This guide is intended to support groups in the federated human data area who are interested in implementing an IT Service Management (ITSM) framework to support their professional delivery of IT Services, in particular the lightweight FitSM standard. Introducing ITSM can be challenging due to the unfamiliar terminology and concepts, so this guide attempts to make it more accessible, with links to supporting material. It was prepared as part of a Staff Exchange program supported by the Elixir research infrastructure, between NBIS National Bioinformatic Infrastructure Sweden and SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics , which was on the same topic. It does not provide every answer needed to implement ITSM, but should offer a good starting point, initial orientation, and a set of suggestions for how to proceed.