There are some excellent new refinements and additions in the process area. There is some really important thinking about the nature of service and the relationship between IT service providers and the business. But some of the challenges are going to be significant because, as they state themselves, you really can’t take a completely linear approach to putting IT organizations and processes together. V2 was much more "linear-thinking," which is very comfortable for most IT people. We want a kit that tells us this is how it works. V3 shoots that completely out of the water.

In one book, a particular process is discussed in its entirety, but most of the processes are relevant to more than one section of a lifecycle for a service, so they’re also discussed in those books. That could be confusing to people who don’t read the whole library.

There is some advanced thought, that’s not really in the easy comfort zone for a lot of people. There’s enormously valuable information, and great ideas, but people will need to take time to absorb this and see what’s really there and be very careful about identifying an appropriate strategy for themselves to get value out of it.

When someone learns a new skill, like golf, you have to learn the basics before someone teaches you the nuances, like reading a green or noticing the difference between different makers of the same club. Until you know what you’re doing, some of the nuances will escape you. You have no context in which to place those ideas yet. So, there will be that sort of thing with ITIL V3 — some organizations as well as individuals will simply not be ready for the nuance, the more complex thinking. They are going to have to get guidance on the underlying basics. Some V2 basics are improved and wonderful, but different people will need to be prepared for V3 in different ways.

It also means that the learning curve for training and consulting vendors is going to be quite steep so that we can provide that guidance. We will have to spend some serious quality time on this and coming up with the best strategies for different clients at different stages of maturity.

In terms of getting people to get serious about becoming mature, it could have that effect. I think it will help to reduce the thinking of ITIL as something you implement and then are finished with. It will help people understand this is a way of life, and adopt a new approach to the way they work with and service the business, and construct their own work effort. With the publication this week of the version 3 refresh of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the talk in the industry will be about how the upgrade to the best practice framework will affect their organizations.

In the second part of this series, we get some additional insight into that from experts in the industry.

Lou Hunnebeck, ITSM practice director at CCN Corp.

There are some excellent new refinements and additions in the process area. There is some really important thinking about the nature of service and the relationship between IT service providers and the business. But some of the challenges are going to be significant because, as they state themselves, you really can’t take a completely linear approach to putting IT organizations and processes together. V2 was much more "linear-thinking," which is very comfortable for most IT people. We want a kit that tells us this is how it works. V3 shoots that completely out of the water.

In one book, a particular process is discussed in its entirety, but most of the processes are relevant to more than one section of a lifecycle for a service, so they’re also discussed in those books. That could be confusing to people who don’t read the whole library.

There is some advanced thought, that’s not really in the easy comfort zone for a lot of people. There’s enormously valuable information, and great ideas, but people will need to take time to absorb this and see what’s really there and be very careful about identifying an appropriate strategy for themselves to get value out of it.

When someone learns a new skill, like golf, you have to learn the basics before someone teaches you the nuances, like reading a green or noticing the difference between different makers of the same club. Until you know what you’re doing, some of the nuances will escape you. You have no context in which to place those ideas yet. So, there will be that sort of thing with ITIL V3 — some organizations as well as individuals will simply not be ready for the nuance, the more complex thinking. They are going to have to get guidance on the underlying basics. Some V2 basics are improved and wonderful, but different people will need to be prepared for V3 in different ways.

It also means that the learning curve for training and consulting vendors is going to be quite steep so that we can provide that guidance. We will have to spend some serious quality time on this and coming up with the best strategies for different clients at different stages of maturity.

In terms of getting people to get serious about becoming mature, it could have that effect. I think it will help to reduce the thinking of ITIL as something you implement and then are finished with. It will help people understand this is a way of life, and adopt a new approach to the way they work with and service the business, and construct their own work effort.
With the publication this week of the version 3 refresh of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), the talk in the industry will be about how the upgrade to the best practice framework will affect their organizations.

In the second part of this series, we get some additional insight into that from experts in the industry.

Lou Hunnebeck, ITSM practice director at CCN Corp.

There are some excellent new refinements and additions in the process area. There is some really important thinking about the nature of service and the relationship between IT service providers and the business. But some of the challenges are going to be significant because, as they state themselves, you really can’t take a completely linear approach to putting IT organizations and processes together. V2 was much more "linear-thinking," which is very comfortable for most IT people. We want a kit that tells us this is how it works. V3 shoots that completely out of the water.

In one book, a particular process is discussed in its entirety, but most of the processes are relevant to more than one section of a lifecycle for a service, so they’re also discussed in those books. That could be confusing to people who don’t read the whole library.

There is some advanced thought, that’s not really in the easy comfort zone for a lot of people. There’s enormously valuable information, and great ideas, but people will need to take time to absorb this and see what’s really there and be very careful about identifying an appropriate strategy for themselves to get value out of it.

When someone learns a new skill, like golf, you have to learn the basics before someone teaches you the nuances, like reading a green or noticing the difference between different makers of the same club. Until you know what you’re doing, some of the nuances will escape you. You have no context in which to place those ideas yet. So, there will be that sort of thing with ITIL V3 — some organizations as well as individuals will simply not be ready for the nuance, the more complex thinking. They are going to have to get guidance on the underlying basics. Some V2 basics are improved and wonderful, but different people will need to be prepared for V3 in different ways.

It also means that the learning curve for training and consulting vendors is going to be quite steep so that we can provide that guidance. We will have to spend some serious quality time on this and coming up with the best strategies for different clients at different stages of maturity.

In terms of getting people to get serious about becoming mature, it could have that effect. I think it will help to reduce the thinking of ITIL as something you implement and then are finished with. It will help people understand this is a way of life, and adopt a new approach to the way they work with and service the business, and construct their own work effort.
Dave Link, President and CEO, ScienceLogic LLC

ITIL V3 is a “refresh” based upon the observations of “experts” that are tracking how IT service delivery has changed and should change. There are some very specific changes and re-classifications of IT service delivery components that are directly related to this – pulling out event management as a separate focus area from what was a more general incident management piece. Another example: instead of having one service desk component, they’ve split this up into three areas of focus – technical management, application management and IT operations management.

But what I think will probably be the most pervasive change is this movement from saying “aligning IT with the business” to “integrating IT with the business.” The entire Service Strategies section of the ITIL guidelines focuses on this – gathering requirements from the business side to define, design and measure IT service delivery. Apparently, there is much more emphasis on ROI as well. This can only be a good thing, but it’s also the hardest thing to do.

In many ways, ITIL represents an ideal. In the best of all possible worlds, with unlimited resources and time to spend to redefine processes from start to finish, with the buy-in of everyone in the organization from top to bottom and both business and technology sides, with the ability to actually redeploy people across the entire organization, etc., the ITIL guidelines define best practices for IT service delivery. Of course, the reality tends to be very different.

ITIL V2, with the goal of aligning IT with the business, was hard enough to adopt – often requiring a cultural shift within the organization to fully implement a wide-ranging set of ITIL services.

The ITIL V2 Adoption rate (from Forrester Research 2006, estimated adoption rates in $1 billion-plus companies):

Implementing basic ITIL services
20% (2005)
50% (2008)
80% (2010)

Implementing all ITIL services
9% (2005)
25% (2008)
30% (2010)

I can only imagine how much harder it will be to reach outside of the IT organization and truly engage and integrate the entire business – ideally necessary, but hard. I expect this shift in ITIL V3 focus will slow down the adoption of all ITIL services, but as happened with ITIL V2, companies will have the option of choosing which ITIL services they will deploy. So Service Design, Service Transition and Service Operations, with their more practical considerations (and existing tools to support them), will be much easier to adopt and probably be the first stop for most organizations.