decision-making based on monitoring Measurement and reporting

data
Setting targets and thresholds for service quality Service level management
and performance
Availability management
Performance and capacity management
Information security management
Continuity management
Setting thresholds for infrastructure and Infrastructure and platform management

application components
Software development and management
Setting targets and thresholds for third parties’ Supplier management

services
PRACTICE SUCCESS FACTORS
Practice success factor
A complex functional component of a practice that is required for the practice to fulfil its
purpose.
A practice success factor (PSF) is more than a task or activity; it includes components from all
four dimensions of service management. The nature of the activities and resources of PSFs within
a practice may differ, but together they ensure that the practice is effective.
The monitoring and event management practice includes the following PSFs:
● establishing and maintaining approaches/models that describe the various types of

events and monitoring capabilities needed to detect them
● ensuring that timely, relevant, and sufficient monitoring data is available to relevant stakeholders
● ensuring that events are detected, interpreted, and if needed acted upon as quickly as possible.

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2.4.1 Establishing and maintaining approaches/models that describe the various
types of events and monitoring capabilities needed to detect them
Modern technologies in most cases provide opportunities to measure and monitor every aspect of
the services and service components operation, but a practitioner should carefully manage the
scope of the monitoring, as well as frequency and number of metrics. The main challenge of the
modern monitoring and event management practice is not lack of data but the volume of data that
monitoring must deal with. The focus of the monitoring and event management practice should be
getting meaningful information to support service operations and improvement, decision-making
and value creation. When establishing or improving the monitoring and event management
practice, the following aspects should be considered.
● Identifying and prioritizing services and service components monitored
Identifying and prioritizing which entities should be monitored is a key activity of the practice,
helping to detect changes of state (or lack of desired changes in state) that are most significant
for the management of a service of CI. Deciding which services, systems, CIs, and other service
components to monitor will be based on the organization’s business objectives. It will also
require a thorough understanding of the organization’s service design architecture.
Practitioners of monitoring and event management will need to know service dependency
mapping: what top-level business capabilities map to which products and services support those
capabilities, and in turn which products and services map to the underlying IT infrastructure
that enables the products and services. By having a full end-to-end picture of what entities are
involved in delivering a service, the monitoring and event management practitioners will be
able to correctly identify and prioritize the critical entities that need to be monitored.
Here, ‘monitorability’ of a service component should also be assessed and effective set of
criteria defined. Criteria chosen should be revealing enough and provide a basis for diagnostics
and decision making.
● Finding balance between informativity, granularity, and frequency of the monitoring

