I have been asked by a public sector consultancy to put together a Q&A about ITIL... basically, an irreverant introduction to the subject.
ITIL v3 has been in place for a couple of years now – what exactly does it offer, and how does this compare to previous versions?
ITIL (The IT Infrastructure Library) is a framework for IT Service Management. Originally devised in the 1980s by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) it attempted to define what best practice meant for managing IT systems and services. Each new release of ITIL has refined the previous version. The first version was a collection of over 30 books. This was difficult to digest and implementing ITIL was a struggle for most organisations. There was no structure and very few people could visualise how to transform their current working practices into the framework. Version 2 introduced a simple structure to the framework and allowed many organisations to embrace ITIL between 2000 and 2005. The qualification system was also simplified resulting in a huge increase in the number of people that decided to become trained and suppliers of service management tools started using ITIL to gain sales. ITIL became a commercial success. However, with this wide adoption it became apparent that some elements of service management had been over-simplified, whereas others had been omitted. The current version (v3) was started as a "refresh project" that would improve upon the success of version 2 and make it even more applicable to the service management disciplines that had themselves altered in the previous 20 years.
What potential benefits does it bring to an organisation, and are these typically realised?
ITIL will not solve all the issues that face an organisation, however it can help expose why they exist and help focus attention on fixing them. ITIL can bring structure to the development, operation and management of IT services, but it does not do those tasks in itself. For example, through ITIL an organisation might implement a Service Desk to receive support calls and manage the resolution and escalation of those calls through Incident Management. This will ensure that the issues faced by users are not forgotten but instead are tracked, dealt with by the appropriate people and resolved in a timely manner. ITIL defines the processes that make this happen, but unless there are appropriately skilled people to actually fix the incident then the user will not see any benefit.
The mistake that is sometimes made by organisations that attempt to align themselves to ITIL is that they re-organise their structure to mirror the ITIL framework, but neglect to ensure that they have adequately skilled staff performing the roles. Secondly, there is sometimes a perception that the benefits of ITIL will become immediately realised. Best practice service management is as much about the individual people involved as it is about the processes that are implemented. It takes time for people to adopt new ways of working, and also to implement the necessary tools and information that many of the ITIL disciplines require.
What about any down side?
I personally do not see any downside to ITIL itself. It must be remembered that ITIL is a framework and as such there is no “one size fits all” implementation. If there is a downside of any kind it is with the way that some organisations have attempted to use the ITIL documentation as a rulebook by which they will manage IT. This rigorous implementation of ITIL ends up being a strait-jacket to the business. An over-bureaucratic set of processes will just stifle the creativity of people rather than enable them to do the best job possible. This way of viewing ITIL is typically seen in people that have learnt about service management in a classroom but have little or no experience of it in a working organisation.