ITIL
The definitive guide
What is ITIL?
Find out ITIL's meaning, the difference between ITIL v3 and ITIL 4, and its management practices. Plus, get an overview of the Service Value Chain and System. Providing guidance on the definition of the direction of the service provider with a clear capability model and aligns them to the business strategy and customer needs.
Until the introduction of ITIL 4 in 2019, ITIL was commonly defined as a library of volumes describing a framework of best practices for delivering IT services (IT Service Management). But, as with ITSM itself, ITIL was increasingly being used in non-IT scenarios through what the IT industry termed Enterprise Service Management strategies: The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is the use of ITSM principles and capabilities in IT and other business areas to improve operations, services, experiences, and outcomes.
This enterprise-wide use of ITSM and ITIL meant that ITIL 4 morphed from its traditional focus on ITSM to service management, with mentions of ITSM avoided in ITIL 4 literature unless absolutely necessary. Such that ITIL is now presented as a body of service management best practice guidance. This has impacted not only the provided guidance and the terminology employed, but also how ITIL is defined.
For example, AXELOS - the custodians of ITIL (there’s more on this shortly) - defines ITIL as both “…the most widely used guidance in the world on IT Service Management” and “best-practice guidance for IT service management” in its ITIL 4 Foundation publication despite the move from ITSM to service management throughout. Whereas the ITIL 4 Glossary has no definition for ITSM, only service management - “A set of specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value for customers in the form of services.”
As to how ITIL was originally created, and continues to be created, it’s curated real-world good practices for service design, delivery, and support (including continual improvement).
Finally, you might be thinking “But it’s the IT Infrastructure Library, right?” This is historically correct - where before the ITIL v3 version in 2007, ITIL was an acronym for the IT Infrastructure Library. However, with this version the longer-form nomenclature was dropped such that ITIL is now just a name, i.e. ITIL simply means “ITIL.”
ITIL framework and Management Practices
ITIL isn’t simply a set of ITSM processes. ITIL is very much about creating a fit-for-purpose capability around service design, delivery, support, and improvement. ITIL 4 addresses the process-bias issue head-on by replacing the 26 processes of ITIL 2011 with 34 management practices which are defined as “…a set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.” There’s more on management practices later but the key point is that service management success requires people, processes, technology, and more
Among the processes found in both ITIL v3 and ITIL 4 are included:
ITIL Change Management
The objective of change management is “to ensure that changes are recorded, evaluated, authorized, prioritized, planned, tested, implemented, documented, and reviewed in a controlled manner in order to to understand and minimize risks while making IT changes.
ITIL Incident Management
The process, or set of activities, that ensures all IT issues (termed “incidents” by ITIL) are logged and progressed effectively and consistently through to resolution. All while ensuring that nothing is lost, ignored, or forgotten about.
ITIL Problem Management
ITIL 4 defines the key purpose of problem management as being “to reduce the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents and managing workarounds and known errors.”
The History of ITIL
While service management, and some would say ITSM, existed long before ITIL - ITIL was introduced in 1989, driven by the UK government which was unhappy with how its IT was being delivered in the latter half of the 1980s. As a result, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), although called the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) at the time, was set to creating a framework of best practices for the efficient and economic use of IT resources.
Both ITIL and ITSM adoption levels grew quickly during the 1990s and much of ITIL’s success can be attributed to the symbiotic relationship it had with ITSM tools, in that ITIL adoption drove ITSM tool sales and ITSM tool sales drove ITIL adoption. Especially since all of the most popular ITSM tools had used ITIL best practice as a blueprint for their process-based design.
ITIL v2 was published in 2001 in the form of two books that focused on service delivery and service support, respectively. These were supplemented by additional non-core ITIL publications that were not examinable. Here ITIL continued to take the approach of documenting the service delivery and support practices used within successful IT organizations and had pretty much a stranglehold on the market for ITSM qualifications.
A third version of ITIL - ITIL v3 - was published in 2007, with this “refreshed” in 2011. For many, this was a rewrite, and the new body of guidance was called ITIL 2011. AXELOS made this ITIL v3 (2011 Edition) with the introduction of ITIL 4 although you might still see it called ITIL 2011 or ITIL v3/2011.