Establishing and maintaining monitoring of a service component could be considered as an
investment of resources (monitoring tools, data storage, manhours, etc.), and the more data is
captured, the less return is expected. This is because the greater the number of criteria
monitored and frequency of probing, the more time and effort needs to be spent filtering,
classifying and analysing data. Automation and machine learning-based solutions could help to
free people and improve results of data analysis, but a practitioner should always aim at making
the monitoring the most efficient.
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● Maintaining capabilities for data gathering, storage, filtering and data correlation. The monitoring and
event management practice relies heavily on the Information and Technology dimension of service
management. Without the native monitoring features of the services and service components being
observed, and without the IT monitoring tools (generic widely available commercial tools as well as
custom-built tools) it would be virtually impossible to detect changes of state that have significance for the
management of a CI or a service.
Communicating information about themselves is something that service elements do through polling, that
is, in response to interrogation by a monitoring tool to collect specific targeted data, or through automatic
notification to a monitoring tool when certain conditions are met. This communication depends on the
availability of the monitoring tools and on the networks to transmit the event data.
Additional attention should be paid to the tools that do classification, filtering and correlation of data, as
well as automation tools for event response.
Deciding which services, systems, CIs, and other service components to monitor will be based on
the organization’s business and mission objectives. It also requires a thorough understanding of the
organization’s service architecture. Practitioners of monitoring and event management will need
to know service dependency mapping: how products and services map to the underlying IT
infrastructure that enables them. By having a full end-to-end picture of what entities are involved
in delivering a service, the monitoring and event management practitioners will be able to
correctly identify and prioritize the critical entities that need to be monitored.
A great deal of the service architecture of individual services often consists of third-party products
and services which the organization has integrated to deliver an end-to-end service to customers
and users. The built-in monitoring capabilities of these third-party products and services are a key
part of the monitoring and event management practice. Monitoring and event management
practitioners along with their counterparts in the Service Design practice need to be able to
cooperate frequently and well with their equipment and service vendors. In doing so, monitoring
and event management and Service Design secure the necessary goods and services that constitute
the organization’s services and ensure that these services are monitorable and manageable.
Determining the appropriate control action for events relies on the filtering and categorization of
the detected changes of state. Filtering and categorization, occurring in the Information and
Technology service dimension, are largely done automatically by the organization’s event
management system (EMS) into which the IT monitoring tools feed the detected, collected, and
transmitted information. The business rules, however, by which the EMS filters and categorizes the
data and makes determinations of significance about them (deciding whether the data represent
an Informational, Warning, or Exception event) are established in the Organization and People
dimension of service management. The thresholds, the alerting parameters, the criteria which the
monitoring tools and the EMS are configured to address are all the product of organizational
priorities and the skilled leadership and staff working to ensure the operational health of the
service ecosystem.
Policies need to be in place to handle different types of events. A “one size fits all” approach to
events is inappropriate and a waste of resources. Different types of events require a response that
is tailored and specific to the type of event it is. A common set of control actions should be
established for each class of event. Policies will address when an auto response is appropriate,
when an alert and escalation to human intervention is appropriate, when an Incident, Problem, or
Change should be initiated, or when special handling is required. For example, in the case of a
security breach that potentially could have operational impact but has not yet affected service
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availability. Policies are defined in the Organization and People dimension and are operationalized
in the Information and Technology dimension.
Having in place a standard classification scheme for events, such as Informational, Warning, and
Exception, enables common handling and escalation processes. It also enables event notifications
to be sent only to those responsible for the handling of further actions or decisions related to the
events. Often, in the incident, problem, or change management practices. Avoiding notifications
to individuals not directly involved in processing events is an efficient use of resources. To do this,
event notifications will identify which departments, groups or individuals need to respond to
events. Maintaining event routing information is a constant task as new events are added or
personnel responsibilities change.
A standard classification scheme for events will enable a common set of actions to be established
for each class of event. In the value streams, when action is being taken on recognized events,
operational and service level objectives for the service are taken into consideration. Actions for
events that trigger the notification of incidents and problems can be tied into existing
categorization and prioritization policies that have been established by incident and problem
management.
Many of the IT monitoring tools and the EMS itself will likely be supplied by third party suppliers
with whom the monitoring and event management practice in conjunction with the supplier
management practice will maintain solid working relationships.
2.4.2 Ensuring that timely, relevant, and sufficient monitoring data is available to
relevant stakeholders
The reporting aspect of monitoring and event management enables ground truth with respect to a
service provider’s actual operating performance and behaviour when benchmarked against the
standards in the original service design and in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) agreed with the
customers. Monitoring and event management provides direct observation results, real-world
empirical evidence as opposed to intended or aspirational results.
Gathering data that has accuracy and integrity in the monitoring and event management practice
is critical to the work of delivering a high-quality service and a high-quality customer experience
when using the service. Service measurement (the gathering of data about the service) depends
on monitoring and event management monitoring and reporting. Monitoring and event
management is critical for Continual Improvement efforts due to its focus on the effectiveness and
efficiency of services and service components
Monitoring and event management identifies weak areas, so that remedial action can be taken (if
there is a justifiable business case), therefore improving future service quality. Monitoring and
event management can also show where customer actions are causing the fault and identify where
working efficiency and/or training can be improved. Monitoring and event management can also
address both internal and external suppliers since their performance must be evaluated and
managed as well.
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2.4.3 Ensuring that events are detected, interpreted, and if needed acted upon as
quickly as possible
Defining rules for monitoring and event management is not enough; actual detection and
processing of events is required to make these rules valuable. Efficiency and scope of event
management heavily depends on the service architecture and level of service management
automation. In digital infrastructure and modern application, many tools for monitoring and event
management are built-in, and the focus of the practice is on the integration and tuning of the
event processing rules.
Contrary to that, organizations with many legacy systems which were not designed for monitoring
must focus on implementation of specialized monitoring and event management tools and add-ons,
or even on manual monitoring and event management.
Technology opportunities and constraints should inform monitoring and event management scope,
policy making, and daily activities.
Regardless of how limited organization’s monitoring and event management capabilities, they
should be subject to continual improvement, to ensure that the practice meets the needs of the
organization.
KEY METRICS
The ITIL practices are means or tools for the management of products and services. Like the
performance of any tool, practice performance can be assessed only in the context of that tool’s
application. However, tools can differ in quality. This difference defines the tool’s potential or
capability to be effective when used according to their purpose.
The same applies to practices: their performance should be assessed in the context of value
streams, but their potential is defined by their design and the quality of the resources. Further
guidance on metrics, KPIs, and other techniques that can help with this can be found in the
measurement and reporting practice guide.
Key metrics for the Monitoring and Event Management Practice are mapped to its PSFs. They can
be used as KPIs in the context of value streams to assess the contribution of the Monitoring and
Event Management Practice to the effectiveness and efficiency of those value streams. Some
examples of key metrics are given in Table 2.2.

