One of the biggest changes in V3 is the Service Lifecycle Approach: The five core books are Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement. Service Strategy was not covered a lot in V2, so much of this material is really new, and the goal is to provide organizations with the ability to design, develop and implement Service Management as a strategic asset and to think and act in a strategic manner. Continual Service Improvement as a Practice is also fairly new material.

Another major change is the move from discussing Business and IT Alignment to Business and IT Integration. Also, V2 talks about a Service Catalog, while V3 talks about a Service Portfolio and Service Catalog.

Within Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operation, the processes that were in V2 have been updated and modified based on good practice. There have also been new processes added, such as Knowledge Management, Event Management and Supplier Management. Service Request Management has also been removed from the Incident Management process and is now its own process. Finally, V3 provides more prescriptive guidance than V2. Whereas V2 told you what you should do, V3 goes a bit further and tells you how you should do it.

Robert Stroud, CA ITSM & ITG Evangelist:

ITIL Version 3 has been developed to meet the growing needs for the integration between business and IT to ensure the transparent delivery of business services representing the current and future state of ITSM delivery.

The new books consist of a core or central theme that follows the Deming (Plan-Do-Check-Act) lifecycle with an integrated approach from planning to execution, monitoring and provisioning, which form the basis for IT service improvement. ITIL V3 introduces more detailed guidance, which thereby enables faster and more cost-effective implementations.

The qualification scheme is in the process of being upgraded with the initial testing on all five core books available in June 2007. Existing qualifications will continue to be recognized and a refresher course will be provided to move practitioners from ITIL V2 to ITIL V3.

ITIL V3 now follows the lifecycle approach and has moved from a focus on individual ITIL processes to the services that IT delivers. This, coupled with the more detailed guidance, will allow CIOs to more actively communicate the value of IT to the business, while enabling IT staff to focus on the elements that drive value to the business.