ITSM Service Desk project management focuses on planning, organizing, and executing IT projects in a manner that ensures quality project delivery within a prescribed schedule and budget. In contrast, ITIL v3 emphasizes a service lifecycle approach, though many organizations focus their ITIL efforts on the service transition and operations phases of the service lifecycle.

Organizations can easily identify the relationships between projects and services by simply identifying the services impacted by each project. This enhances the organization's understanding of the potential project impact, which helps ensure a thorough identification of the project benefits.

The risk of failing can be considerably reduced through rigorous project management ensuring that:

• Who are the various people involved and act in a co-ordinated way.
• The complexity of the tasks is reduced through structuring.
• The project contents are subdivided into meaningful units to ensure clarity and ease of handling, the goals are achieved.
• Neither deadlines nor financial limits are exceeded.