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Table 2.2 Example metrics for the practice success factors
Practice success factors Example metrics
Establishing and maintaining ● Satisfaction of the stakeholders with monitoring and event
approaches/models that describe management approach
● Adherence of the organization to the approach
the various types of events and
● Percentage of the recommendations / requirements of the
monitoring capabilities needed to
approach that are not followed or found unrealistic
detect them
Ensuring that timely, relevant, ● Satisfaction of the stakeholders with monitoring data and its
and sufficient monitoring data is presentation
available to relevant stakeholders
● Quality of the monitoring data (as per agreed data quality
criteria)
Ensuring that events are ● Impact of event management errors

detected, interpreted, and if ● Number and impact of event communications ‘noise’
needed acted upon as quickly as ● Impact of incidents and problems that could not be prevented
or resolved due to poor event management
possible
The correct aggregation of metrics into complex indicators will make them easier to use for the
ongoing management of value streams and for the periodic assessment and continual improvement
of the Monitoring and Event Management Practice. There is no single best solution. Metrics will be
based on the overall service strategy and priorities of an organization, as well as on the goals of
the value streams to which the practice contributes.
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3 Value streams and processes

VALUE STREAM CONTRIBUTION
Like any other ITIL management practice, the monitoring and event management practice
contributes to multiple value streams. Remember, no value stream is made up of a single practice.
The monitoring and event management practice combines with other practices to provide high-
quality services to consumers.
The contribution of the Monitoring and event practice to the service value chain is shown in Figure
3.1.
Figure 3.1 Heat map of the contribution of the Monitoring and event management Practice to the
value chain activities.
The main value chain activities to which the Monitoring and Event Management Practice
contributes are:
● deliver and support
● design and transition
● improve.
PROCESSES
Each practice may include one or more processes and activities that may be necessary to fulfil the
purpose of that practice.

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Process
A set of interrelated or interacting activities that transform inputs into outputs. Processes
define the sequence of actions and their dependencies.
The monitoring and event management practice activities form three processes:
● Monitoring planning process This is a process of adding an element into monitoring, defining
the priority of the element, choosing features to monitor, establishing metrics and thresholds
for event classification, mapping events with the action plans and teams responsible.
● Event handling process
● Monitoring and event management review This process is scheduled or triggered review
process for major event post-mortems, updates on filtering and correlation analysis, services
‘health models’, improvements to automate and operationalize monitoring.
3.2.1 Monitoring planning

Table 3.1 Inputs, activities, and outputs of the monitoring planning process
Key inputs Activities Key outputs