ITIL v3 had a far wider scope than ITIL v2 and introduced “the service lifecycle” to house ITIL v3’s 26 ITSM processes and four functions across five areas: service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement (CSI).
The latest incarnation of ITIL - ITIL 4 - was made available in February 2019 in the form of the Foundation publication and exam. Additional, higher level, publications and exams were released in February 2020.
The ITIL 4 Managing Professional certification requires the passing of four higher-level exams plus ITIL 4 Foundation:
- ITIL 4 Specialist: Create, Deliver and Support
- ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value
- ITIL 4 Specialist: High-velocity IT
- ITIL 4 Strategist: Direct, Plan and Improve (a universal module that’s also employed in the ITIL 4 Strategic Leader certification)
The ITIL 4 Strategic Leader certification requires the passing of two higher-level exams plus ITIL 4 Foundation:
- ITIL 4 Strategist: Direct Plan and Improve
- ITIL 4 Leader: Digital and IT Strategy
The “ITIL Master” designation requires both the Managing Professional and Strategic Leader certifications. Here, candidates need at least five years’ experience working in service management leadership, management, or higher management advisory roles in addition to the exam passes.
The Need for ITIL 4
One could argue that ITIL 4 was well overdue in 2019, given that ITIL v3/2011 was released in 2007 and then refreshed in 2011. So much had changed in the world, let alone IT, between 2011 and 2019.
The key drivers for replacing ITIL v3 (2011 Edition) are well expressed in an ITIL 4 blog by ITIL author Stuart Rance. These include that the 2011 Edition:
- Was process-centric
- Talked to capability implementation in silos where different teams operated different ITIL processes separately
- Had too little focus on value, outcomes, costs, and risks
- Has little compatibility with Agile, DevOps, Lean, and other management approaches
- Lacked support for digital transformation (a business need that was already a decade old in 2019)
ITIL 4 vs. ITIL v3 (2011 Edition)
While the following sections outline a number of significant changes in ITIL 4 - versus ITIL v3 (2011 Edition) - it’s important to note that ITIL 4 retains many of the ITIL best practices that have assisted organizations over the last three decades
As to what has changed, the key differences include that:
- ITIL 4 relates to service management rather than ITSM
- ITIL 4 introduces the Service Value System with the Service Value Chain at its center
- “Management practices” replaces the processes in ITIL v3 (2011 Edition)
- The ITIL Practitioner book’s Guiding Principles are now part of the core ITIL guidance
- The Four Dimensions of Service Management replace the “four Ps” of ITIL v3 (2011 Edition).
The Service Value System
At the heart of the ITIL 4 service management best practice is the Service Value System. This is shown below, with demand for services being turned into value using the ITIL 4 “components” in the central hexagons.
- The Service Value Chain which is described in the next section
- Management practices (covered later)
- Governance, with three key governance-related activities - evaluation, direction, and monitoring
- Continual improvement, which replaces CSI to reflect that improvement applies to more than just services
- Guiding Principles that were first included in 2016’s ITIL Practitioner publication (covered later).
The Service Value Chain
ITIL 4 describes the Service Value Chain, shown in the diagram below, as “an operating model which outlines the key activities required to respond to demand and facilitate value realization through the creation and management of products and services.”
Each of the six central elements within the Service Value Chain can be used to create “value streams” that define how value is created by particular service management capabilities. Importantly, each element can be reused within any given value stream as demand is turned into value. A common example of this is that many value streams will have multiple instances of engagement.
Management Practices
The highest-profile part of the various incarnations of ITIL has traditionally been the ITSM processes. In ITIL 4, the focus has been elevated to consider practices, or capabilities, rather than simply the processes - this reflects that ITSM capabilities require more than simply processes. ITIL 4 defines a management practice as:
“A set of organizational resources designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective.” Importantly, a practice is more than just the process(es).”
