In this book, the authors draw upon their extensive experiences in small and medium sized organizations to provide a ‘practical and application-oriented path’ to address the many challenges in the world of IT service management. Their approach is based upon the FitSM framework, distinguishing 82 concise requirements. It draws upon the ISO/IEC 20000 standard and the COBIT and ITIL frameworks. These requirements help organizations see through the details into what is important. The author’s motto, drawn from FitSM, is “keep it simple”, describing ‘what’ needs to be done, and focusing on 14 core processes - reducing the size and complexity of an ITSM adoption. As the authors stress, those requiring more can look to ITIL, COBIT or other extensive frameworks. For the authors, the strength of the FitSM approach lies in the focus on the ‘requirements’ to be met for a functioning IT service management system, supported by the ‘maturity assessment’ that provides a reference point for continual improvement. Continual improvement needs to be a core capability. Another point of attention is improving maturity “in small steps with small changes”, with an emphasis on addressing the all-important ‘People’ factor. These small improvements are enabled by an easy-to-implement, simply structured approach, backed up by a role model, templates and implementation guides. The implementation guidance will appear in a separate Volume 2.