Service health criteria from service Defining the objective of monitoring Monitoring plan for the object
design Assessing measurements available Service health model
SLAs and criteria to be monitored Defined types of events, criteria for
Service performance thresholds Defining types of events for the event detection, priority and
from availability, capacity and object of monitoring response to the events
performance management Defining the thresholds for different Responsibility matrix for events
practices type of events
Knowledge articles Defining a service ‘health model’
Service catalogue (end-to-end events)
CI data Defining events correlations and
rule sets
Mapping events with action plans
and functions responsible and
notified
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Figure 3.2 Workflow of the monitoring planning process
Table 3.2 Activities of the monitoring planning process
Activity Description
Defining the objective of monitoring With information received from the service design stage and service
validation and testing practice and practices involved in the
development of the service (availability, capacity and performance
management practices) and service level management practice, the
team defines key objectives of monitoring.
This discussion should move from warranty to utility requirements (first

covering the most obvious functionality requirements, that were, for
example, in the user stories for the application). Also, it should increase
in granularity, starting with the key service performance and moving to
more details and components.
Team should make a list with descending monitoring priority.
Assessing measurements available Monitoring priority list items are then mapped or translated into
and criteria to be monitored available measurements or synthetic measurements based on available
measurements.
Adding measurements should be explored.
Defining types of events for the Team defines and classifies different types of events. Types could be
object of monitoring general, like informational, warning, exception, or may depend on the
functionality, user groups and their priorities, divided by components or
types of key monitoring objectives.
Defining the thresholds for different Team, together with service or component development team, defines
type of events the thresholds for types of events. The same component metric could be

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treated differently based on the service it contributes into, depending
on the existing SLAs and availability, capacity and performance
requirements defined for the service or component.
Also, event handling throughput should be taken into consideration, as,

although modern IT systems can detect almost any event, not any event
should be acted upon. So generally monitoring and event management
should be developed iteratively, from preventing disasters in the very
beginning, to refinement of components later.
Defining a service ‘health model’ Based on input from teams involved in the service design, a ‘health
(end-to-end events) model’ is built, that reflects the key events in the service and
connections between them. There could be several models for one
service.
Such models let monitoring team assess user experience of the service.
For example, a model can be built for a single bank customer
transaction, and measure how much time it takes from a request in
mobile app, with all the bank database systems in-between, to the
notification of completed transaction in the mobile app.
Service ‘health models’ could also be implemented as reports or

dashboards on service health and performance and used at ad-hoc basis
by service owners, teams involved in other practices, and other
stakeholders. This way the information about the service is ‘pulled’ by a
stakeholder.
Defining event correlations and rule Together with teams involved in the service design, event correlations
sets and corresponding sets of rules are defined.
Some correlations might use second event as a check of the first event,
or to further filter the scope of the event. Also, defined correlations can
help preventing some negative synergic effects events might have when
occurring simultaneously.
A rule set consists of several rules that define how the event messages
for a particular event will be processed and evaluated. For example, a
warning event may be generated each time a disk log file reaches its
capacity, but an exception event will be generated if more than four
warning events have been generated.
Rules themselves are typically embedded into monitoring and event

handling technologies. They consist of Boolean kinds of algorithms to
correlate events that have been generated in order to create additional
events that need to be communicated. These algorithms can be codified
into event management software typically referred to as correlation
engines.
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems could be used to define typical and

atypical behaviors of users, admins, systems, etc. This may form an
additional check to filter the events.
Mapping events with action plans For each event or group of events, an action plan to minimize the
and functions responsible and negative impact of event is defined. Based on the action plan, the team
notified or function responsible for actions following the event, can be defined.
Action plans can also be executed automatically or be semi-automated,

including human intervention for some important actions.
Action plans created at this stage become a basis for event procedures
and automation.
3.2.2 Event planning
Table 3.3 Inputs, activities, and outputs of the event handling process
● Notifications from objects ● Event detection ● Event record

of monitoring, monitoring
● Event logging ● Events statistics updated
tools ● Event filtering and correlation ● Event response errors
● Monitoring plan check (might be iterative) ● Major event post-mortem
● Event classification initiated
● Event response selected ● Stakeholder notifications
● Notifications sent, response ● Knowledge articles update
procedure carries out ● Incidents logged
● Updated reports and
dashboards
Figure 3.3 Workflow of the event handling process

