ITIL: It'll get fixed in the next version
 |
By: Michael Warrilow, Director, Hydrasight Published: 10th May 2007 Copyright Hydrasight © 2007 |
Hydrasight notes that ITIL version 3, scheduled to be released late May 2007, is a significant improvement of the fundamentals. However, we do not believe that ITIL version 3 will address the underlying issues associated with enterprise efforts to standardise service management processes.
The release of ITIL version 3 will be heralded by the publication of five new core texts, plus an official introduction. Based on information currently available, the five core texts will be:
- Service Strategy—focusing on aligning business and IT and aims to ensure that the Service Lifecycle is focused on customer outcomes;
- Service Design—providing guidance on the production and maintenance of IT policies, architectures, and documents for the design of service solutions and processes;
- Service Transition—providing guidance and process activities for the transition of services in the operational business environment and covers the broader, long-term change management role, release and deployment practices;
- Service Operation—detailing delivery and control activities to achieve operational excellence on a day-to-day basis;
- Continual Service Improvement—focusing on the process elements involved in identifying and introducing service management improvements (and also deals with issues surrounding service retirement).
ITIL version 3 aims to strengthen the focus on 'business and IT integration' (commonly referred to as business / IT alignment). It also claims to recognise the need for management of IT throughout the complete IT lifecycle: an aspect that we believe was deficient in earlier versions. One of the stated aims of version 3 is to make a clearer and stronger link between ITIL and business benefits. As such, this potentially represents another improvement over previous versions, which have commonly been associated only with IT operations (namely service delivery and service support). However, we believe current assumptions will continue such that ITIL version 3 will simply become a more business-aligned IT operations discipline rather than ITO-wide discipline.
In spite of the potential improvements, Hydrasight therefore cautions organisations to recognise that ITIL version 3 cannot solve many of the underlying problems associated with IT service management. As we have previously stated, our research shows that most organisations have limited organisational recognition that ITIL is a process framework and not a process methodology. Moreover, Hydrasight foresees that the majority of enterprises will continue to 'mix' aspects of ITIL with other process disciplines (e.g., COBIT, Six Sigma, SDLC, ASL, and internally-developed procedures). This trend lends further support to the realisation that a 'one size fits all' approach to IT service management is not possible. This is particularly relevant, and cautionary, given that ITIL remains the most commonly-used (IT operational) process framework and is often assumed to be ‘best practice' (with all the associated misconceptions).
Reader Comments
Posted: 21st May 2007 | By Mark Smalley :
As an active member of the Foundation that promotes the non-proprietary ASL method for Application Management, I wholeheartedly support your point about the impossibility of a 'one size fits all' approach. ASL fills a gap that ITIL doesn't address. As ITIL v3 Chief Architect Sharon Taylor has mentioned in presentations, there will be additional publications covering the formal mapping of ITIL to other global standards. In the mean time I can recommend a good publication that can be found on the Foundation website.
The messages above were all contributed by IT-Director.com readers. Whilst we take care to remove any posts deemed inappropriate, we can take no responsibility for these comments. If you would like a comment removed please contact our editorial team.
We automatically stop accepting comments 180 days after a post is published. If you would like to know more about this subject, please contact us and we'll try to help.