The allure of ITIL
By Linda King, G2G3
I have been working on an editorial piece this week for a leading service management magazine on the growth and adoption of ITIL. It was an eye opening piece of writing for me to be honest... do organizations who are implementing ITIL actually evaluate the strengths of ITIL against other frameworks? Or do they simply jump on the ITIL bandwagon, led by its ever increasing popularity and column inches? In adopting ITIL, many IT organizations think it will be a panacea to their issues with the added bonus of raising their profile and increasing the perceived brand value of IT. But when you actually seek empirical evidence of the benefits of ITIL, there is very little around - apart from that put forward by over-eager vendors who are trying to put numbers where their hype is.
Don't get me wrong - implemented well, ITIL can be highly beneficial, and has been for thousands of organizations. But there are alternatives to ITIL, many of which are overlooked in the rush to jump into the ITIL pond - internally defined or homespun processes, COBIT, ITSMBoK, MOF, Lean, ISO/IEC 20000 etc. Some of these alternatives are very different to ITIL - but all offer unique benefits. The key is to understanding what each offers. As the saying goes... 'an educated consumer is the best customerÂ’'. And education and understanding is key to creating the readiness required to make any of these frameworks or initiatives a success.
I have been working on an editorial piece this week for a leading service management magazine on the growth and adoption of ITIL. It was an eye opening piece of writing for me to be honest... do organizations who are implementing ITIL actually evaluate the strengths of ITIL against other frameworks? Or do they simply jump on the ITIL bandwagon, led by its ever increasing popularity and column inches? In adopting ITIL, many IT organizations think it will be a panacea to their issues with the added bonus of raising their profile and increasing the perceived brand value of IT. But when you actually seek empirical evidence of the benefits of ITIL, there is very little around - apart from that put forward by over-eager vendors who are trying to put numbers where their hype is.
Don't get me wrong - implemented well, ITIL can be highly beneficial, and has been for thousands of organizations. But there are alternatives to ITIL, many of which are overlooked in the rush to jump into the ITIL pond - internally defined or homespun processes, COBIT, ITSMBoK, MOF, Lean, ISO/IEC 20000 etc. Some of these alternatives are very different to ITIL - but all offer unique benefits. The key is to understanding what each offers. As the saying goes... 'an educated consumer is the best customerÂ’'. And education and understanding is key to creating the readiness required to make any of these frameworks or initiatives a success.
posted by G2G3 Blog at
10:20
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