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Table 3.4 Activities of the event handling process
Event detection Event detected by monitoring systems, or as a result of manual

monitoring.
Not all events should be detected, and monitoring systems bandwidth

should be taken into consideration. Only critical events and events that
can be acted upon should be detected within existing resource
constraints.
Event logging Event should be logged in the monitoring system, preferably

automatically.
Event filtering and correlation check Event should be treated according to rule sets, to filter and find
(might be iterative) correlations, to enable better classification.
This activity might be iterative.
Event classification Event classified into a group or type, and specific event is filtered
further within a group if needed to select a proper response.
Event response selected Action plan or response procedure should be planned for each event in
the monitoring planning process. Based on the rules defined in planning,
event response and teams notified are is selected.
Notifications sent, response Response procedure carries out, teams responsible for actions or
procedure carries out supervision (if response procedure is fully automated) are notified.
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● Updated knowledge articles

● Post-mortem review for major ● Updated event response
events and incidents procedures
● Major event records
● Major incident records
● Review of filtering and ● Improvement proposals for
correlation analysis filtering and correlation
● Improvement proposals
● Event records and statistics ● Review of services ‘health analysis
● Information requests from

models’ ● Changes proposed to
service owners and
● Review of event response automation
procedures and automation ● Updated monitoring criteria
stakeholders
● Review of tools available for and thresholds
data analysis, correlation ● Updated filtering methods
analysis, AI and ML ● Updated list of tools and
● Review of statistical technology used
information gathered by ● Updated list of reports and
monitoring tools statistical information
provided
3.2.3 Monitoring and event management review

Table 3.6 Activities of the monitoring and event management review process
Post-mortem review for major The fact that a major incident occurred may often mean that some
events and incidents abnormal service or component behavior was not detected and
acted upon. Therefore, major events and incidents provide a good
basis for monitoring knowledge discovery and improvements.
The nature of the major event should be reviewed, analyzed for

event correlations, decomposed to component or even CI level,
and corresponding metrics should be explored that may have
helped to detect the major event or failure that led to the major
incident.
Additional or similar risks of the component should be explored,
and events identified should be added into monitoring.

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Changes to monitoring should be proposed to detect the similar

incidents in future.
Review of filtering and Filtering and correlation should be addressed when monitoring
correlation analysis detects a huge number of events or does not detect events when
it should. Sometimes temporary measures could be considered,
like loosening the thresholds or grouping of events. Otherwise,
Review of services ‘health detailed analysis and thorough rules definition should be
models’
undertaken, and changes to monitoring proposed as a result.
Review of event response Incidents and failures occurred in result of event response should
procedures and automation be reviewed and changes proposed.
Also, this review should aim at increasing automation in both
detecting events and responding to them. Additional automation
should be proposed.
Review of tools available for Tools available internally and in the market that may increase
data analysis, correlation efficiency of monitoring should be reviewed. Trials, pilot
analysis, AI and ML implementations should be proposed within monitoring budget.
Also, this review should discuss any new techniques or best
practices used in monitoring, market benchmarking should be
carried out, and improvements to monitoring proposed.
Review of statistical information Statistical information should be reviewed, to propose

gathered by monitoring tools improvements to monitoring, services monitored.
Trends detected for services should be reviewed by all teams
involved in service lifecycle.
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4 Organizations and people

