There is a growing demand for IT service management (ITSM) professionals across multiple industries as organisations strive to bring themselves into the digital age. To achieve these positions and remain competitive in the job market, individuals need to continuously enhance their technical knowledge and skills.
What are technical skills?
Technical skills, or hard skills, are practical abilities relevant to a particular field or industry. This essential knowledge is typically quantifiable and measurable, and will have been developed through education, training, or hands-on experience.
What technical skills are most useful for ITSM professionals?
These are the technical skills most relevant for the varied role of an IT service management professional.
Proficiency in using IT service management and monitoring tools
Understanding how to use tools such as ServiceNow, BMC Remedy or Jira Service Management is fundamental, as they can help to manage processes, incidents and requests efficiently. While network and system monitoring tools like Nagios, Zabbix, or SolarWinds help to proactively identify and resolve issues.
Incident and problem management
Expertise in diagnosing, managing, and resolving IT incidents and problems is crucial. This includes understanding root cause analysis and implementing preventive measures.
Configuration management
ITSM professionals need to develop a knowledge of configuration management databases (CMBDs) and their role in maintaining accurate records of IT assets and their relationships.
Service Level Management
Understanding service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs) to ensure that IT services meet agreed-upon performance standards is important.
Knowledge of IT infrastructure
Being aware of the IT infrastructure components such as servers, networks, and storage systems is valuable for troubleshooting and collaboration with technical teams.
Security and compliance
Awareness of IT security principles and compliance requirements can prove useful, as ITSM professionals often deal with sensitive data and access control.
Reporting and data analysis
The ability to create meaningful reports and analyse data to identify trends and areas for improvement in IT services is vital.
What are the benefits of developing these technical skills?
Developing technical skills, offers a range of benefits for professionals and their organisations:
- Better innovation and creativity
- Cost savings
- Enhanced productivity
- Helps meet business objectives
- Higher quality of work and improved service delivery
- Improved employability and career advancement
- Increased adaptability
- Problem-solving abilities
- And more!
Enhance your knowledge with ITIL® 4 training
ITIL 4 training will help individuals and IT service management teams to develop a range of these essential technical skills.
Learn more about our ITIL 4 e-learning, virtual or classroom training, and book your course now!
Now you understand the value of technical skills, you can read more about the importance of soft skills in ITSM in our previous blog.