Also, the 34 ITIL 4 management practices are related to service management per se such that they apply to all service providers and not just IT. They’re also split across three groupings: general management practices, service management practices, and technical management practices as shown in the table below.
| General Management x14 | Service Management x17 | Technical Management x3 |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture management | Availability management | Deployment management |
| Continual improvement | Business analysis | Infrastructure and platform management |
| Information security management | Capacity and performance management | Software development and management |
| Knowledge management | Change enablement | |
| Measurement and reporting | Incident management | |
| Organizational change management | IT asset management | |
| Portfolio management | Monitoring and event management | |
| Project management | Problem management | |
| Relationship management | Release management | |
| Risk management | Service catalog management | |
| Service financial management | Service configuration management | |
| Strategy management | Service continuity management | |
| Supplier management | Service design | |
| Workforce and talent management | Service desk | |
| Service level management | ||
| Service request management | ||
| Service validation and testing |
The origins of each set of management practices are as follows:
- “General management practices have been adopted and adapted for service management from general business management domains.
- Service management practices have been developed in service management and ITSM industries.
- Technical management practices have been adapted from technology management domains for service management purposes by expanding or shifting their focus from technology solutions to IT services.”
When the ITIL 4 management practices are compared to the ITIL v3 (2011 Edition) processes, some practices have new names as well as updated content, for example:
- Capacity and performance management was previously capacity management
- Change enablement was previously change management
- Monitoring and event management was previously event management.
Some practices are new to ITIL (although elements of related guidance might have been contained within other processes), for example:
- IT asset management
- Organizational change management
- Software development and management
- Workforce and talent management.
The ITIL Guiding Principles
ITIL 4 has brought the nine guiding principles for ITIL contained within the 2016 ITIL Practitioner Guidance publication into the main body of ITIL. Albeit reimagining them as just seven principles that better reflect the needs of modern service management and ITSM. These are outlined below.
The Four Dimensions
of Service Management
ITIL has long urged people to focus on all three of “people, process, and technology” and not simply the technology. ITIL v3 (2011 Edition) extended this with the “four Ps” of people, process, product (meaning “technology”), and partners.
ITIL 4 has extended this even further with “the four dimensions of service management” as shown in the diagram below.
The observant will see that this model still includes people (in 1), processes (in 4), technology (in 2), and partners (in 3), with the addition of the external factors affecting each of the four dimensions.
The Relevance of ITIL to ITSM Tools
As already mentioned, the earliest service desk solutions and then ITSM tools were modeled on ITIL best practices. Or, more specifically, the most commonly adopted elements of ITIL were used as an ITSM tool blueprint in terms of capabilities such as incident management, service request management, problem management, change management/enablement, knowledge management, service catalog management and self-service, and service configuration management and the configuration management database (CMDB).
The introduction of the service lifecycle and its five stages in ITIL v3 also brought with it a way to group ITSM capabilities within ITSM tools for more intuitive user experiences too. For example, grouping all the service operation processes together and all the service transition processes together.
This said, any ITSM tool that you’re currently using or planning to use is still likely built on ITIL best practices. Meaning that many organizations are benefitting from ITIL even if they haven’t separately invested in its adoption.
How ITIL Will Enable Your Organization
ITIL adoption will benefit your organization across three areas. First, the use of ITSM or service management thinking. Second, the use of specific ITIL best practices. And third, the use of ITIL-aligned ITSM tools to deliver enhanced versions of otherwise manual practices.
So, for example, the benefits of ITIL adoption start with the generic benefits of ITSM. That the focus of IT delivery and support moves from individual technology domains to the delivery and improvement of IT services. Here the use of standard practices and defined responsibilities increase speed and efficiency, reduce costs, and provide better user experiences and outcomes.
Then the ITIL guidance provides guidance related to optimizing specific practices and processes along with related benefits driven by the supplementary ITIL content, i.e. that which sits outside of specific processes. For example, increased control and governance.
Finally, the use of a fit-for-purpose ITSM tool provides technology-based enablement that improves both operations and outcomes, For example, the automation of workflows and routine tasks and activities, the provision of multiple access and communication channels (such as self-service), the facilitation of knowledge management, and greater insight into operational performance and opportunities for improvement.
With ITIL, everyone benefits - from service-provider staff, through service receivers (employees and potentially customers), to the organization as a whole. Where ITIL will help technology, or digital enablement, to become a source of competitive advantage.