ROLES, COMPETENCIES, AND RESPONSIBILITIES
The practice guides do not describe the practice management roles such as practice owner,
practice lead, or practice coach. The practice guides focus on specialist roles specific to each
practice. The structure and naming of each role may differ from organization to organization, so
any roles defined in ITIL should not be treated as mandatory, or even recommended. Remember,
roles are not job titles. One person can take on multiple roles and one role can be assigned to
multiple people.
Roles are described in the context of processes and activities. Each role is characterized with a
competence profile based on the following model:
Competence Description
code
L Leader Activities and skills associated with this competence include decision
making, delegation, overseeing other activities, incentives and motivation, and
evaluating outcomes.
А Administrator Activities and skills associated with this competence include the
assignment and prioritization of tasks, record keeping, ongoing reporting, and basic
improvement initiatives.
C Coordinator/communicator Activities and skills associated with this competence

include the coordination of multiple parties, communication between stakeholders,
and the running of awareness campaigns.
М Methods and techniques expert Activities and skills associated with this competence
include the design and implementation of work techniques, the documentation of
procedures, consulting on processes, work analysis, and continual
improvement.
Т Technical expert This competence focuses on technical (IT) expertise and expertise-
based assignments.

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Table 4.1 The roles involved in the monitoring and event management practice activities
Activity Responsible roles Competence profile Specific skills
Monitoring planning process
Defining the objective of Service owner CA Understanding of service value

monitoring for stakeholders and service
Designer
proposition
Developer
Knowledge of service levels
User and user experience
Delivery manager
Account manager
Tester
Service validation specialist
Operations manager
Assessing measurements Tester TM Knowledge of service

available and criteria to architecture and design
Service validation specialist
be monitored
Expertise in monitoring tools,
Monitoring specialist
Defining types of events probe detectors and sensors
for the object of Developer
monitoring
Designer
Defining the thresholds
for different type of Architect
events
Operations manager
Defining a service Service owner TMA Knowledge of user experience

‘health model’ (end-to-
User Knowledge of warranty and
end events)
utility requirements
Delivery manager
Defining events
Knowledge of service subject
correlations and rule Account manager
matter and business processes
sets
Operations manager
Knowledge of service
Tester architecture and design
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Service validation specialist Expertise in monitoring tools

and probe detectors and
sensors
Developer
Designer
Architect
Mapping events with Service owner ATM Knowledge of operations and

action plans and support infrastructure and
User
functions responsible organization
and notified Delivery manager
Knowledge of service
Account manager architecture and design
Tester Expertise in monitoring tools

and probe detectors and
Service validation specialist sensors
Developer
Designer
Architect
Event handling process.
All efforts should be made to make this process as automated as possible, so no roles are discussed for this
process.
Monitoring and event management review
Post-mortem review for Service owner TMA Knowledge of service

major events and architecture and design
User
incidents
Expertise in monitoring tools
Delivery manager
Review of filtering and
correlation analysis Account manager
Review of services Monitoring specialist
Continual improvement skills
‘health models’
Developer
Designer
Architect

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2020
Review of event Service owner ATMC Knowledge of operations and
response procedures and support infrastructure and
Delivery manager
automation organization
Account manager
Expertise in automation
Developer
Designer matter and business processes
Architect Continual improvement skills
Service desk manager
Operations manager
Review of tools available Monitoring specialist MTA Expertise in monitoring tools,

for data analysis, AI, ML
Architect
correlation analysis, AI
Expertise in automation
and ML Business analyst
Technology consultant
Review of statistical Monitoring specialist MTA Knowledge of service

information gathered by architecture and design
Architect
monitoring tools
Business analyst
4.2 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES AND TEAMS

It is rare that a dedicated monitoring and event management team exists in the organization.
Usually, people responsible for the service delivery and operations are those involved in the
monitoring.
It is important to ensure that monitoring is planned at the design stage of the service lifecycle.
Therefore, people responsible for monitoring should be involved in the design phase, and teams
that developed the service or component are available for service hand-over to operations and
setting up the monitoring. This includes architects, software development teams, infrastructure
teams, designers, teams responsible for service validation, availability, continuity, capacity,
and performance, and so on.
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5 Information and technology

INFORMATION EXCHANGE
The effectiveness of the monitoring and event management practice is based on the quality of
the information used. This information includes, but is not limited to, information about:
● customers and users

● services, their architecture, and design, acceptance criteria and SLAs
● partners and suppliers, including SLA information on the services they provide
● policies and requirements which regulate service provision
● ongoing service delivery, including:
• information about the current operational status of services
• service warranty and utility requirements
• service metrics available
• CIs the service is dependent on
• interdependencies of service components and their performance
• information about major incidents
• information about planned and ongoing changes and expected impact on service
performance
• availability, capacity and performance targets
• teams responsible for service and components
• knowledge articles about the service
● information about the status of service improvements.
This information may take various forms. The key inputs and outputs of the practice are listed in
the ‘value streams and processes’ section of this guide.
AUTOMATION AND TOOLING

In some cases, the work of the monitoring and event management practice can significantly
benefit from automation (see the ‘value streams and processes’ section of this guide for details on
when this is applicable). Where this is the case, and automation is possible and effective, it may
involve the solutions outlined in Table 5.1.
Table 5.1 Automation solutions for monitoring and event management activities
Process activity  Means of automation  Key functionality  Impact on the

effectiveness of the
practice 
Monitoring planning process
Defining the objective of Visualization tools (e.g. Visualization of service Medium

monitoring mind maps, service structure, dependencies,
diagrams, architecture CIs, etc.
Assessing measurements
visualization)
available and criteria to be Providing information on
monitored Service catalogue tools service structure and

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component/service
Defining types of events for CMDB
interdependencies
the object of monitoring
Providing information on
service SLAs and
requirements
Defining the thresholds for Monitoring and event Active and reactive High
different type of events management tools monitoring, event setup,
data gathering, data
Defining a service ‘health ITSM tool
analysis, alerting, rules
model’ (end-to-end events)
Software-defined setting
Defining events correlations infrastructure tools
and rule sets
Infrastructure and platform
built-in monitoring tools
Service visualization tools
Mapping events with action Monitoring and event ITSM tools integration (e.g. High
plans and functions management tools incidents logging based on
responsible and notified events)
ITSM tools
Notifications and
Software-defined
communications, task
infrastructure tools
creation.
Collaboration and
Automated scripts running
communication tools
AI and ML event
Integration bus
correlation,
Automation systems normal/abnormal behavior

analysis
AI and ML tools for event
correlation, behavior
monitoring and analysis
Event handling process.
Event detection Monitoring and event ITSM tools integration (e.g. High
management tools incidents logging based on
Event logging
events)
ITSM tools
Event filtering and
Notifications and
correlation check (might be Software-defined
communications, task
iterative) infrastructure tools
creation.
Event classification Collaboration and

Automated scripts running
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communication tools
Event response selected AI and ML event
Integration bus correlation,
Notifications sent, response
normal/abnormal behavior
procedure carries out Automation systems
analysis
Reports and dashboard tools
Reports and dashboard
and portals
publishing
Monitoring and event management review
Post-mortem review for Visualization tools (e.g. Visualization of service Medium

major events and incidents mind maps, service structure, dependencies,
diagrams, architecture Cis, etc.
Review of filtering and
visualization)
correlation analysis Providing information on
Statistics and analysis tools, service structure and
Review of services ‘health
databases component/service
models’
interdependencies
Service catalogue tools
Review of event response
Providing information on
procedures and automation CMDB
service SLAs and
Review of tools available Monitoring and event requirements, compliance
for data analysis, management tools and breaches
correlation analysis, AI and

ITSM tools Providing information on
ML
major incidents
Collaboration and
Review of statistical
Reports and dashboard
communication tools
information gathered by
publishing
monitoring tools Reports and dashboard tools
Notifications, chats
and portals
Business analysis tools Analysis and assessment
Benchmarking tools and Knowledge sharing
knowledge management
tools

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6 Partners and suppliers
Very few services are delivered using only an organization’s own resources. Most, if not all, depend
on other services, often provided by third parties outside the organization (see section 2.4 of the
ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition publication for a model of a service relationship). Relationships
and dependencies introduced by supporting services are described in the practice guides for
supplier management.
Development of communications and cloud services made external monitoring services very
popular. CIs like servers, database instances can have monitoring agents installed and feeding
information into cloud repository. Such solutions make additional AI and machine learning (ML)-
enabled analysis easier and cheaper. ML in such solutions is improved by merging data from
thousands of monitoring objects and fine-tuned understanding of normal and abnormal behaviour
of systems and users.
Another important consideration is the agreement concerning the access to monitoring for
outsourced services and components, so that an organization has control over measurements and
metrics agreed with the service provider.
Also, all services that are developed by external suppliers must be designed as monitoring-
enabled, which means that a designed service must be able to provide information on its
performance and health.
Where organizations aim to ensure fast and effective the monitoring and event management, they
usually try to agree to close cooperation with their partners and suppliers, removing formal
bureaucratic barriers in communication, collaboration, and decision making. Refer to the supplier
management practice guide for more information on this.
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7 Important reminder
Most of the content of the practice guides should be taken as a suggestion of areas that an
organization might consider when establishing and nurturing their own practices. The practice
guides are catalogues of things that organizations might think about, not a list of answers. When
using the content of the ITIL practice guides, organizations should always follow the ITIL guiding
principles:
● focus on value
● start where you are
● progress iteratively with feedback
● collaborate and promote visibility
● think and work holistically
● keep it simple and practical
● optimize and automate.
More information on the guiding principles and their application can be found in section 4.3 of
ITIL® Foundation: ITIL 4 Edition.

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8 Acknowledgments 2020
AXELOS Ltd is grateful to everyone who has contributed to the development of

this guidance. These practice guides incorporate an unprecedented level of
enthusiasm and feedback from across the ITIL community. In particular,
AXELOS would like to thank the following people.
8.1 AUTHORS
Dennis Cotter.
2.2 REVIEWERS
Roman Jouravlev.
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© 2020 32

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What are the main sections covered in the document?

What are the main sections covered in the document?

What are some of the practices that monitoring and event management provides input to?

What are some of the practices that monitoring and event management provides input to?

Monitoring and event

1 About this document

● general information about the practice

1.1 ITIL® 4 QUALIFICATION SCHEME

● ITIL Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support

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TERMS AND CONCEPTS

Repeated observation of a system, practice, process, service, or other entity to detect

Figure 2.1 Types of monitoring

In addition to native monitoring features, monitoring also employs designed-for-purpose

Although monitoring and event management is traditionally focused on technology components of

A measurement or calculation that is monitored or reported for management and

● low-level infrastructure metrics (host-, server-, network- and others)

Responses to a threshold vary and may include:

● creating an alert or other notification

• More than X disk errors in an hour

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● identifying and optimizing the scope of monitoring

Activity Practice Guide

Management of incidents Incident management

Investigation of causes of events and trends Problem management

Management of changes in response to events Change enablement

Communications with users Service desk

Support decision-making based on monitoring Measurement and reporting

Performance and capacity management

Information security management

Setting thresholds for infrastructure and Infrastructure and platform management

Setting targets and thresholds for third parties’ Supplier management

PRACTICE SUCCESS FACTORS

Practice success factor

● establishing and maintaining approaches/models that describe the various types of

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● Finding balance between informativity, granularity, and frequency of the monitoring

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Practice success factors Example metrics

Ensuring that events are ● Impact of event management errors

3 Value streams and processes

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3.2.1 Monitoring planning

Key inputs Activities Key outputs

Figure 3.2 Workflow of the monitoring planning process

Table 3.2 Activities of the monitoring planning process

This discussion should move from warranty to utility requirements (first

Team should make a list with descending monitoring priority.

Adding measurements should be explored.

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Also, event handling throughput should be taken into consideration, as,

Service ‘health models’ could also be implemented as reports or

Rules themselves are typically embedded into monitoring and event

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems could be used to define typical and

Action plans can also be executed automatically or be semi-automated,

Key inputs Activities Key outputs

● Notifications from objects ● Event detection ● Event record

Figure 3.3 Workflow of the event handling process

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Process activity  Means of automation  Key functionality  Impact on the